Transition from Member to Moderator

How do you smoothly engage in the transition from a member to a moderator when you bring a new staff member onto the team? I've come to realize that for most moderators, it's extremely overwhelming to them to throw a manual at them, apply a new title, open up a staff forum where things are moving at a fast pace, and have them jump into the already-tight-knit staff team.

How do you make the transition easy and not overwhelming for the member? You don't want the first impression upon them to be that being a moderator is scary and daunting.

 

To be honest, this is never something I have had to worry about. Every member I have promoted to moderator has already had the will to be a moderator beforehand (because the majority, at least, enjoy the rank/username color/power it comes with). And they know what their job will be. So at the very most I'll just need to teach them how to use vBulletin's moderating tools if they haven't already experienced that.

 

We move them into a "Hall Monitor" position for the forum. They have limited moderation abilities and no access to the moderator forum. Their job is to maintain and expand traffic to their subforum and its topics and to fair but justly handle any issues.

If it works out, they become a moderator; if not, they return to being a regular user.

 

Ah, so they're put through a series of "tests" before being promoted to the actual position at hand?

 

Well, users get interviewed by us with a series of questions from me and the mods, then we make them go through a trial of a week, then a second trial till the month is over. At the end of the month we get their experiences and if they want to keep going or not.

 

I don't think I've ever done that. Great idea.

 

It has worked for me a lot, when Pisoga gets bigger I am expecting having to change it up a bit, xD

 

With a new look comes a new [overall] approach, eh?

 

I like the way they do it at vb.org - you get put into an Advisor group first and learn to act as a mod and get feedback from the other admins/mods and then later get promoted to moderator if it all works out. The admins/mods there are also all very friendly and offer to help out at anytime. I know I sent several PMs to a couple of the mods/admins there for help and they were extremely nice and explained things to me so I could do things right. I know a few people give the vb.org Staff team a real bad rap, but they honestly are some of the nicest users I've met.

On my site, we don't do anything like that - the poor user just gets throw into Staff and given the manual. OK, it's not that bad. Usually, the user is already well known to the members of Staff he/she will be working with (I let Staff pick out who their new Mods will be). We always have a welcome thread for the new Staff member in the Staff forum and we give a link to any sort of moderation threads they may need to read (they are different for different Mods depending on what they will be doing). We also tell the mods to use the Report this Post button to ask questions - that makes a post in a Staff forum and we all will discuss the problem with them so they know what to do. And, I have a test forum that I give them access to and tell them if they ever want to test out their vb mod powers then that is a great place to do it.

 

Throw 'em right into the fire! :devil:

 

Basically that's it. Just see if they can make that transition into being a forum participant to a forum leader, and vocal in the moderation forum. One of our last added mods to our initial "hiring" became the first (well only so far) supermod promoted from the moderator spot.

 

I think this is a great plan ... I'll probably do something like that with "Mentors." Haven't had new mods in a couple of years, more like trying to shed a few.

The transition is definitely toughest on the new mod. As ready to take charge as they think they are most have a few nerves when it is time to make their first mod post. I think the biggest thing I ran into with new mods is that one or two had a tendency to over-react to things they would previously not taken as seriously. And that they want to make a general post about some point of conduct, when they should only be addressing one or two people who have an issue with it. The forum doesn't take kindly to being tasked with behavior they don't practice. Some support is needed with these things, and they need confidence the head mod or owner is going to back them. Once the new mod has more confidence with the one-on-one it goes well for most of them.

 

The vast majority of "new" moderators also tend to be wary about the actions they decide to perform and/or the comments they make - they feel that any mistake made (on their part) could have an effect on their future as a team member.

 

This is what I observe the most. Moderators are hesitant to take action. Luckily they come to me, and one even posted in the staff forum in the past: "New moderator afraid to moderate". She told me what she thought she should do (to handle the situation) and I along with the other moderators gave her feedback. She went ahead and did it, and ever since then has been completely fine and confident.

I think once they get a "feel" for it, it becomes much easier.

 

Much better for them to be cautious than overzealous.

We see this on our forums even with mods that have been around for a bit - should I or shouldn't I? I think I mentioned before that I encourage the mods to use the Report this Post button (it creates a thread in a Staff forum) if they have a question about something. Then we can discuss it in Staff prior to any action being taken.

 

True, Lynne - and once they get the "hang" of the day-to-day responsibilities, they'll slowly transition into a natural flow.

 

The way I see it, you can teach moderation, you can't teach character.

 

Yep - that's up to each moderator, as an individual.

 

The rules in my site are based on each mods PoV, therefore they are subjected to differ at some point and we make this obvious to the users. We are not zombies, so they shouldn't expect us to have the same thoughts about certain issue.

 

If all staff members were to act identically, it'd be a mess - talk about a complete, non-creative nightmare.