If the moderation position were a paid job - what is the minimum you'd take to fill the position?

All the currency the federal reserve can print in a year, converted to precious metals.

@WestRiverrat beat me to it.

one million dollars

Apparently the above posters equate moderating with something like personally inseminating a fully awake crocodile, or being Lindsey Lohan’s copilot on her party plane.

I do too, and I’d do it for about $40/hour. ;-p

@Incoherency_ I would charge less for the crocodile, and LL is a deal breaker. I wouldn’t get near her with my worst enemy’s body.

Assuming it was for a set amount of hours per week, say 35, I would do it for 60k a year and benefits.

I apparenlty did it for a t-shirt.

I’d run with Lindsey….no wait- her mom I meant her mom

To moderate on Fluther. I’d say $50/hour.

I’d say $14 an hour if I can do it part time. Not more than 20 hours a week.

I make 55 to 105 per hour grooming dogs so it would have to beat that. And when grooming dogs all I have to worry about is getting bitten. Since there is no rabies in Australia, that is no biggie! Whereas there are many rabid types on fluther, (including mods) so I think I will stick with the dogs!

100K a year to do it my way. 250K a year to do it the way they want it done.

This is a real job. I don’t know why anyone would volunteer to do it. Of course, if it was just removing spam, I might charge less.

But this is a silly question, anyway. So that’s why it gets silly answers.

$10/hr

I’m managing the dang site for 500 bucks a month.

I don’t get out of bed for less than £500, so fuck that for a game of soldiers.

$500 a month? 6 k a year? Are you kidding?

They should be giving you a share of the company, @augustlan. What difference would it make to them? Right now, it’s worthless, and if it ever did become worth something, it would be thanks to you.

I used to make a decent-ish full-time job salary (nothing extravagant, but livable) doing it, but then the site couldn’t afford that anymore. The job went back to being basically a volunteer position, with a small stipend payment. I took a 90% pay cut. Hoping the traffic increase continues, and my pay will be increased again. Meanwhile, I consider it a labor of love.

I would prefer to work on a pay per moderated comment basis. I think I could make a small fortune from some people by doing it this way rather than a per hour basis.

I wouldn’t do it for free. My time is worth some money.
Other than knowing the basic rules of grammar and the software the site uses to run the program, I don’t think the job itself requires any kind of special skills, so I think minimum wage is in order. Would I do it as a full-time job? I don’t think so. It would be boring for me and totally unrelated to my area of expertise.

@wundayatta Why is this a silly question? Why do you think the answers are also silly? It’s a good thing my answer is after your comment otherwise I’d be really offended.

I think modding is comparable to working retail: hard work, under paid, and under appreciated. Dealing with A-holes everyday, with a smile on your face, ain’t easy.

Been there; done both. $50/hour for part time work. I don’t think I could do it full time.

@Yeahright It’s silly because it’s hypothetical, and thus you have to make unstated assumptions in order to answer it. Because the assumptions are usually unstated, or not fully stated (indeed, people usually aren’t even aware of the assumptions they make), the answers are not understandable or interpretable except in a very impressionistic way. Therefore people may feel like they are gaining knowledge or information, but they aren’t. It’s all bogus, and we have no choice but to give bogus answers. Hence, the question is silly.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love silly questions and I always answer them. They are fun. They are fun because they are silly. But it always bears remembering that we are answering a silly question, especially when people start to act as if they are taking it seriously.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a situation where you would take a job. We don’t know whether people have the skills. We don’t know what salary they require and how much they are being paid now and what they are doing now for that work. We don’t know what they think of the work, and even if they can do it.

You, for example, don’t think the job requires special skills. You severely underestimate what is done, in my opinion. There is a lot of special knowledge you need to have to do the job. You have to take on flutherhead in order to do it. That might require a Faustian bargain for you, or it might not. I don’t know you. But you have to make some legalistic determinations a lot of the time and that requires you think in a very specific way. Not just anyone can do that.

I joined for a t-shirt, valued at $19 + shipping.

@augustlan Where do you currently get the rest of your income?

Wow, compared to a lot of the comments here, I must sound like a cheap whore when I say I’d mod for $7 an hour, full time or part time.

@WillWorkForChocolate That depends: what is the current conversion rate of $7 into chocolate units?

@bossob Approximately fifteen pieces of my favorite chocolate. (Lindt Lindor Extra Dark Truffles)

@PhiNotPi I’m also doing copy editing. It nowhere near makes up the difference, but it sure does help!

@WillWorkForChocolate Well, I said $14 as my lowest. I think $18—$20 is a better amount for retaining staff, which would better control the quality of the modding. Although, we have great mods now who volunteer. All the comments on here for $50 an hour or $50k a year, I have to wonder how much those people make in the job they work in now.

When you ask about what people are making now, @JLeslie are you including the full compensation package? Benefits typically add one quarter to one third again as much as salary. So a hundred thousand dollar compensation package translates into around seventy thousand in salary. Which comes out to around fifty dollars an hour—maybe a little less. I doubt that fluther pays any benefits. It most likely hires people as consultants.

@augustlan Well, so far I’m the cheapest one here. I expect an interview today, so I can start earning that paycheck by tomorrow. Thanks. :D

You get what you pay for.

Perhaps, but some people are willing to put forth more effort than others, and they aren’t greedy about it.

@wundayatta Nope, not even thinking about total compensation. I doubt most people who answered are either. I have worked as an employee and self employed, I know the tax laws pretty well regarding that. The question was about the minimum. I think they easily could hire people who do not need health benefits part time for as low as $14. College students, stay at home moms, etc. This job does not require a certain level of education, nor a lot of specific training. I was not really asking people to reveal their salaries, just wondering out loud.

Oh, I think it does take a lot of specific education. I mean, I have been here five years and I still don’t understand how they do it.

So if you get people who are wiling to do it for a low hourly wage, well, I doubt you’d get any better job done than those people who do it for free. If you want to attract people who are already working, you’d have to pay them more than they are currently making to do it, I think. Certainly, you’d have to pay me more. A lot more. I would not want the aggravation of the moderators job unless you paid me two or three times as much as I already make.

In any case, I probably couldn’t do it, because, as I have said, I don’t understand how they do it.

First and foremost, modding is a people job. Many people couldn’t do the job without kicking holes in the wall everyday. Doing the job well for an extended time period is a difficult job for anybody. That reduces the quantity of suitable applicants significantly, which increases the necessary compensation that would attract qualified applicants.

Modding on a volunteer basis is a whole different game.

It’s a ball game? What? Baseball? Foorball? Whiffle ball? Ping pong?

Is hackysack a ball game?

@wundayatta If we want you to do it, well you are not likely to do it is what I would guess. That is why you want a lot of pay. But, someone who likes the idea of the job might be fine with less. I don’t like to work for less than $16 an hour, I have made much more in my day. But, part time, with extremely flexible hours, a little extra cash for me, and not a difficult job, I will take less. They might be overqualified and still be fine doing the job. I have worked as an executive assistant in that way, very overqualified, I have to dumb down my resume. $7 an hour I don’t support, because generally I think our minimum wage is horribly low. I think every job out there is worth more.

@JLeslie I say I’d take $7 hr. because I’m an unpaid housewife and I’m on Fluther a lot anyway, so $7 would be great pay for helping on a website that I already enjoy. Despite having to wade through a bunch of spam BS, it would be like getting paid to play.

@wundayatta Unfortunately, for a few, it’s an ego game.

I wouldn’t act as a moderator if I was paid. It would mean I have to be here for a required number of hours a week moderating. As it is, I can choose when to do some modding and choose when to be a member. Some days I don’t want to moderate. Some days and even weeks, I don’t have the time to moderate. Other weeks I have free time and the willingness and patience for it. You do need to take breaks from modding. So far my walls don’t have holes so the current system is obviously working for me.

I joined for a t-shirt and was happy to do so. (I’m damn proud of that T-shirt, too.)

I’d do it again, if I could moderate anonymously, behind-the-scenes. But then, in D&D I’ve always rather played an assassin than a knight. No fanfare, no banners – just do what needs done and get out.

Free… seeing that I am on disability and I could use something to take the excess free time away…. I could use a job that pays less than $800 a month that eats all the wasted time being Idle… So I guess if I can stay online long enough and get my own computer out of the hopsital that I am in I could totaly see myself interning with Lisa as site manager.