How a moderator gets selected
Every year, LAC will open up a topic calling for volunteers who would like to be a moderator of the forums. The purpose of this topic yearly will be to replace any moderators who wish to no longer moderate after a year.

Depending on the amount of volunteers that volunteer, there will be 2 or 4 moderators selected. This number in addition to Linda Lawson makes for an odd number (3 or 5) if a vote is ever needed.

Reasons for anonymous moderators:
Protection of privacy for those moderators -
If a user did not feel that LAC's moderators made a decision in that user's favor - that user may seek out to email the moderators. What exactly would be in these emails - is anyone's guess.

A no buddy-buddy system -
If a member of the forums was a very close friend to 1, 2, or even 3 of the moderators - that could be a conflict of interest for that moderator. That would not be fair to the rest of the community when the moderators could be influenced, persuaded, or even threatened.

Eliminates popularity contest
In order to get to an anonymous moderator system, voting would have to be taken out of the equation. With voting out of the equation - the whole popularity contest is not in effect.

What would be required of a moderator?
Time
A moderator would be required to go through as many recent posts as time allows on their schedule. We would like this to be a daily routine - several times a day. For Linda and I - it's practically an hour routine right now. This would ensure if one moderator wasn't able to get to the forums that day, the other moderators would be there checking as well.

An initial commitment of 1 year would also be required for the time frame of being a moderator.

Integrity
A moderator would have to have a self professed quality of integrity. This integrity would also have to be evident through their time on LAC - no matter how new, or how old of a member.

Humility
Part of being in a group of moderators is listening to others and their opinions. You need to have an open mind to other people's views and be able to professionally discuss, without flaming the other moderators, the issue at hand.

Complete understanding of LAC's Policies
You will need to have read and understand every section of the LAC policies. If there are any questions regarding the policy, please ask those before you volunteer.

An agreement to stay completely anonymous
You would need to refrain from allowing anyone to know your identity as a moderator when you are a moderator or even after you are a moderator. This is for your protection. Moderators will not even know the identities of each other as a separate user account will be created for that moderator (moderator1, moderator2, etc.).

We will be setting up a system in which users can post an issue or question if they have one to the group of moderators. I have to look at the technical aspects of this, but the idea would be any issue that comes up would be discussed in a private moderator forum that only moderators can view, but users may submit their concerns to (without seeing the rest of the content).

This eliminates having to email the moderators. It also allows all the other moderators to see directly the issue, instead of relying on one moderators extraction of the issue from an email they may of gotten.

A commitment
In addition to the 1 year commitment of being a moderator, a commitment to the entire community, it's policies, and the forum owners' goals for LAC is also required.


How will the moderators operate?
Ongoing discussions of issues that have been brought up
As mentioned before, there will be a private forum for the moderators. This forum will be where Linda, myself (if needed on technical aspects), and the moderators will discuss issues that have been brought to their attention. The issues can be posted from the outside subscribers, but only viewed and discussed by the moderators.

This will be a daily discussion if need be.

The number of moderators
Our goal is to have an odd number (2-4) of moderators so if a vote is needed, there will not be any deadlocks when you include Linda Lawson to make an odd number of votes. I, myself (Johnny), will not be a voting participant. The moderator number will be combined with (1) site owner - Linda Lawson - to get the odd amount of moderators.


Moderators will be at the sole discretion of Linda and John Lawson
If for any reason a moderator goes outside the guidelines of being a moderator, they will receive a warning shared with the other moderators in their private forum. If a moderator goes outside a guideline again, it will be up to Linda and John Lawson on if that person remains a moderator.