Moderator vs Administrator and why so many?

The main difference is the Administrators have access to a wider selection of configuration options on the proboards software, including some pretty destructive ones that are perhaps best not being available to new members of forum staff learning how to drive the forum software.

All the forum staff are volunteers, who have variable amounts of time to contribute to moderating the forum. Some staff members may be unable to commit any time to the forum for a few months, but then contribute whilst others back away.   The forum team has been stretched rather thinly this year, as a number of team members have had other priorities, and hence why we have recently recruited an additional two moderators.  There needs to be a constant influx of new moderators to allow others to step back.

We can get anything up to 20 posts reported every day that need attention, having a decent sized pool of staff members allows the work to be shared out. Without the administrators and moderators responding to each and every reported post the forum would have to close.


The forum staff are totally independent of the platforms, and whilst some of us do have minor equity investments in platforms that in no way compromises our independence.

The forum was created in Nov 2013 following the retrieval by FC of the url the precursor forum was using, and forgive me for stressing the point, relies on there being sufficient forum members who appreciate that the forum has to be moderated to remain an open public forum, and are willing to volunteer their time to assist with the moderation.

At present it is unclear whether there is enough appetite amongst forum members for the forum to continue in the medium/long term as an open public forum.


Disclosure: As per my signature strip, I am an AC shareholder  (shareholding is just 2% of my p2p loans)