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The answer is obvious imo.
Ridiculously huge traffic to his blog.
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Given how much the lifehacker folks struggled in creating their forum eventhrough the had the necessary traffic I don't think that's the case.
Traffic alone isn't everything.
When this forum got founded Steve got 2 moderators for every forum. A lot of interesting people applied in the start to get moderators.
Those people were all commited to making that forum a success.
They were also enough people to write quality post's to get others interested in participating.
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But I WOULD say that Steve doesn't keep moderators that have any tendency to disagree with him or would put up TOO much of a disagreement with him.
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Given that you have never seen the moderator forum from the inside I don't think you have any basis for making such a claim.
Disagreements simply get discussed internally instead of externally. Most well functioning teams follow that principle.
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I do get the sense that Steve is more interested in "lackey" type of moderators
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Steve doesn't recruit new moderators on his own but the process is rather that the existing moderators discuss a new candidate.
In the end it's Steve decision whether or not to hire the new moderator, but I can't remember a single case where Steve decided differently than the consensus of other moderators.
The ability of people to think themselves and have their own opinion was always something that I looked to.
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he is in the type of moderator that would be apt to question some of the policies that are already in place
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When Steve asked him to be a moderator I told him that I will basically do what I think it's right when he makes me a moderator.
That included to delete more commercial messages than were deleted beforehand and moving paranormal topics out of the personal effectiveness forum.
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move for adapting/changing the forums based on the feedback from its members.
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Most of moderators care more about what's right than what's popular.
I think it makes sense to run a forum according to your ideal and then let people decide whether they like to stay in the forum or go elsewhere.
We allow discussion of other forums to make it easy for people to find a better fit when they don't like this forum.
We even ban people on request when they want to quit this forum.
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And how to keep my members there using the forums once they are in?
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By providing a good experience through banning people who disrupt the community.