Moderator Selection Techniques [closed]

Question

What are the most popular Moderator selection techniques?

Where and how are they used?

I would like some statistics if possible to show the effectiveness of each selection technique (Rejection of Moderator by Community, Owner, or Admins).

Answer 1

1. The absolutely most common moderator selection technique is "Good pals/lovers/drink buddies of the site owner." Their skills at moderation being entirely irrelevant and often abysmally bad, often the moderators outnumbering users, fighting between each other and being dismissed after a disagreement with the owner (on entirely forum-unrelated subject). The title of "moderator" is akin to a title of nobility like "Count" or "Marquis" and means moderators may flay the peasantry as they see fit.

2. By 'maturity' on site. Users that stay longest and didn't get into too many arguments get the moderator status.

3. None. The admin/owner is the only moderator, period.

4. Let the moderators decide. The owner defers to existing moderators to hire more, following whatever metric they deem right. Usually that boils down to discussing potential candidates on the moderator forum, considering various "for" and "against".

5. Hiring through job agency. Whoever the agency sends in, is the moderator. That's how most big portals handle this (also, including interns.)

Multi-phase community elections like on StackExchange probably don't make it into top 20 popularity-wise.

EDIT: If the question was asked purely for some academic research purposes, I can tell the answer is probably just a stub for further research, which, personally I believe doesn't exist.

Then, if the question was more along the line "Which moderation selection model would fit [my site] best", I could provide some tips, especially that it largely depends on the site and its profile.

For example, election system of StackExchange is only good on big sites with mostly mature audience. On a site frequented by teens it will result in several characters with biggest egos getting the moderator positions and fighting, undermining each other, to scrape to the top - utterly counterproductive.

For example most small communities, like personal blogs only need the site owner to moderate. There's really no need for multiple moderators if you have less than 200 semi-active participants.

For example moderators hired for a commercial site through a work agency need a manager/overseer to check quality of their work and monitor complaints from users. They are assigned at random but bad ones are dismissed on the spot, and after a while you have a semi-permanent crew, with skill honed through experience.

#4 "Let the moderators decide" is about the most versatile and successful. It's the existing moderators who know what the site needs, who know the users on quite personal basis, know the basic factors required from a moderator given their site specificity, and know whether a new moderator is needed or not.

This works well for all but the absolutely largest sites. Sites too big to build rich interpersonal relationships - like Digg, Slashdot, or Stackexchange - need more arbitrary methods, as moderators are simply unable to fish out best candidates from the overwhelming bulk - and these are a relatively small margin on the number of sites that do have moderators; edge cases.

Still, owner's ego, poor knowledge of own community, and fear of giving this kind of power away to strangers more often than not cause #1,#2,#3 to outweigh #4.