Can someone walk us through "A Day if the Life of a WebDip mod..." please?

Wake up, 50 new mod chat messages. Mostly ghug and HR arguing over the finer points of Crème Brûlée. Put pants on one leg at a time. Check email, 5 new emails. Mostly people pointing out minor forum violations and demanding swift justice. Mark as unread. Make cereal in a cup and drive to work. Check email, someone needs a game unpaused. Check no players are awol from the site, unpause game and post in global. Pretend to work. Make a condescending forum comment about PPSC. It's lunch time already, better get some actual work done this afternoon. Great work, now spend the evening dealing with 10 emails from that school group of 20 you found cheating last week. Post a picture of you holding a spoon in mod chat. They have played knifey spooney before.

seems legit
school groups seem like a fun bunch to be playing with

Fuck Leon - you should be in marketing (I'll pass :D)

Crème Brûlée is important shit. One cannot just ignore such a critical life topic.

So I wanted to take a minute to provide a real answer to those actually curious about becoming a moderator.

For several years on the site I enjoyed playing diplomacy on a regular basis. I found the game fun, but the really intriguing part was the people I was playing against. Working with and against them.

After a while I started to get frustrated with cheaters and people on the forum constantly attacking each other and detracting from the game itself. That lead to me losing interest in the site and I was about a month out from deleting the bookmark and never looking back.

When I became a mod I was quickly able to start making a significant different that I could see on the site. I decided I had 3 main topics I wanted to address. I wanted to reduce the number of stuck paused games. I wanted to stop people discussing ongoing games on the forum. And I wanted to cut down on the number of cheaters on the site.

You have a lot of freedom as a mod in the direction you get to focus on. For me, it was extremely satisfying to not only find cheaters in games, but to do my best to leave the games they had impacted in a decent/fair state for the players left in them. So that everyone impacted by cheating didn't grow frustrated with the site as I had.

A few thousand cases later and I left the mod team with a pretty good feeling after having contributed in a way that helped keep the site enjoyable for thousands of people who also love this game.

There were weeks at a time where I didn't do a thing, and there were days when I started over 50 cases that involved sending over 100 emails that day (this is why the other mods still joke I'm a robot). But the point is you have a significant amount of freedom to devote your time as you are able. The problem is not the time, it is deciding if you have the desire and motivation to devote your time (sometimes at your own personal expense) to allow others to fully enjoy this game and this site. If you have that desire, and can keep it, then you'll enjoy moderating and handling cases as much as I did.

The potential work is varied in its forms. They include:
setting up tournaments
teaching others how to set up tournaments
forum conflict resolution
opening cases auto detected by the site's cheater catching tools
manually hunting for cases using other tools to catch the craftier cheaters who occasionally slip past the automated processes
helping users with paused games
answering any number of questions about anything from passwords being lost to mis-orders
helping guide the sites future by providing input with the rest of the mod team

The work is focused around gmail and gchat for communication and in site tools only available to mods and admins. Very little technical experience is needed (Zultar and bo both managed it). The main thing you will do in your cases is play human lie detector to those accused of cheating.

The main requirement is having a desire to help others enjoy playing the game by keeping the site running as smoothly as possible.

Hope that helps answer the questions of those who are interested in the position.

I call bullshit on this message taking a minute unless it was done by a robot. Was it done by a robot, jmo? :)

Danger of discovery protocol raised 1 level in reply to userID=33599 last post. Monitoring for further signs of suspicion.

thanks jmo. that was helpful and enlightening (really, not kidding, serious). how come zultar has an id of 33000+ shouldn't he have number one?

User #1 is used by the code to show the site to non registered users.

another enlightening tidbit brought to you by jmo. when you really want to know, use jmo brand information. you don't know, unless you jmo!

+1 to everything jmo said. It really is a great way to give back to the site and ensure we continue to improve. He liked it so much he kept the comedy cube, even though robots have no real sense of sentimentality.

Do I get College Credit?

Also for those uninitiated. The reason why zultar's user id is so high is that he is not the original owner of this site. He took it from a man named kestas (userID=10) in a coup that had much blood spilt on both sides. However, everyone has been asked not to mention this part of our history and the few brave souls who have recounted it mysteriously dissa

^ the above is not true unless verified by jmo, because you don't know unless you jmo!

Poor Zach, seven years of college down the drain!

I am interested in modding. why would I be good? well, maybe cause I am willing to consider doing it? ( for the good of the site )

Hey if it can help me transfer to MIT I'm all for modding

Modding is basically an unpaid internship, though. No pay, no benefits, everyone else in the office hates you for unexplained reasons and they steal your lunch out of the fridge.

@bo_sox48 No one likes you regardless of being a mod

Sorry, my profile is reserved for people that know how to grammar.

That'd be a great comeback if krellin weren't on there several times.

rip krellin

Geofram for mod 2011

^2WL going way back. There's a name I'd forgotten.

How about A.I. moderator? )

You mean Jmo?

Abge for mod 2009 2012 2015

I'm sad I'm not being appointed through popular acclaim!

;)