This is absolutely the dumbest post I've seen in this thread. You're trying to be funny right? Being on the staff for anything is serious. Yeah they can have fun, but you're expected to help a lot of ungrateful users with typically no thank you in return. You're expected to clean up ****posts, porn threads, ban bots, discipline bad apples, be a referee because he said she said, and ensure this is a safe environment for all ages given the forum's theme. It's not just click select ban justin and anyone who thinks that is a bloomin idjit.
Most people on this site can identify spam and porn threads. These are very obvious. Being a referee and trying to judge whether a post is offensive or not is a different matter. TBT mods are not professionals. They just do it on a volunteer basis. So you can't expect them to have perfect judgement.
For a moment imagine two extremes. On one hand, TBT could have few moderators like is has now and those moderators only have the power to delete posts and ban for spam, graphic posts, and promotion of illegal activities. However, they do not have the power to delete or discipline for any name-calling or abusive posts. This would maximize freedom of speech, but would result in a lot of people getting offended.
Now imagine on the other end, any user could delete any post for any reason. All of the spam, graphic, abusive, and offensive posts would disappear very quickly, but so would many legitimate posts. All of the s*** posts would be gone quickly, but people would complain about how their freedom of speech is being restricted (not that it really applies here).
Obviously both extremes are stupid, but you have to draw the line somewhere. More mods = less bad posts and less freedom of speech. Less mods = more bad posts and more freedom of speech. It's a trade-off and different people have different opinions, so there will never be a perfect balance. I used to be on a site with heavy moderation and some of the mods were on a power trip and would have a quick trigger finger when it came to infracting and banning people. I stopped visiting that site for that reason. I like the laid-back nature of this forum and I don't want there to be more mods just for the sake of having more, because that's how you get bad mods.
There are actually rules the forum itself has to follow or the staff can get in trouble for it.
They get in trouble how? They lose their unpaid volunteer position with absolutely no incentives? And who makes that decision? Another unpaid staff member? And who would replace a bad moderator? There are not a ton of qualified people lining up to do this. Honestly we shouldn't expect to get more from the mods than what we pay for (they are actually better than that thank god). A mod has to A) be mature and have good judgement and B) be able to make the time commitment to a volunteer position. Usually people who have A don't have B and people who have B don't have A. So if you want more mods, then understand that you'll have to compromise on A and just hope that the inmates aren't running the asylum.
Edit:
I guess the main takeaway from this thread is that the moderators here are hesitant to add more of them because this thread itself has clearly shown that not very many people on this site are capable of being effective moderators including me. They can try to train people, but there is only so much they can do to polish a turd (metaphorically speaking).
