Become a moderator

Usually a Moderator posts the first message—whether a welcome-type message or a post that hits the ground running by starting off the discussion with an interesting point of view.

As you know, uses Universal Bulletin Board Code (UBBC) in place of common HTML code operations such as including a picture, linking to another site, and text formatting. Occassionally users forget that cannot accept standard HTML code. You might see "<i>Hi!</i>" in someone's post. A good Moderator picks up on the fact that the author intended to make the text italic, and will edit the post to replace "<i>Hi!</i>" with "[i]Hi![/i]".

Fixing type-o's is at your discretion. Some Moderators will fix a post's type-o's, others won't. It can be time consuming.

Here's a very useful, and much appreciated trick to use when you lock a topic for being too long and create a follow up topic. Each topic has a unique URL that will always link back to it, which you will see displayed in your browser's address/location bar. Since the Topic List always sorts the most recently modified topic to the top of the list, older or locked topics get pushed to the bottom or even to other pages, making it difficult for people new to the board to catch up on previous parts of the discussion. Why not give them a hand? In addition to titling the next part of the topic "[title] (part x)", in the first post put a link back to the previous topic. For example, when locking up "special fx in film" and starting the new topic "special fx in film (part 2)", include in the topic opening message something like "Continued from [URL=http:// .org/ forum/.cgi? board=general& action=display&num=42]'special fx in film'[/URL]". Anyone new to the "special fx in film (part 2)" topic can then click the link to catch up on the full discussion. Members will appreciate the extra effort.

Occassionally a user may post a message off-topic or not related to the theme of the board. The best way to handle this situation is to ask the user through Private Message to re-post his message in a more appropriate place, and indicate what place that would be.