The original text was written by Wintermute (Suzie) who used to help admin a few years ago. I think it's been posted in here before, but I think this should be a sticky for new mods to reference. Here are her words:

A brief synopsis of what we expect from all of you.

(1) Be an active user in your own forum(s). This means you should at
least post often enough that the regular users in your forum recognise
your name. I know that some forums get very very tedious, especially
answering questions repeatedly, but answering questions and
stimulating intelligent discussion is part of your job. Only
exceptions where we will allow some leeway are Spurious, HB, B&M, and
IFIOTW, since they're not exactly intelligent discussion forums and
the mods of those forums are more there for damage control. It'd be
nice if you posted, but it's not as important there as in the other
forums. If we check up on you and don't find posts by you in your
forum we're liable to remove you because we have no idea if you've
gone awol or not.

(2) Move posts to the correct forum, delete or close spam posts.
Inform admins of repeat offenders, and/or people breaking the rules.
If you're NOT aware of what totse's rules are (though you should be by
now) refresh yourself. http://www.totse.com/en/_faq/totse_faq.html#bbs

(3) Try whenever possible to be strict with yourself - if someone
isn't breaking the rules, even if they're a dumbass, their topic
doesn't necessarily deserve to be deleted. Move it to halfbaked
instead, if you're not sure if they're breaking rules or not. I'll
deal with it from there.
Often what happens when mods are overzealous (and admins too, we make
this mistake too) is that the user gets pissed and the problem gets
worse. Bans are largely ineffective whenever registration is closed,
and completely ineffective when it is open, so try and avoid needing
to ask for users to be banned whenever possible.

(4) If you do need a user to be banned, send an email to this list,
with their username, IP, if possible (doesn't work in all forums for
some reason, yet another bug) and an example post of why they need to
be banned, or failing that a description (brief) of what they've done.

(5) Sign ALL emails to the admin list with your totse username. Saves
us crap loads of time in trying to figure out who is who. Try and keep
your emails to the list ON topic. (that means you and your penis size
too AM ). Much easier to sort through old emails and find important
information that way.

(6) What's said here, stays here. If you have a problem with keeping
this confidential, tell me now. We need to be able to trust our
moderators, which means, if you know something is going on, let us
KNOW about it. Recent events should make this clear enough to all of
you. We (the admins) do our best to keep this place going, to make it
better, even, but we have to know that you're behind us, at the very
least keeping control of your forum.

(7) Various mods in the past have criticised one or more of us on the
boards. Let me state very clearly now, that if you have a problem with
us, if you have a problem with another moderator, it does NOT belong
on the boards. Preferably, take care of the issue via email to the
person concerned, let it go, or as a last resort email the
administration, if it is a personal issue. If you believe another mod
is doing their job badly, either AWOL, or abusing their power, then
the administration is your FIRST email. Respect the fact that we are
all doing what is a difficult and thankless job for free. Even if you
disagree or dislike someone else on the staff, do your best to act
like an adult.

(8) If for some reason you are unable to perform your duties for a
specific period of time (vacation, illness, other) let us KNOW. We
won't remove you if we know you're going to be back, and if necessary
we can appoint someone in addition to take over while you're absent.

(9) Similarly, if you're getting bored with your forum, if you're
burned out, if you're just tired of totse, let us know. We can
consider switching people around (as we're now planning to do with
Spurious), or if you're done, you can quit, with our thanks. Just
please, let us know, because an absent mod is worse than an empty
space. If we know you're not around, we can take care of things. If
you're just completely absent and we don't know, that's when we end up
with problem forums.

(10) Suggestions for improvements and features, while welcome, are
currently not possible for us. We utilise everything we can in keeping
control of the forums. At some point we hope we can update the
software, but that's something that we have to have at least a
relatively crisis free bbs for, in order for us to start working and
spending our time on improvements, rather than damage control. That's
where you guys come in, obviously.

Finally, thanks for your hard work in the past, present and future. We
do appreciate it.

Suzie (Wintermute)

I had forgotten that she wrote that and posted it to the admin email list. So I wrote my own guide before I went on vacation and never bothered to finish it until today. I think we overlapped on a few points, but I focused more on moderator-poster interaction and how to avoid bad situations. Here's what I had to say:

Zok's Guide to Being a Good Moderator: First Edition

The big topics that I want to cover in this guide are over-moderation, under-moderation, and how to be a good moderator in general. This will mostly be a list reasons why former moderators were problematic and how we were able to fix them. Every moderator has had SOME sort of problem while here, even I have. But regardless, I’m not naming any names except my own and Snoopy (whom I asked for permission – actually he was the one who suggested that I write this guide oh so long ago).

The “whip them into shape” approach: When a person is made a new moderator they often get the idea that they need to “whip the forum into shape” by being overly strict and not allowing borderline threads to occur. While this may work to keep some people in line, it only infuriates the others. People see it as a restriction on their freedom of speech (which it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t). The people who threats will not work against are going to give the moderator the most trouble. They will try the moderator as hard as they can to get them to close and delete threads and even apply bans. Though the troll is usually in the wrong and should be banned for their actions, it’s still an unnecessary situation. The entire problem could have been avoided by simply showing everyone in the forum some common courtesy and not threatening every troll with a ban/infraction.

How to get a troll to stop trolling without banning them: I’ve done this many times in the past. You must have the patience of a saint. If you just go ahead and ban the person or infract them, you’re almost always going to have them dispute it and thus try your patience even harder. Either way, here’s how I do it:
1) Leave the offending post open. Post in it and say something like, “Your thread is clearly off topic. Please don’t do that in this forum” and wait for a reply (they will almost always respond – especially if it’s a recent thread). This avoid the whole “making a thread to ask why my thread was locked” thing. Once the matter has been resolved, close or delete the thread.
2) As Mr. Rogers would say, “Be kind.” You’re only going to piss them off more if you threaten then with a ban, call them names, or give them an infraction. When they’re pissed off, they’re going to try and make you pissed off by spamming and trolling more.
3) If 1 and 2 don’t work and you’ve still got some patience left, email them. Explain to them the situation and why they should stop. Here is an email I wrote to someone about 8 weeks ago (edited to remove personal info): “Hey, you really need to stop trolling in ABC and XYZ. I’m not threatening you with a ban because that would be a stupid solution to a stupid problem. But you’re pissing off enough users that I was asked to talk to you. So please stop.” – As the dog whisperer would say, “Calm and assertive.” Guess what. It worked!
4) Infract or ban the user – last resort.

Becoming bored with your forum: Moderators often become bored with their forums - especially when they must check it for spam every few hours (like SG). The side effects of a bored moderator are easily noticed. Sometimes the moderator will moderate threads that simply don’t need moderating out of sheer boredom (Snoopy) - others will just go AWOL. If you think you’re becoming bored with your forum, ask the other moderators in your forum if it’s ok for you to take a short vacation (I’ve done this on MANY occasions). Take a vacation from moderation, posting, or totse entirely if you like. I don’t think anybody is mentally fit to take on totse 365 days of the year.

Low traffic forums: Moderators here are most commonly known for disappearing without telling anyone. Under-moderating: This usually happens with our lower traffic forums. I don’t think we’ll have this problem for quite some time though, since we’ve got a pretty fresh batch of moderators. I don’t think we’ve ever had a case of a moderator posting every day but simply not moderating anything. If you are the moderator of a low traffic forum it is important to know that your forum needs you less for moderation and more for post and thread contribution. Many forums just die from lack of traffic. Having a moderator that posts there regularly is a great way of getting more traffic. So if you moderate a low traffic forum, the best thing you can do is post. Members who post there regularly will give you more respect if you appear to be doing something aside from just closing/moving threads.

Edit: And I'm sorry for making you read two giant threads this week.

Excellent. Thanks.

Never be sorry.

Zok, good tips on moderation.

Threads don't get sent to HB anymore, the forum has changed since Wintermute's guide was written.

I would like to add something, Zok specifically used the phrase 'whipping them into shape', saying that it doesn't work.

I think it DOES, people just have the wrong idea about what being a STRICT mod is. For example I would consider myself a strict mod. The other two mods and myself, in R&R keep a very tight ship. That being said, we almost never close thread, almost never Infract anyone, almost never ban, almost never have to edit posts, and almost never even have to tell someone they're doing something wrong, because people simply just don't cause problems. They USED to, but over time we've created an environment that just isnt condusive to trolling and 'bad behavior' in general.

If there is enough GOOD content and interesting conversation going on in ANY forum, the trolls will get distracted by that. I think even the WORST troll in the world is more entertained by a REALLY GOOD than they are by their own playing (trolling).

I think it DOES, people just have the wrong idea about what being a STRICT mod is. For example I would consider myself a strict mod.

That's scary. I allways thought you were kinda laid back.
When someone made a shit thread about "have you ever eaten this ?lolz" and then posted a 8====D shape like a penis, I'd have infracted them whereas you simply closed the thread.
Heh.

I think it DOES, people just have the wrong idea about what being a STRICT mod is. For example I would consider myself a strict mod. The other two mods and myself, in R&R keep a very tight ship. That being said, we almost never close thread, almost never Infract anyone, almost never ban, almost never have to edit posts, and almost never even have to tell someone they're doing something wrong, because people simply just don't cause problems. They USED to, but over time we've created an environment that just isnt condusive to trolling and 'bad behavior' in general.

To add a disclaimer, this sort of thing is over the course of years.

Yeah maybe 1-2 years for a mid sized forum.

I've said it before but the single most important thing about modding on totse, in my not so humble opinion, is to not take yourself too seriously.

We all (without exception) act like total dicks sometimes, we all get down and play in the sandbox.

And I quite often suddenly realise i'm starring at my colon from the inside.


Accept the fact that its in the nature of such internet forums that regulars will also act that way sometimes.

Never be sorry.


I like it :D

So, can mods check ISP addresses? I've been told this can be done, but have no idea how to or even if I can.

We used to be able to check them under UBB. But not with the current software.


Oh it can be set so we can. But Jeff has said that he doesn't really want us to have such access. But the Super Mods and up can check them if you really need to have something checked.

Ah, thank you.

I don't need anything checked, but like firebreathing and thread moving, this is one of those powers that people seem to think we have, and I couldn't find how to do it.