Well, I've been on the internet for over 20 years now, so you can call me a veteran on this field. I've seen communities change. One thing has never changed, even though people appear to think so... moderators are needed.

For some reason people always dream of being a moderator. On many sites I've seen people actually been spamming the administrators about it. And I've served many communities both as a moderator and a few times even as administrator and dang, did I get a lot of requests to promote people at the time or to vouch for them to the administrators.
If I ever become a staff member of a big site again, I can tell you one thing, I never make vouchings for you by your request. And if the administrators ask me advice I will only do so in secret contact between me and that administrator, and my advice will never be based on what you asked me for, but on judgment of how I see people in general, as I believe a professional moderator should.

Now why would people wanna be a moderator. I think the answer is easy. Moderators have power. They can delete posts, close forum topics, and even ban people, sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently. Moderators can be held in high regard (or be assholes depending on what kind of user we're dealing with), and well, it's great to enjoy the attention, eh?

Now truth is, moderation is a downright AWFUL job and only a masochist idiot would even be considering to do it. You gotta imagine this, you are prosecutor, lawyer, judge and jury all in once. And aside from that you are also playing host to the community you moderate, and therefore you are expected to help people who are new, or to get them into contact with the correct administrator when some technical issues arise.

The reason why I became a moderator on many sites, of which I shall mention none in this post, was simply... SOMEBODY HAS TO DO IT... And over time, I've also come to learn that only people who do NOT want to be a moderator because they know what holding the badge means, might be suitable to be a proper moderator.

The latter part is something I've seen underestimated already for starters. I've seen people getting banned from several sites for merely asking a question. A valid question even. Of course, I've also seen people whine about a moderator banning them from this, but when checking the history of the conversation there was more going in there.... And by default, in the eye of the users, the moderator is always a power hungry monster who "think they can get away with anything". Reality is however that on a site with DECENT moderation, the user is in 99% of the cases wrong, unfortunately. However a moderator should always be aware of that 1% that is right. And that 1% can really ruin the reputation of a community if you are not careful.

Now when it comes to just deleting and banning, the cases can be really hard here. Of course, when a message is just "test this new Viagra" or "Free college diplomas" or "This ain't a joke, you can be a millionaire TODAY" kind of messages, being a moderator isn't that hard. Just ban the accounts and delete all stuff posted with them. One should take in mind though that spammers have tried many tricks on me to deceive me as a moderator. Like posting something that really looks like an addition to a forum discussion only to edit it months later in order to put in malicious links. You'd say that's senseless as only thread necromancers would ever see it right... Wrong... Since moderators are also unlikely to see it due to old discussions mostly not being edited and moderators not having the time to check all topics out, the link will remain there, but spider bots like Google and such will still pick it up and so their scam products can hit the top ranks in search results... or at least that's what they hope. That is one of the oldest tricks in the box many moderators have fallen for. So even spammers can make your life hard.

Of course, and I've been in those situations many many times, are big internet fights. Many communities just make the mistake to rashly delete all "abusive" messages or even start banning. The truth is, that is very extremely terrible moderation and should even be considered a criminal offense. Yes, the damage that kind of moderation can cause is that high. Fights often have a story behind them. I've seen many times that the person being deemed the bully was actually the victim. And then any decision a moderator can make can have the wrong impact. As a matter of fact, I've seen many many fights in which there is no bully nor a victim, but merely a kind of misunderstanding that made people think the worst of each other. The reasons moderators came to be on communities like these is to keep the peace. I've many times just contacted the two fighters and asked for their stories, and many times it had a better effect than many could hope for. Sometimes that was just that the fighting stopped and that people just went on and came to a kind of compromise to settle the affairs. But sometimes I've also seen people actually apologizing to each other and shaking hands. Of course, I take pride in that I managed to get people to that point, but trust me, that is not an easy job. If you keep in mind I'm an Aspie, which does impair me a bit in social skills, the fact that I managed to do that is even remarkable. These are the kind of situations in which just mindlessly deleting messages and threatening with bans would actually have worked counterproductive. However these kinds of fights are often very very complex, and very hard to deal with, and especially when misunderstanding lead to pure hatred you'll need a lot of patience to get people onto the right track. I hate interfering in other people's affairs, but remember as a moderator you are a host of a public forum, and a fight can therefore affect the entire community, so you basically must act.
I mean sometimes the case is easy. I once spoke to somebody who replied with... I quote "To moderator Jeroen. Why don't you go fuck yourself?" Well I love it when people do that, as then my case is easy (that justifies an immediate ban, as that reply clearly shows the way things are), but in my experience most cases are by far more complex than that.

My moderation style for which I've been both loved and hated, is based on experiences for which I feel both awful and privileged at the same time. I've been able to talk to people with many many kinds of backgrounds when I had professional help on many things, and this brought me in touch with other people requiring professional help. I've heard the confession of an African man who came to the Netherlands illegally, but when he found out Europe was not the paradise many people in Africa think it to be, he basically had to resort to crime in order to make a living. I don't remember how many times he said to me "Ik ben stom geweest" (which means "I've been stupid" in Dutch. Yes, he did manage pretty well with the Dutch language, even though it was heavily accented). I was only 19 or 20 years old back then, so perhaps you can imagine how shocked I was to hear somebody with such a background tell his story to me. I've also met a girl (whose name I won't reveal for obvious reason) on the internet not much later who came to expose to me, a guy she had never met for real, how her sexuality and her desire to have a child were being threatened by a disease called "endometriosis". Now that I am looking back to that... I am still not sure why she sought me to entrust this story to. I mean, this is kind of heavy stuff, not to mention very personal. Sexuality is not something you should discuss over the internet so easily. And those two stories are just the tip of the iceberg of stories I've heard. Not to mention my own stories. I've been target of many case of serious lack of proper judgment. Sounds arrogant, but looking back on the way things happened back then, we can say that. I'm always thinking.... thinking... Every coin has a flip side. I may sound very direct sometimes, but trust me, you have no idea how many things run through my head when I see internet fights break out. My experiences in real life and as a moderator made me aware of all this....

Another downside of being a moderator is. You'll get to know too much. Moderators have access to what happens backstage on a site. There is a reason why I don't many any of the site I held the badge for. Some of these sites were actually sites I now regret having been a moderator for. As a matter of fact I regret having been a member there at all. Of course, there are also sites to which I think back with great joy, but for which it was simply time to move on at some point.

Now some people claim that I am the best moderator they ever saw. Well if that is what you think of me, I'm honored. Me? I don't think I deserve that much praise. Every time I accepted the badge or applied for it myself, I simply felt that it was something that needed to be done, and of course, when I thought I was not the proper candidate, I wouldn't accept nor apply for the job. And whenever I'm given a job like that, I always tend to give it my very best shot.

But really peeps, think twice before you ever apply for a job as moderator or to accept it if sites offer you the position. You'll get in very harsh situations, and also you'll also face situations in which you should really be careful. Of course, nobody should hold it against you if you accidentally delete a spammer who didn't turn out to be a spammer. With the crapload of spam being posted on many communities every day, that is kinda of unavoidable. But banning somebody just because you judged the situation entirely in the wrong way can have a huge impact. And sometimes you must act in a split second, yes even when not dealing with instant chat. And there are situations in which you must do something, but whatever you do, it's ALWAYS wrong... Yes, I've encountered some situations like those, but in which I was in the end forced to cast a ban in order to end that situation. And although I don't remember them all in detail, I still regret pushing the ban-button there, but I try to tell myself that it was the only thing left to do.

If you've seen the movie Spiderman, you may have heard the line "With a great power comes a great responsibility". Well, despite the fact that moderators do NOT dictate the rules, nor decide the way a site is being administrated, the power of a moderator can be huge. People easily underestimate that. This is also the reason why I am NOT a fan of self-moderation systems, as moderators who are fully aware of how a moderator should act are rare, so that makes it inevitable that self-moderating systems have a lot of crappy moderators as a result (not to mention enthusiastically set up channels that are abandoned soon after, quite often leaving a lot of disappointed members behind or just taking up database space but leading to useless search results).

Peeps, I've told you a few of my insights of being a moderator. It can be a rewarding job. If you used your position to help people, or to clean a community of a horrible bully who is trying to undermine a community, it feels very rewarding when people thank you for that. But in times that you have to deal with people where the situation is by far more complicated, and where you get yourself hated in the process, it's downright horrible. And trust me when I say that those kinds of situations happen a lot, especially on bigger communities.

Think of what I told you now, if you still dream of being a moderator. The job sounds so incredibly cool until the moment you accepted the job and begin to realize what it means.

The most required feature you need in yourself is WISDOM.
Do you dare to say about yourself that you are wise? Wisdom is one of the rarest virtues found in humanity. Perhaps that cuts entirely short why being a moderator is not what it looks like.