Looping back around

Possibly a Rick Steves employee could be allowed or tasked to monitor the Forum a bit closer (than is currently the case) for earlier identification of any negative encounters with the OP, and then "intervene" with a post that defuses the situation?
Laura's posts have been appreciated and helpful with questions that are difficult or that involve things that only a RS employee would know. I realize, or assume, that you don't have the resources to monitor the Forum 24/7, and that you folks have other things to do.

Also, some of the negative encounters have developed over weekends, where I think I've noticed there is less monitoring of the Forum by RS employees. Realize that's a business decision and so don't know if there's anything that can be done about that?

Also, one of the suggestions was for sticky FAQs at the top of forum sections. There is some irony in asking for that in a topic within General Europe where there is already a sticky FAQ. We found that they were largely ignored when we added them years back -- and it's clear that the person asking for it never saw it.

However, I'm not opposed to adding more if you think it will help. The trick is assembling the content for FAQs as the advice should come from you. I'm only interested in working on a sticky post (in each section) once, so the advice should be timeless. Feel free to e.g. start threads discussing what you'd like to see in an FAQ for any given section. I'd just need to be pinged when you're done discussing what you'd like. Then I can collect it, parse it, and format it for a sticky post.

Your prior post reminds me of a time, way back when the software and site was in the early stages, when I had actually contributed to some of the stickies. Long time ago.

Thanks, Kent. There are two aspects to that. 24/7 coverage and a proactive approach.

Largely, moderation is a reactive approach. We react when something is reported to be a problem. While there are some controls and occasional moderation on a weekend, we know that this can be better. That isn't as big of a deal as a proactive approach to moderation. That would mean reading all posts as they happen to catch issues in real time. The cost for something like that is unfortunately prohibitive. 3 8-hour shifts per day just to have one person reading everything would mean 4-5 full-time staff. 6 or 7 if someone wants a vacation. More than that if we need more than one person working at a time -- and we're at that level. Pay those people a living wage and you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

As I know that someone else will bring up deputizing members of the forum, there are technical and legal reasons why we haven't jumped into that. I do thank the many trustworthy members that have already volunteered. It's not off the table, but it's not an impending change.

Right, understood; when I said 24/7 I didn't mean literally 24/7, since relatively few posts are made after about 7 or 8pm.
But there is a lot of activity on the weekends, say between 9am and 7 or 8 pm.
But your point is well taken, that there are business decision limits to the resources available.

Thanks for these - the "How To" page reads well and I welcome it.

Just need to find a way to newbies to it before they start posting...

Thanks