Your Job
Your job as a forum moderator is to help make the Banjo Hangout Forums an effective resource for our members.

This will involve these actions:
- Relocating Topics
- Participating in the Forums
- Hiding, Editing or Deleting Posts
- Locking Members
- Communicating with the Forum Administrator

Be sure you are familiar with the rules, since these are what you're asked to enforce!

Moderators gain access to the private moderator forum, which is used by the moderators to communicate about various topics and situations.

Relocating Posts
People may post topics in the wrong forum. When this happens, you'll need to edit that topic and place it under the correct forum. The forum automatically emails the poster to let them know that their topic has been relocated, but you can also post a message under that topic, kindly letting the poster know that you moved the topic to the appropriate forum.

Participating in the Forums
Moderating works best when you maintain a good relationship with the forum you're moderating. This doesn't mean you have to spend hours on the forum every day... but it is important that people recognize you as someone who contributes to the community.

Part of this participation may also involve posting messages that deal with correct forum etiquette or other forms of advice to posters. It often happens that posters will make simple mistakes (like typing in all caps, or being consistently rude to others) and it is helpful in those cases to contact the person (via private message or the forum itself) to give them some gentle advice.

Locking Members
Accounts which are obviously spammers should be immediately locked. Members who repeatedly break the rules should also be locked out, but this typically involves some discussion among the moderators first. When in doubt, email the site administrator, Eric Schlange.

Hiding, Editing or Deleting Posts
If a post contains rule-breaking material (ie flagrant expletives, pornography, personal attacks, etc) it may need to be hidden, edited or deleted. Posts should be hidden if you want to remove from the public eye while we discuss the post, or if you want to save the content of the post while hiding it from the public. Posts should be deleted if they are obviously rule-breaking posts. Generally, editing the text of a post is not necessary, but in some instances it is the best solution. Please hide/edit/delete sparingly and carefully! Nothing kills a forum more than "heavy handed" moderators who won't let people speak their mind. When in doubt, email the site administrator, Eric Schlange.

Communicating with the Forum Administrator
If you have ideas for improvements, questions, etc, please let me know. Since you'll be "in the field" more than I, you'll know best what issues are facing the forum. Email me at eric@banjohangout.org.