Moderation. Can I help?

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Hi there,

I was just wondering how WP goes about approving new moderators. I'm here on the site nearly every day, have been a moderator on another site previously, and I really feel for the mod's who are working so hard to deal with the current spate of spam attacks. As a UK user, I could maybe help out by being "on call" when US based moderators are having some well deserved rest!

WP has come to mean a lot to me since I joined, and I'd really love to repay that by helping out. I would be happy to join the moderation team - subject to whatever checks and approval is needed, of course.

There are only two things to prevent you from being a moderator.

1. You haven't been offered the position. This is just common sense.

2. You volunteered for the position. This is an unwritten rule on every social website that has had me as a member.

Well, while that's not been my experience of other sites I've moderated for, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." as they say. Exactly why I wanted to check the etiquette. Thanks Fnord.

Thanks for the offer. Alex approves the moderators and it seems that a pre-condition for selection is for a member to have a bit of time and postage mileage clocked up - the last two on the team were Adamantium and me, and we had been consistently posting and were in our third year of membership. My guess is that the membership overall probably prefers moderators that they feel they know well, rather than new members who are relative strangers. The other advantage of appointing members who have mileage on the forums is that member support is sometimes needed - we know that members can hit difficult patches - and this is accomplished more easily if there is an existing familiarity. It may seem as if we only have a punitive function though that is not quite the case..

That's cool. Thanks for getting back to me - I appreciate you taking the time what with the current spam-storm you're dealing with. Think I was just "jumping the gun" a bit out of frustration with the spamming - now that I've cooled off a bit I can see that my over-enthusiasm could be a bit out of place.

Best wishes - and thanks for all your hard work.

Trust me you don't want to to be a moderator.