A Moderator's View

Unfortunately, I fell asleep before I could write what should have been yesterday's entry. I hope you didn't miss us too much. I'd like to focus a bit on some experiences I've had as a moderator of TorrentFries. I wasn't always an admin or even moderator at TorrentFries. One day I logged in to find a full host of "shiny new buttons," as we like to call them at TorrentFries, and what a true surprise that was. It's a gratifying feeling to be an uploader and to give to the community, but as a moderator and admin, that responsibility takes on a deeper meaning of giving to the community. I'm glad to have been able to give in that unique way.

As a new moderator, some of my initial duties included moderating the forum, responding to torrent reports and weeding out torrents that didn't follow the rules. As a moderator team, it's obviously pretty important that everyone gets along so the work gets done without too much hassle. If things get slack and neglected, it's apparent right away.

For instance, at one time we were experiencing problems that required users to use the staff contact form to fix, but nobody was addressing the problems. When 25 or 30 messages piled up, it became difficult to manage. I eventually got enough time to clear out the problems, but it took a full 2 hours to take care of. The point is this: our team is good, but without clear direction or responsibility, things tend to not get done if there's a lot of work to get done. The admin has to either pick up this slack or divvy it up, but sometimes that choice has to be made.

Another problem we saw was spam in the forums. Thankfully, there were mods checking the forums, but our registration system didn't include CAPTCHA or any other deterrent to bots, so we began seeing a heavy influx of pornographic material posts. Without fixing the root of the problem, it was difficult to keep the issue under control, and with CurlyFries busy he couldn't rewrite a part of the login. No one else could do it, so we just kept getting bombarded with spam.

Save small issues like these two mentioned, the site as a whole could easily run itself without CurlyFries logging in at all. Nevertheless, there needs to be some direction and fiddling done by the sysop no matter how well the mods work.

Additionally, there always seems to be something that mods should be doing instead of bantering on the forums. It's difficult to moderate torrent comments with any efficiency, and even ensuring that the uploaded content follows the rules seems take a backseat at times. So, in short, as an admin, aim to get a staff that can run the site, but expect that they won't always do everything on their own accord.