Conversing with moderators

How do you typically converse with your moderators? Do you have a staff room just for them and you tend to chat and organise things in there or do you tend to use MSN, or even your very own staff chat room on your site?

On our forums we have a staff room and almost all of our organisation, staff discussion and management goes on in there. We used to use cyb chatbox for staff only but decided to no longer use it for these purposes, having the discussion contained in a thread is better than a chat archive.

 

I generally tend to converse with my moderation team by using the following methods:

• The "Moderator Discussion" forum
• Instant Messaging (generally Windows Live Messenger)
• Skype

and sometimes...

• Phone calls and/or text messaging

Now that I've begun using Skype as my main method of communication for all web-related ventures, I'll begin to phase out using my cell phone for keeping in touch with staff members on a professional level.

 

I tend to use both the Admin and Mods Private forum, and MSN if they are both online and its a small issue.

 

You talk with your moderators? The first thing that comes to mind is "holy crap", maybe I need to try it sometime?

We have a private moderator forum section, and some of us are on yahoo instant messenger. I posted my phone number, but nobody ever called me. Well, one of my moderators from Sweden called. And I talked to another one from New Mexico.

I had to think about it, and yea, I guess I do talk to my mods. Its been so long I forgot what it was like.

 

I have a moderator forum, that's where most of it goes on, but i do ahve an irc staff chatroom too.

 

Staff forums are good... I get contacted on msn too sometimes.

 

we have a staff room, but me, the other admin and the mods are good friends in real life and we also talk on the phone, msn, or the chat in facebook.

staff room hardly gets used, except for a few threads on how to do certain things (like lock/delete/move threads, edit/delete posts) and how we deal with trolls and spammers. we also have a thread on updates on an ex admin of our old forum, who fell out with us and is trying her hardest to troll us and destroy our forum

 

Set aside private forums for Mods to discuss issues. I also maintain a "IT logs" sort of a forum to track any and all tech related changes / modifications / issues on the site, sorta makes it easy to refer back at a later stage, for forum related project work we also used "Team space" at one point in time..have used the chat system too in the past but wasn't successful due to the varied time zones / countries my mods come from

 

I mostly talk with my staff on MSN, but some of my mods have skype and such. All my mods have my number incase something happens or if they are just bored. I call one of my mods on a daily basis xD

 

I've got an Admin forum for talking with my IT guys but that is about it. The only mod I have is a good friend but we rarely ever talk about the forum. It's usually about who is buying lunch or when is the next trip to the range.

 

I have a mod lounge in which we can talk to them and also talk over the phone.

Since the forum is UK based and all our members are we have regular staff meetings where we will arrange a place for lunch and then discuss any major issues/running of the forum then between mods, area reps etc.

 

Like everyone else, I too have a hidden Moderator forum which I use to converse with all staff members. In addition to that I have 3 sub-forums in the moderator forum that include Reported Posts, Infractions & Bans, and Trash Can. Anytime someone reports a post, a discussion is automatically created in the Reported Posts sub-forum, same with Infractions when one is given, it's automatically posted in the Infractions & Bans forum. We use the Trash Can forum to move threads and posts which shouldn't be on the public forum. This allows us to discuss it and if we find the thread/post is ok, then we move it back where it was, otherwise it stays there or is permanently removed.

Another thing we do that works good is the Moderators themselves will report posts just the same as any user can. This is nice because if a Moderator see's a post he feels is against the rules or causes a problem, then they report it automatically generating a discussion thread for the entire staff to converse about the issue. We found this leads to a fair judgment in all cases as we can come to an objective decision together. I like my Moderators to discuss things like this to avoid making any hasty decisions to infract or ban someone. It has served us really great since the beginning.

Hope this helps! :thumbup:

 

I too have a Moderators Lounge for discussing site problems/concerns with the moderators. I've found its very useful. I also use MSN with them a lot!

 

There's a Staff Lounge for Admins, Mods, and GFX's