Usually a Moderator posts the first message—whether
a welcome-type message or a post that hits the ground
running by starting off the discussion with an interesting
point of view.
As you know, YaBB uses Universal Bulletin Board
Code (UBBC) in place of common HTML code operations
such as including a picture, linking to another
site, and text formatting. Occassionally users forget
that YaBB cannot accept standard HTML code. You
might see "<i>Hi!</i>" in someone's
post. A good Moderator picks up on the fact that
the author intended to make the text italic,
and will edit the post to replace "<i>Hi!</i>"
with "[i]Hi![/i]".
Fixing type-o's is at your discretion. Some Moderators
will fix a post's type-o's, others won't. It can
be time consuming.
Here's a very useful, and much appreciated trick
to use when you lock a topic for being too long
and create a follow up topic. Each topic has a unique
URL that will always link back to it, which you
will see displayed in your browser's address/location
bar. Since the Topic List always sorts the most
recently modified topic to the top of the list,
older or locked topics get pushed to the bottom
or even to other pages, making it difficult for
people new to the board to catch up on previous
parts of the discussion. Why not give them a hand?
In addition to titling the next part of the topic
"[title] (part x)", in the first post put a link
back to the previous topic. For example, when locking
up "special fx in film" and starting the new topic
"special fx in film (part 2)", include in the topic
opening message something like "Continued from
[URL=http:// YaBB.org/ forum/YaBB.cgi? board=general&
action=display&num=42]'special fx in film'[/URL]".
Anyone new to the "special fx in film (part 2)"
topic can then click the link to catch up on the
full discussion. Members will appreciate the extra
effort.
Occassionally a user may post a message off-topic
or not related to the theme of the board. The best
way to handle this situation is to ask the user
through Private Message to re-post his message in
a more appropriate place, and indicate what place
that would be.
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