Moderators ?

"Pork with ham meat added" always kind of scared me. Isn't ham, in fact, pork? That's like saying "My aquarium has fish, with some tetras added in." Huh??? What am I missing there?

Oh, and I missed answering one question: Members can't grade us and rate us because we're volunteers doing the best we can, some members aren't very nice to us (seriously), and constantly being told what we're doing wrong might damage our fragile self-esteems. But some people do it anyway. We always welcome concerns and feedback via reported posts or PM. And lest this get too flippant*, I'm just going to go ahead and link to this again, as it contains more serious answers to many of your questions.
*Can a conversation like this get too flippant?
 
I was once a mod on another forum. There, we had to deal with wave after wave of porn, marketing and political bots trying to join with ludicrous machine generated names. Most could be traced to Russia. Sometimes when I went on I would have to check flagged posts. Some were legitimately flagged and others were more difficult and needed discussion among the mods. Sometimes you'd get members who would rather fight than eat. It was a US forum and the divisions are fierce. Mostly, it was checking the spam filters for new members who were not human and were programs just trying to get in to send their messages to the entire forum.
Very little of it was public. I spamhammered a few dozen bots some days, and rarely had to deal with flame wars, racism or hate stuff. There was some, for sure, but those members got booted out.

I have seen internet fish forums turn into nightmares, so I tip my hat to the mods. It's a rotten job. I've been on forums where the moderation was over the top - mods who rewrote posts they disagreed with, or really overstepped. I don't see anything like that here, and I thanks the mods in place for that.
 
We are fortunate now that with technology, most questionable people registering are filtered out automatically so mods dont have to deal with them. We have just a few newly registered people per day that we have to make a decision on whether to allow them on the forums. This makes our roles much easier as we mainly have to deal with posts on the forum. Fellow members help the mods by reporting objectionable posts.
 
"Pork with ham meat added" always kind of scared me. Isn't ham, in fact, pork?
I have read it's a domain terminology difference (the USDA has some bizarre definitions of things like "poultry" too), but I will admit I've also wondered if it's some weird loophole like the way you can have "lobster" bisque made from a selection of other interesting crustaceans. :lol: There is other interesting word game stuff like that in the seafood industry so it surely must exist in other foods too.
 
I run my own small computer help forums and would define an admins as the government and a mods as the police force.

Spam is advertising, usually not of a good kind. These days most spam is done with spam bots that are computer code that crawls around the internet just like search engine bots. If they find a site with a registration page, such as a forum, they will try to register and, if successful, they will inundate the site with ads. I HATE spam, especially spam bots. I wrote code for my forums to prevent spam bots and have not had a successful bot registration in several years.
 
As I posted elsewhere......


Definition of an admin and mod.....


You need to be able to act like a NATO peacekeeper and a kindergarten teacher, have the patience of a saint and have the ability to be onsite 28 hours a day, 9 days a week. The ability to read minds is essential and to have a strong coffee addiction is helpful too....along with a life supply of tissues, ibruprofen and haemoroids cream (an optional extra to have would be the pins to stick in yourself to prevent excess swearing)


You must NEVER have a life away from the forum as that will inevitably interupt your duties and be a distraction. To be an admin or mod is a thankless task that ages you prematurely, gives you grey hair and bald spots and wrinkles....you also get severely bruised fingers from the mountain of typing behind the scenes and will, again inevitably, lose your voice due to screaming obscenities at the wall behind your pooter.


The life of an admin or mod is not an easy one...they have to make difficult decisions that most forum members would not have to make and would not want the responsibility to make.


I should also add that to be a mod or admin, you definitely require the skin of a rhinoceros to assist survival against the various barbs, spears and arrows lobbed your way.


(I spent 15 years or so building, administering and moderating a total of 22 forums like this one for an owner in Texas....its an honour and a joy to be asked to become staff but it can be mentally and emotionally draining, especially when dealing with disruptive, underage or trolling members...and don't even mention the spambots which are a nightmare)


Something that I used to tell members of my forums was to just use the report tab on posts that rile, upset or give bad information.....try not to get angry on the thread as that will perpetuate the argument, which usually plays right into the offender's hands.


Use the report tab. Don't rise to goading or taunts.


You may not see an immediate mod or admin intervention but rest assured that ALL staffmembers know that a post has been reported....and in its unedited form too. This software is very clever, it originated from VBulletin to become XenForo, as someone who built forums in the earlier and the current variant, there is alot of things that the software does that the average member has no idea about....so if you make a post that is borderline or worse and you think that if anyone reports it after you edit it....think again


The guys and gals on this forum do a damned good job, as a former admin I would be proud to have them on my staff. So please cut them some slack, they do all have lives away from this forum but do please realise that every report made DOES get to them instantly and even if it seems to take a while to deal with that report or issue, it will be sorted, nothing gets ignored......and incase you did not realise, all these wonderful guys and gals are volunteers, they are not paid to be mods or admin, they do it for the love of doing it and the love of the subject so please don't give them a hard time. (OK maybe one or two of them need reining in sometimes (only kidding))
 
As I posted elsewhere......


Definition of an admin and mod.....


You need to be able to act like a NATO peacekeeper and a kindergarten teacher, have the patience of a saint and have the ability to be onsite 28 hours a day, 9 days a week. The ability to read minds is essential and to have a strong coffee addiction is helpful too....along with a life supply of tissues, ibruprofen and haemoroids cream (an optional extra to have would be the pins to stick in yourself to prevent excess swearing)


You must NEVER have a life away from the forum as that will inevitably interupt your duties and be a distraction. To be an admin or mod is a thankless task that ages you prematurely, gives you grey hair and bald spots and wrinkles....you also get severely bruised fingers from the mountain of typing behind the scenes and will, again inevitably, lose your voice due to screaming obscenities at the wall behind your pooter.


The life of an admin or mod is not an easy one...they have to make difficult decisions that most forum members would not have to make and would not want the responsibility to make.


I should also add that to be a mod or admin, you definitely require the skin of a rhinoceros to assist survival against the various barbs, spears and arrows lobbed your way.


(I spent 15 years or so building, administering and moderating a total of 22 forums like this one for an owner in Texas....its an honour and a joy to be asked to become staff but it can be mentally and emotionally draining, especially when dealing with disruptive, underage or trolling members...and don't even mention the spambots which are a nightmare)


Something that I used to tell members of my forums was to just use the report tab on posts that rile, upset or give bad information.....try not to get angry on the thread as that will perpetuate the argument, which usually plays right into the offender's hands.


Use the report tab. Don't rise to goading or taunts.


You may not see an immediate mod or admin intervention but rest assured that ALL staffmembers know that a post has been reported....and in its unedited form too. This software is very clever, it originated from VBulletin to become XenForo, as someone who built forums in the earlier and the current variant, there is alot of things that the software does that the average member has no idea about....so if you make a post that is borderline or worse and you think that if anyone reports it after you edit it....think again


The guys and gals on this forum do a damned good job, as a former admin I would be proud to have them on my staff. So please cut them some slack, they do all have lives away from this forum but do please realise that every report made DOES get to them instantly and even if it seems to take a while to deal with that report or issue, it will be sorted, nothing gets ignored......and incase you did not realise, all these wonderful guys and gals are volunteers, they are not paid to be mods or admin, they do it for the love of doing it and the love of the subject so please don't give them a hard time. (OK maybe one or two of them need reining in sometimes (only kidding))
I would add "copious amounts of alcoholic libations" to the above in red...otherwise, perfect post
 

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