How much time do you spend monitoring moderators?

As inherited from the previous owner, oversight of my mod group has always been pretty relaxed. A big reason is that it takes time to check the admin panel queries on their activities moving threads and such, cursorily reviewing some posts, and so forth. It's unfortunately necessary as not everyone always does what they said they'd do. I know devoting more time to this will make for more consistent management, as perceived by the mods and the members. But it does take time!

How much time per week and per month do you spend monitoring your staff? Do you find your time changes based on their apparent activity, or lack thereof?


I've got a couple mods who retired on the job about a year ago. They've been mods for over 5 years. I think several things have led to a sort of silent strike on their part. I also think they like mod status, think I don't know how much they do or don't do since I'm gentle with volunteers on that point, and aren't going to say anything. I actually did not notice this right away because I was not monitoring mod activity on a consistent basis ... so now it has gone on for awhile, sometimes they rally and are a little more active ... I need a tighter protocol on this point. Definitely it's my job as admin to take control of this situation. Find out what's bugging them and what would make it right for them; and/or ask them to step up or move on.

I feel doing that means being able to demonstrate to them that I do monitor and I KNOW what they are doing. They infer they are doing things they are not, thinking I don't know. It's not a secret from the mods that the admin panel shows their activity, but I never bring it up and they probably think I don't look at it - and I haven't on a regular basis.

 

I honestly don't spend much time monitoring my moderators. I check the moderator log every once in a while just to see if they have deleted any threads or anything, and if they are actually doing things. If I check one month and see that a moderator hasn't done anything (like moving a thread), I'll investigate further: check their last login date, see if they've been posting recently, etc. If I am concerned, I will closely monitor their progress for a little while longer. I've never had to go past this step; they all come around and get back into full-swing.
But if somebody were to continue to displease me by way of inactivity, I would contact them and see what's up.

 

I gave up checking mod logs unless completely necessary; you'd be better off speaking directly with each of them at intervals.

 

I haven't really had to worry about this yet; I just check the moderation queue from time to time. Perhaps you should post a message in your staff forum saying "Hey guys, it looks like some people have been on a posting frenzy and the moderation queue is all backed up. All hands on deck!"

 

My philosophy is that there should never be a thread waiting for me in the moderation queue. I only check my board a couple of times per day, at random times, and I don't spend much time. I'm all for administrators playing an active role in the site, but I feel that my moderation team is large enough to have the queue covered.

One of my pet-peeves is when a moderator is online (and actively browsing) while there is an item in the moderation queue.

 

And ask them what?

If a mod likes the title but not the work, they feed me any bs, if I don't actually know what they've been up to in management.

 

Me and Dave tend not to spend too much time at all with them. We have a moderators forum that we have general discussions about naughty members or whatever so as a new moderator comes on boards there's normally quite a bit they can read through to see how we handled such a thing. I just make sure I always say to them 'do as much or as little as you want, but should it become a chore just log off or join in as a member for a bit'. If the day ever came that 8 out of 9 mods didn't do that much I'd just get more mods. I'd only remove them after I knew for sure they left the forum.

I've had issues with one forum where a couple of the mods setup their own. That wasn't fun for anybody, including the members who were being PM'd about the new forum. Tut. Had a lot of banning to do that day. lol

 

YES! true but it didn't run for long...:doh: did it...Like said on here before good mods are hard to come by and Dan and me just let them come and go and if more are needed we add them as required but very rarely remove any...

 

Nah you're right there boss. Didn't last long at all.