forum administration and moderation

[bigbear]

I run two forums, both of which I have installed and setup myself. I also am an admin on a couple others .

The two that I have are one that is phpBB (this forum) and an SMF forum for my beekeeping site.

It's interesting to me that no matter how different the topic/purpose of the forum is, the personalities and general posting and communication behaviors are still so similar.

To be truthful, I find beekeepers to tend to be a bit more on the polite and easy going side, though there are obvious contradictions to that.

I find computer forum people to be a bit less forgiving and more 'my way or the highway' types present.

moderating in each of these is interesting yet challenging. It takes a special person o be a good moderator, something I do not claim to be.

The tools that each forum app provides or doesn't provide makes staying on top of admin and moderating unique in some ways to each app used.

What are your experiences as a forum administrator or moderator?

Big Bear