Chris,
It's some times who ya know more than what ya know...ya know?
I wanted a wilderness forum here, because it's a passion for me. I knew Ron Hood, who is one of the very best instructors and my personal mentor in the arts and science of wilderness skills, and my friend. He agreed to come aboard here as moderator, with me as co-moderator. Me? I am just a student, still, learning every day.
A moderator basically manages the flow of discussion, deals with problem people, posts, etc., and generally keeps things moving. Most of the forums here require a lot of moderation, but this one runs itself. We have, in my opinion, one of the most professionally behaved groups anywhere online, right here -- not because of the moderators, but because of the quality members who post and share here. There are almost never problems, and it makes the job of moderator very easy.
I've been tied up with projects, as has Ron, and have not had an opportunity to participate in the discussions nearly as much as I would like, but I visit several times a day here -- but things'll even out shortly and I'll be able to get back to jumping in.
If problems come up, I take care of them. But this place really moderates itself! Maybe it's the subject matter -- people who are into this stuff tend to be self-reliant by nature, and don't feel a childish need to take their bad karma out on others. The discussions are always productive, and a great deal of excellent information is exchanged...in other words, the signal-to-noise ratio is nice and low.
There are many wilderness forums online...this place is very busy and attracts the best because Bladeforums is a high-profile web discussion site, and knives, naturally, are the primary tool in wilderness survival for most of us.
The biggest time-consumer on a web forum is the administration. Since Spark, the owner, and a couple others do all that (exceedingly well, I might add), we moderators just work with content. Your friend may find that being the maintainer/administrator AND moderator of his site adds time to his schedule.
Good person to ask is Plainsman, who runs his own forum.
Hope this helped!
Best,
Brian.
