Thank you,
Bęthberry, for clarifying the terminology of forum administration. There is indeed a difference between admins and moderators; the former are more concerned with the general technicalities of operating a website, though they have the right to step in to moderate all areas if necessary. The moderators are concerned mainly with forum content and have the responsibility for making sure that posts in their area(s) of responsibility are in accordance with the site owner's rules.
I'm puzzled over the suggestion that the site needs more moderation. What do you mean by "lack of activity" on the part of forum admins/mods? I realize that there are times when no mod/admin is on the forum, as we all have jobs, families, and other things to attend to in real life - oh, and we need a few hours of sleep as well. However, since we live in different time zones, those hours are never long, and a PM will usually get help at short notice when it is urgently needed. It doesn't hurt any of our readers if a spam post is not immediately deleted, and our members are generally so sensible and cooperative that we rarely need to step in when there are disagreements on discussion threads.
When I first joined this site six years ago, there were no moderators at all. As traffic increased and posting got more intensive, it became necessary to set up a system to keep our content within the boundaries of forum policy. Since then, moderators have come and gone as they were needed (and as they had the necessary time to invest). Those who resigned were replaced by others who had proven themselves trustworthy to the site owner,
The Barrow-Wight.* He is the one who makes the choices and sets up the rules, since he is the one who pays for all of this - with occasional help from members who have contributed in the past to keep the site going. If new moderators are needed in the future, I am sure he will find good ones among our members. However, as long as there is at least one responsible moderator for those forums which require active controlling, I doubt that it will be necessary to install additional mods at this time.
We do appreciate the intense interest that many of our members take in forum matters and are willing to consider suggestions for changes. In the past, some of those have been implemented, and others rejected. As a rule, change should mean improvement, and if a change is necessary to improve the site, it has a better chance of being considered than mere change for change's sake.
*It is true that some names linger on the list of administrators and moderators though they are no longer active - consider them honorary members of the team. As long as there are enough others active, why should the name list worry anyone?
