Should forum mods be paid?

Depends on the size of the site, but yeah, they should get paid a lot of cash.

In an ideal world, money wouldn’t matter.

no, ever.

Depends on context. If their work in general is to be community representatives for company yes. It could very well be a real job with forum moderation as a part.

For hobbyist and fan sites not really possible or viable. There it shouldn't happen.

Last week, most of the moderators of the behemoth gaming forum NeoGAF resigned from their posts in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against the site’s owner.

Holy crap. That's huge news.

If the owner is making a significant amount of money of the site, apart from the operational costs of running the site, then yes. Since you would just be profiteering of other people's good will otherwise.

Some more NeoGAF stories, yay...

Apart from that, I'd say it really depends on the context. If tons of people are willing to do the job for free, why pay them? If noone is willing to do it for free, well sure I guess the only choice is to hire paid ones.
I guess it also depends on how profitable the site is: it makes sense to have volunteers help around a non-profit site or a site that barely covers its hosting costs. It makes less sense to have volunteers help around a site that makes billions of profits (for instance, would you imagine Facebook being moderated by volunteer mods? :D). So it's hard to answer the question without knowing how revenues are going ^^

Another thing to do could be to improve tools for auto-moderation. For instance:

• rerolls could be automatically granted if the winner asks for it
• GA deletions could be automatically granted if the GA creator asks for it and the winner approves
• tickets to reroll based on the winner having broken a rule (non-activated or multiple wins) could be semi-automatically filtered by requiring the reporter to enter the date of the latest infraction (if latest infraction is older than the latest suspension, close the ticket)

We should make some non bundle giveaway every month that only site mods are allowed to enter and that should compensate for the time they put to moderate stuff.

only if they are moderated by a moderate moderator modernly mulling moderative modes of mondo maneuvres on mondays.

paids involves paperwork and taxes, and almost all your copy-paste threads could be closed

If you want to (re)pay them, white-list them or invite them to your groups, but paying with cash would require some form of consistent time commitment -- making it a second job for most -- when most probably make far more already than they would modding this site.

Having said that, I'd love to get paid to show up to work whenever I want. I don't think I'll be bringing that up at the next meeting, though.

Only if I get paid in candy. Been visiting Amazon on a daily basis to buy a tub of banana flavoured laffy taffy at a reasonable price for the past 2 weeks. I'm running low, but I refuse to spend $40 per tub of candy! D:

OT: If I was paid to mod, then it would feel more like a real job and I don't need my soul crushed both in rl and online :/

They should be given more site benefits rather than money of sort.

But aren't dominance hierarchy arbitrary? After all, we all are equal, right?
The forums belong to the people, like a true democracy should work. I want no dirty businesspigs deciding for me. If the workers make all the resources, they should decide how to use them. If that's an utopian society, let's do the same with our forums. Lenin for 1922. Eisenstein movies are the best. You all have to watch a cinema classic like Alexander Nekvsy, with the flawless score of Prokofiev. A movie so good it's like a medieval Star Wars.
Ever heard Jazz Suite, from that Shostakovich guy? Well, you can't surpass that masterpiece.
I also like Holst, Bizet and Vivaldi.

Slaves should not get pay or be compensated.

I'm assuming any ad money gained goes into site improvements and paying for hosting. If there's anything left over, it would be nice if it went to mods and anyone else who may be doing work to help keep the website running.

Ok sure, if I can be paid for helping my mom take care of my bedridden father for the past 3 years. (Where's all that backpay going to come from though...) honestly, it's a volunteer position, if people don't want to volunteer any longer then they can quit.

My point is...no one is going to be in danger if the mods all quit. Maybe this site would shut down, but that is hardly the end of the world.More likely there would be a new crop of mods and life would go on.

ETA:Before people cry foul, I respect what the moderators do, and am grateful for the ones who do volunteer to make SG a better place.I have volunteered a lot in my lifetime and can say that I might not have done it as a job. Two examples:

1. I have both been employed by bicycle shops and worked at community centers to fix bikes for less fortunate people, taught children how to fix their own bikes, and certainly wouldn't have done both if they were jobs. I got way more out of the volunteer experience but I also know it would've created hierarchy and competition if we added paychecks into a co-operative environment.(I can imagine SG would see a surge of opportunists who didn't want to mod to help cg but because they wanted compensation.)

2. I taught GED classes at a halfway house in college and then became a substitute teacher for awhile. Although both positions came with responsibility, the subbing was obnoxious because of the lack of control I had over virtually everything. True, some of that is because substitute teachers are generally treated with kid gloves and given very little respect, but I also just "went through the motions" of subbing and did what was required of me, no more. That wasn't fair to the kids, though, so eventually I quit. Burnout already happens with volunteers, I feel like when you pay someone they either feel like they have to earn it,creating tension within the group potentially, or, since they're already being paid, they can slack off. I'm not saying this would happen for sure but it just seems like more trouble than it is worth.

In a perfect world, sure, and a lot. But in a perfect world, everyone would.

In this imperfect world, it shouldn't be assumed by mods that they'd get paid. But if the mods reach an agreement with the site owner about getting paid, then sure, why not.

Should forum mods be paid?

For what? Sleeping the whole day?

if they were to get paid, I can sense... mass unemployment.

It’s important to not exploit the goodwill of your community members by asking them to do unreasonable amounts of uncompensated labor.

You mean, like having to match your games manually at SteamTrades? ;)
I used to be a believer that if you build a (trading or whatever) site and make it as easy & fun as possible to use, the audience will come. I was proven wrong by the simple fact that there are millions of SteamTrades users (well, maybe not millions...), and I'm struggling to even reach a thousand.

I think that most people are just masochists. (The alternative explanation would be even worse.)

As such, 'big' sites with many visitors don't really need to pay mods-- if one is just tired of moderating or whatever other chore, they'll quit, and be shortly replaced by another enthusiast. What's hard is to make sure to maintain moderation quality throughout staff changes. But then, you get what you pay for. ;)

They should absolutely be rewarded. But let's be real, if a job is done for free, a company/website is never like to suddenly give them money. It's a psychological effect too - if you give too little money then you swtich to money norm and they will be offended and refuse to do the job. So I think rewards, recognition is the safest way to go. If the website was reddit then it would be different.