GREAT CHESS.COM POSTS

Since many of our members misunderstand what moderators do, I thought I'd write up a description of a typical day.

At 5:00, we get up and get ready for the day.  Moderators work long hours, so it takes an early start to be able to fulfil all our duties.

After breakfast, we log on to chess.com and go to @Erik's page.  We stare at his picture for five minutes, and then repeat "Erik, Erik, Erik, I am here to serve you today."  This helps to put us in the right frame of mind for the day's activities.  Then we begin monitoring the forums.

The servers only have so much space available for each day, and if the level of activity in the forums was too high in the previous night, we might have to delete a few comments to save space later.  If we delete one of your comments that you thought was particularly brilliant, sorry, but we're trying to keep the forums running smoothly for the rest of the day.  If the servers got filled up, we wouldn't have any space left for the spammers.

We have a daily quota system for bans and mutes.  If we don't mute ten people, our salary for the day is cut in half.  On the other hand, if we ban at least five people, our wages are doubled.  I try to get five of my mutes and two of my bans in before lunch.  Since people have to pay $50 to get unmuted and $100 to be allowed to create a new account after getting banned, this is a very important source of revenue for chess.com, and moderators are encouraged to do their part by ensuring a sufficient number of people are muted and banned.  Regular members can do their part by reporting cheaters (select Report Abuse under the Help menu).  This helps raise the money needed to pay for Erik to take his family to Bermuda four times a year.

We actually love spammers.  Not only do they make for relatively quick and easy bans, but they always want to come back with new accounts, which means lots of extra revenue.  We reward them by letting them post half a dozen comments before we ban them.  This is why it's so important to delete enough comments earlier in the day to ensure there's room on the servers for the spammers.

After I have all my bans and mutes for the day, it's time to start looking for references to competitor sites.  This is a major part of our job, and usually takes a couple hours.  Some moderators prefer to do it in the morning, but I like to get my bans and mutes in first.

Then we spend a few minutes helping members with problems they're having or addressing abusive behaviour.  This needs done, but it's really a much smaller part of what we do than people think.

We usually finish all our tasks at about 11:00 PM.  We then send @jdcannon a note, and he transfers $0 to our account, doubled or halved according to the number of bans and mutes we were able to manage during the day.

We wrap up the day the way we began, by going back to Erik's page and staring at his picture for five minutes, then repeating "Erik, Erik, Erik, I am happy to have served you today."

All told, it's a hard job, the hours are long, and the pay isn't great, but it's very rewarding.  The site members all love us, and nobody ever complains.  And we get to help pay for Erik's family holidays (or vacations for you Americans).

If you're interested in joining us, you should contact @jdcannon.  You must be at least 18, and normally also a site member in good standing for at least six months.

Nobody ever has any complaints about moderators, but in the unlikely event that you do, you should direct your complaints here:

I hope that helps all of you better understand what we do.

Note: some of the details above may not be entirely accurate.