Finding the right Moderators

If you're an Admin starting fresh, or just starting up, and you're managing a fairly popular server, you may want to consider having some moderators, or players with some elevated privileges around. Moderators have some admin powers, but only enough to allow them to keep things in order, instead of giving them all the wonderful admin powers. Which is fun, but some moderators you just can't trust with those powers.

So-who should you appoint? We have a moderator application system, where you have to apply on the forums. A lot of other public servers do this as well. If you're a player wanting to become a moderator-you might want to know this as well.

An Admin shouldn't just appoint mods left and right only because they seem to fit the bill. The moderator, to some degree, has to either comply or agree with the Admin's idea of how the server should be run. For example, you can't have a laid back server Admin, and then an uptight and on-the-nose Moderator kicking and banning without warning first. The server needs to have some consistency in it's discipline, otherwise people won't be as inclined to stick around. Even though the disciplinary side of a server is frowned upon the most by players, players usually understand on a lower level how important it is, and if they feel that discipline on the server isn't well maintained or consistently kept on the server, regardless of the exact level of disciple the server administration uses, the player may not want to stick around.