Marcia - 11:19 pm on Dec 19, 2002 (gmt 0)

miles, from what I've seen, my guess would be that it might take 20 hours a day for Brett, and that could be a conservative estimate. :)

Roger mentioned some of the aspects, related to dealing with managing and problems, but there's also the very positive, personally enriching side of moderating, related to what he mentioned about community building. There's a two-fold building process, as I personally see it, with both aspects inter-related.

Building community involves setting the tone and developing what you could call a "community personality," that's hospitable and service-oriented, which involves making sure that the needs of members are met, that they always feel comfortable and welcome, and keeping an eye out to maintain an atmosphere of friendliness, courtesy and cooperation. The welcome mat isn't so much what you say, it's what's demonstrated on a day to day basis, which is what people see when they read posts, which they often do for a while before ever posting. It's not so much what a community says, but what they do on a constant, day to day basis that demonstrates what they're about. If people like what they see they'll get the picture pretty quick and join in.

In the case of an information-based site, there's an aspect of moderating that involves stepping in where necessary to try to ensure that the needs of members are met with development in topical areas that are known to be of proven or potential interest on a community level, or within niches. Sometimes there can be posts that have tremendous potential for developing a discussion that can lead to a wealth of knowledge on a given topic, but they might lag a bit and not reach that potential without stepping in and "moderating" to encourage drawing out more complete answers and further defining the issues. Without active positive moderation some potentially excellent discussion can die still-born and never reach fruition for their potential value.

That also means being willing to share information freely and contribute generously to the input and quality of information. It's not hard to spot fluff posts vs. valuable posts, people do see and know which is which, and part of moderating is spotting which is which and who does what. There are some people who are a literal goldmine when it comes to contributing informations that's useful to members, and those people might never know just how much they've actually contributed to adding value to a community. Not only do those who are "fluffing it" for personal reasons need to be spotted and watched out for, but the valuable ones need to be fully appreciated and recognized. There's room for all, but it's good to know who's who and why.

Moderating involves active involvement with the membership, and how it's done depends on individual styles, temperaments, personal preferences and time availability. It does take an enormous amount of time collectively between a lot of people with a large, busy site and of course different people put in different amounts of time and effort with different degrees of involvement, but it's the collective of all put together that sets the tone.

So there's what I'd refer to as the "negative" side of moderating, which is dealing with problems, and the "positive" side, which involves involvement with topical or content development among members, as well as community development which involves the different aspects of member relations.

That's all applicable in principle to a small forum site, which of course would take much less time relative to the size and volume. But the watching and involvement aspects have to be done on a constant basis once there's a steady flow of posting, even with a small site. Some people like large communities, some like small ones; there's a place for all, but the principles behind them are the same, even though management issues would be different.

That's some of what's involved up front, but that's aside from the normal aspects of running any site with matters like administrative and technical issues, and that can vary depending on the scope, and also depending on what software is used, as in the case here it's custom developed.

miles, in your case if you're evaluating whether to take over a certain forum, in your place I think I'd look around for other similar forums related to the subject area and see how those are going and how busy they are. That would give you an idea of what to expect and how much of a commitment it would take on your part.

One thing I have to say about commiting to something like that decision is that if the motive is strictly or even mostly "business" it'll show to a degree and could end up being burdensome. If it's something you enjoy, or even love or have a passion for, then whatever time you put in will be rewarding to you and it'll be worthwhile. And that will show, too - and give much more chance of success.