The Role of Admin and Moderator

At this point in time there are several things going on and several things happening around the forum that personally I am not happy with. I won't be going into those details as I feel that exposing them to the rest of the site will spark up unwanted arguments between members of the community and members of Staff. So to prevent that from happening I am approaching this topic in a different manner to usual and I am going to answer some questions that have been addressed to me recently.
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Moderators and Admins... What are they?
Moderators and Admins are people who work on websites and chat forums to maintain and control the environment. They are the people that do all the work behind the stage to keep the site running and to keep it updated and maintained. In many cases they are here to run comps, prevent spam-bots from taking over the forum, organise community projects and most of all here as a regular source of support and help for those who need it.

How does one become a Staff Member?
Nearly all the Moderators you see here on the Void have been chosen by other members of Staff. These people were selected out of the community because of their commitment to the site, their positive attitude towards other members, and their ability to show reason during situations that may come up. This last part is important because a person that can understand both sides of a scenario can more then likely predict the possible outcomes and make a decision based on that judgement.

So they are helpful people... Why do we 'really' need mods?
Eric Schmid once said:
"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had."

What does this mean? Well the Internet is a place that exists with no government. With no fraction that enforces law and order it basically means that anything goes because their is no one here to stop it, so in order to protect people from the little nasties of the world (Hacking, Copyright Infringement, Child Pornography, Spam, Fraud, Harassment, Cyberbullying, Viruses, etc...) various websites create the Mod status in order to enforce the rules accepted by society and to keep a watch on suspicious activity. Hence the name Moderator.

So when something happens on a website that needs to be addressed, it is the responsibility of the Moderator to take control of the situation and resolve it as quickly and efficiently as possible so that any people that visit or are members of the site won't be harmed.

How far does their control go?
"We are everywhere." - A.R.I.A. (Eagle Eye)

We see everything on this forum. In the same way the Police have access to your personal data and the government has access to your tax file, moderators have access to several pieces of Data on their Websites. They need it to do their job and to do it efficiently. Most of the time these members of staff have no need to access this source of information but it's there just in case.

Supermods and Admin have extra privileges that allow them to view personal data and forum statistics. One such perk is the ability to view and compare IPs so that we can find out duplicate accounts or repeat offenders. While on this topic I will mention that we do not have and do not necessarily wish to be able to view member's PMs. There are some websites that allow this action, but we respect our members personal space and would rather only be told about these problems in dire situations.

Sure... with all that power someone is bound to abuse it right?
No. We don't do anything of the kind and I can guarantee that the rest of our Team wouldn't violate that level of trust. That is part of the unwritten contract that we sign when we become a mod. We strive to have an unbiased opinion where ever possible and do our duties in a fair matter. Our reactions are based on your actions and what what we do is a consequence of that. We do not look up personal details or spy on people for the fun of it.

If you believe that the Void is an exception to any other site, then I would like to mention that every site you visit and even your internet service provider is recording information about you. Most sites follow similar guidelines to us and if you think we are hard here, then you clearly don't understand what the internet is really like.

How much work is done by the Staff on the forum?
Every time we log on we are doing work and maintaining the forum. I can't speak much about what the other's do since each one is different, but I access my account daily and I receive regular E-mail notifications from various parts of the forum. I may not respond to PMs instantly as it does depend on my time available, but I have in some cases received up to 6 PMs in the time that I log off for sleep and log back on when I wake up in the morning.

Essentially, I spend a major part of my free time devoted to this site and to responding to any problems or queries that occur.

You guys get paid for this job don't you?
Erm... No. We choose to give up our own personal free time for this site. We don't have to sit here and put up with some of the garbage that we see regularly, but we choose to.

I can say whatever I want, after all this is the internet, right?
Sure you can! This is what is called Freedom of Speech. You have the right to express your opinions and views in any way, shape or form... You also have the right to receive any consequences to what you say, as well as remembering that once you post up something on the internet, it's there to stay, even after editing.

What you did was unfair and I don't like it!
Let me ask in return what is fair... Is it fair that we have to spend hours of our own free time sorting out arguments and trash that appears all over the forum? We don't go on power trips, we act because of your actions. We clean up the mess that is left by other. We give our members heaps of free space but when we step in to do something minor is it fair that we cop abuse from the people that we want to help out? Think about that for next time...
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Now I'm gonna leave that as it is, but if anyone has any questions or general enquiries they can PM me and I'll discuss them when I get some free time.

As a final remark I honestly do enjoy my position as an Admin of this forum and even though some days I really do hate it, I don't particularly want to leave. I like the idea of being there for people and helping them with their questions, but it does dishearten me when I see that I try to help out as much as possible and people don't appreciate the work that you put in and they do throw it back in your face and take actions into their own hands. Take a look at the bigger picture and understand that we are not out to hunt people's heads and show everyone that we are the boss. We are just doing a simple job. I won't much more but this forum honestly wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the work that DM, the staff and I put in to keep this site running.

Thanks,
Nutter