Les,

I disagree with you on the role & importance of moderators. I believe moderators should be active participants in their forum & in the community in general. They should display leadership & stand out in the community. To some extent, they define the board. In my opinion, any moderator who doesn’t love & participate in his forum should step aside for someone who does. Being a moderator isn’t a title or special badge, it is a special & important job in a volunteer organization. I don't think my views on this issue are unique. I have noticed that most successful boards have moderators who are active in their forums. I think it adds dynamism to the forum.

Like in all organization, a hierarchy exists in this board & the moderators to some extent are the management. In order to maintain long term participation we need to keep recruiting to the management ranks. Additionally, all the key contributors should feel they have a chance to rise up in the organization. Closing ranks & locking out newcomers is not a good idea in my opinion.

I never truly liked all our doubling up of moderators; this is not typical behavior for a board such as ours but I recognized at the time that our pool of potential moderators was limited & thus doubling up was a necessity. I think we should work towards eliminating this practice, not entrenching it. Your suggestion reduces the number of moderators & thus concentrates administrative power in an even smaller group of hands. So in answer to your question, I have no problem with NTDOC taking over in the UDF forum but I do have a serious problem with a reduction in the number of moderators. DrillSergeant has obviously moved on to other endeavors & thus should be replaced. Now it is time to invite someone new into the moderator group to replace him.

You want to change the recruitment process, fine, I am all for that. I never liked either of the 2 previous processes either. I gather most boards create a board management forum that essentially undertakes this process internally. Seems to me, such a forum would reduce the complexity, if that is what you want.

[ 24. February 2003, 20:21: Message edited by: Jack Lothian ]
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Jack