I hereby apply for the post of night time moderator

At a time when the media is being criticised for their elitist, exclusive practices? Internships, volunteering, work shadowing etc all marginalise those that cannot afford to give away their time for free.

Don't get me wrong, I spend more than half my life on MN but if one is doing it as a moderator, one needs to be applying a code of practice, or set of standards rather than keeping half an eye on it between popping toddlers back into bed for the fifteenth time and supervising the tweenie's flute practice, which as volunteers parents would be justified in doing alongside the moderation.

Well, yes monmatre but for the specific needs of MN, it can be achieved by recruiting the person/people with the right awareness/balance/values and giving them a chance to test themselves and gain valuable experience in the tangled messy world of social media. Lots of pros start with volunteering activities. MN shouldn't be any different, imho.

GetOeuf (ha!) I think I'm seeing the night time mod role as a very simple deleter-of-spam-attack one. Not so much the more nuanced calls about whether a regular has gone over the line with something that might or might not be a personal attack.

But the vast majority of us need to be paid to work pan!

Volunteers wouldn't work. Would need to be someone who has same ethic as daytime mods as detailed above.

I mod on another forum, sometimes is quiet sometimes a debate starts and its all hands on deck. We've a mod able to be contacted within reasonable working hours at all times and we have a fair agreement as to how we manage issues. I'll check in on it from 9am ish until 4pm ish on and off but watch most evenings from 7pm ish till 9pm ish.

Then someone else takes over. Helps we have mods in Canada, US, Aus and NZ as welk as UK.

I like the idea of 'volunteers', made up of MNers. Experienced posters with an ability to be objective, keen, get some intern IT/social media experience.

I don't see how it could be a volunteer role really. How would volunteers either be impartial or understand MN?

You absolute genius ladybeagle, I will change my name now.

You should be LadybEGGleEyes

Your Easter name should be GetOeuf, Getorf.
So simple and eggy too.

Yes boeuf (great easter name btw) - I feel uncharitable now. Mumsnet is always so great at listening to and responding to grievances from its users.

Mind you I think a rota of volunteers would be a difficult thing to manage. Plus gives no assurance really - we could be spammed to death one night because a voluntEer decided to do something else. At least if you pay someone you can guarantee they're there.

I never even knew there were professional forum moderators. Learn something new every day.

I'll do it, for a fee. In Canada here so 8 hours ahead. Perfect on Night of the Living Spambots. It was my evening.

I really feel we are abandoned overnight. On monday night, HQ worked really hard zapping the invaders, then around 2am, they just left, then returned at 9am to pick up where they left off. In the mean time, the invaders get free rein!

at 'volunteer role' don't be so tight MN.

Telling a commercial company to pay the going rate for a job done is not calling them "cut-throat capitalists", Boeuf.

It is all very well MN earning huge swathes of sponsorship / advertising revenue by getting people to do product tests and surveys with only the remote chance of winning a voucher, but to actually think it is acceptable to offer a job for no pay is insulting.

I feel sorry for them: people suggest something they are under no obligation to respond to, they come up with a solution, and next they are being derided as cut-throat capitalists.

Agreed.
Why should night mod be any less an important role as day mod. Clearly they are much needed!

I think it is embarrassing for MN to suggest it should be a volunteer role. They pay mods here, so why would they expect someone else to do the job without pay?

Stinks of exploitation, and I think anyone who volunteers for such a role is obviously unsuited to it.

I agree it should be a paid staff role, but no reason it shouldn't be a day job from someone overseas.
Tech lives in New York, doesn't he?

Surely a mod would only delete the obvious troll posts, and the deletion would be subject to MNHQ approval in the morning.

They wouldn't need to know the nuances of the site because anything debatable could be left til morning. A mod would only be concerned with the offensive/spam night-time posts that need immediate deletion.

It does seem a bit odd to think of nighttime moderation as a volunteer role in a major business. What would Boots et al. think of someone keeping the wankstains off their adverts for free? Bit workfare-ish to contribute economic value without pay? esp since I bet that in general mn is a very conscientious employer.

I don't think they could post as mods though- just delete offensive messages. Wouldn't it be great if you could ban people though? I'd never be trusted with it: I'd just be "Oh FFS, this is Extended having a wank- BAM, gone!" . Anyone who had a problem which involved an aunt would be toast.

Have you ever seen pics of the interior of mnhq? It's very swish.

Thing is you could pick a mner on their posting history but still have no idea of they would be any good as a mod. I am a pretty reliable poster if you look at my history - doesn't mean I am not a complete twat on here though at times. I think mods need to have a bit of distance, like the current staff.

Plus, how would it work? If something got a bit heated and I went and posted 'calm down' with my mod hat on, I would expect hope people would say 'fuck off, getorf'.

I would be like being a sixer at brownies all over again

There used to be moderators on here that were MNers rather than MNHQ. Can't Remember if they could actually do anything though.

True those responses. i don't know why, but I always imagine MNHQ as a bedsit with one computer held together by rubber bands.