@gailcalled – Thank you for asking how members can help the moderators.
The current moderators are always listed here: http://www.fluther.com/help/moderators/. When someone needs to contact one of us but isn’t sure who’s around, they can use the Contact button next to the Search bar. However, flagging Questions and Comments is better than that generic note when one wants to bring a specific item to our attention. We are volunteers with real-world responsibilities, and we can’t always be here or see everything that everyone posts, so we really rely on Jellies to use the flags to let us know when something seems awry. Commenting that a Question should have been posted in a different section, or that one suspects spam or a troll is counter-productive and creates more work for us. Just flag it and add a note in the flagging message box when needed, and move on to another post.
The biggest help that people can give the moderators is to be respectful of one-another. As Auggie noted in the blog, it is really up to the community to establish and maintain the tone of the site. We need to make it a place where people want to spend time. If we all could pause a moment before hitting the ‘Ask’ or ‘Answer’ button to check not only if our comment is clear and concise, but also whether it contributes to an interesting, productive discussion, there would be less mess for the mods to clean up.
Many Jellies have been here for several years and we can joke with some, but there are many who might not be ‘in’ on the joke—so it helps to use the tilde ~ to indicate sarcasm so everyone (including us mods) knows that it is not a serious dig. Similarly, after being here a while, some of us also have another Jelly or several who rub us the wrong way or with whom we disagree on many points. In those cases, bickering, snide, or rude remarks disrupt conversations and are a turn-off for newer folks. Disruptions are not allowed, even in the Social section, although some Jellies seem to think posts there are a free-for-all. Again, we ask all Jellies to consider the usefulness of your statement to the discussion and the community before submitting it.
As diverse a group as we are, we all clearly have a soft spot for this little corner of the world-wide-web… and it makes sense that we should all put a little effort into our contributions here and actively participate in the community’s evolution and well-being if we want it to continue.