A Moderator is a clean-up boy.
When I used to PA public meetings: the moderator would get the crowd into their seats, get the Guest Stars into their seats, introduce the topic, then ask each Star to speak in turn or in turns, possibly suggesting the direction of the discussion.
The moderator would also eject rowdy participants, be sure each star had water, set up the chairs on stage.
The moderator was usually someone with decent but non-Star qualifications in the topic. A minor professor, a journalist. Knew the words and concepts enough to lead the Stars' discussion, not someone you would listen to solo.
In an online forum there is no need to take-turns. There is often little need to introduce topics for discussion. In fact all (or many-of) the 3,228 Members here are the "Stars". If you have an interesting post, other Members will go with it. A good question is as valuable as a good answer.
So a forum moderator uses his magic wand mostly to clean-up spam, assist members with broken-quotes or munged images or extreme thread-drift. Occasionally a quiet word to a trouble-maker. Any real trouble goes to Doug-- he rents the hall, his name is on it.
At a prior head-moderator gig I selected helper moderators who posted good questions and good comprehension of the answers they got. I avoided "volunteering" the super-geeks who knew most of the answers... why burden them with thread-moves and other mop-work?
So if you have not ben asked to be a Moderator, it could be a snub or it could be a complement. And if somebody hangs here too much and isn't a Mod, that does not mean they are any less valuable. I suspect a few of the members have been asked and have refused the job.
So the "Moderator" badge is no great honor. It mostly means a person has been hanging around so much that the boss tells him to mop-up when he is the first to notice a mess.
The "Global Moderator" badge is no promotion. In a HUGE forum the boss may decide to segregate duties by forum sections. If Paul is always hanging on the Cars section, but doesn't even like bicycles, the boss might give Paul power in Cars but not Bikes. This place is not that convoluted, Doug just hits the "Global Mod" tag.
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If you are asking: How do you get to be an Expert, like Sluckey or tubenit or HotBluePlates or OldHouseScott or *dozens* of others here (some more focused some more general).... it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a subject.
I just estimated I have studied and thought-about electronics for 48,000 hours (I'm obsessed and I been around).
Sluckey obviously has similar experience just through radar-tech work, plus whatever he's done off the job.
HBP is younger, and as a Soldier he can't really say what his work is, but when on-the-job he may be working intensely 29 hours some days (if he mis-calibrates a helicopter radio, somebody dies; if he bricks the General's iPad he'll be peeling potatoes for the rest of his tour). On top of his past passion for vintage amps and his current expedition into recreation. Probably 10,000 hours, but if it's "only 9,000 hours" many of them were much more intense than I had hanging around a school.
Doug is well known for the excellent amps he plotted and built some years back, and his essays and layouts on amp detailing and debugging; clearly he's been rubbing resistors together for many thousands of hours.
A lot of subjects don't even begin to "come together" for several thousand hours. Nobody is born knowing this stuff, you have to marinade a while.
To be an Expert on a Forum you need to be expert in the topic *and* you should be half-expert in Clear Writing. Not a Hemmingway or Spillane; more like the Golden Books series on engines and mechanics. I went to school for Technical Writing. That didn't work out, but I had some genes from my mother and a lot of writing practice at work and decades in online forums.
Topic: How does one get to be one of Hoffmans' Mount Rushmore faces ? (Read 12933 times)