Moderator

A moderator is a forum user who watches over the forums. Moderators exist in forums (or chat rooms, or any group) all over the internet. The main NaNoWriMo forums were unmoderated for the first several years of their existence. During the 2004 NaNoWriMo season Cybele May joined the staff to moderate the forums. Heather Dudley replaced her in January 2008 when Cybele stepped down to work on other site features.

Heather is assisted by a team of volunteer moderators throughout the forums, each of whom moderates one or more forums. The regional lounges are moderated by the Municipal Liaisons of that region. Moderator volunteers are generally (but not always) pulled from the Municipal Liaison pool, although former MLs may continue their moderator duties after stepping down from managing their regions. In 2018, moderator applications were open to the larger Wrimo population for the first time, without any previous ML experience required.

Some responsiblities of NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy forum moderators

• Answer questions from users.
• Manage spam.
• Read discussions and make sure users are behaving. Remind users of the Codes of Conduct if discussions get heated.
• Monitor signature and profile image sizes.
• Move threads that were posted in the wrong forum.
• Ban users who repeatedly break the rules. (Generally reserved for the lead forum moderator.)
• Lock threads that violate the Codes of Conduct.
• Sticky popular and informational threads.