Gallery Moderators

I would like to see a position of “Gallery Moderator” created to accompany the role of the gallery director. Here is what a gallery moderator would be:
A gallery moderator would have been part of the DA community for long enough to know what there is to know. This would not be a set time, but would be a buffer, so that new users didn't start to ask to be gallery moderators immediately. They would have a special interest in the gallery they moderate. This would be good for two reasons, first, they enjoy viewing the art in that genre, and secondly they would have a special motivation to keep that gallery clean.

Gallery Moderators would be in charge of the lowest levels of categories. Not to be a geek, but an analogy is a moderator to just one of the lowest level domains on a website. For instance, there would not be a Gallery Moderator to the Darkroom category, there would be a moderator to the Darkroom>Digital and a mod to the Darkroom>Traditional. These would be separate. No matter how much a person loves DA and their category, more than one low level category is much too much to take care of.

So what would this “gallery moderator” do? They would simply take the policy violations for that gallery and then deal with them. They would move miscats primarily. Not only those that had been submitted, but those that they saw when browsing that category. There would be enough to browse and catch this because they are only responsible for a small area. If they got a rip report, they would check it out, if they thought that it was really ripped, they would forward it to somebody who could take care of it, and if they thought it was just a mistake or not a rip, they could clear it. This would save time for the people who deal with rip reporting, and also be an extra filter.

What would be the benefits to being a gallery moderator? Well, as I see it, since the gallery directors get a “Subscribed till hell freezes over” (which incidentally will be longer now because of Global Climate Change) this would be too great a reward for being a gallery moderator. Also, because this work is pretty intense, and peoples lives change, it wouldn't be fair to give a “hell sub” and than for that person to quit the next day. My proposal is to have the gallery moderators subscribed during their “term in office.” That is, as long as they were an active gallery moderator, they would enjoy the benefits of a sub, if and when they quit, that privilege would go away at the end of the calendar month. When they resumed active duty they would wait until the start of the next month and then their sub would start. (This is to prevent, coming and going as one pleases.)

Would their be any other benefits?
Well, they would get a cool new symbol in front of their name when they were active. Might I suggest a © (copyright) symbol? That would demonstrate their job pretty well. \
Contests might be held for the gallery mods. For instance: who spent the most time browsing in their categories, who caught the most policy violations before they were reported, or even as informal as, who found the best miscat. The reward might be prints, or DevWear stuff. I think that would be a good way to keep people active and doing their job, it would bring some competition to the whole gallery moderating thing, and some fun.

These jobs would be completely voluntary. People would be asked to do this, especially if they were particularly active in reporting miscats, or they could apply using an application process.

The final benefit that I see is that it builds these people who would take on these jobs. They will learn more about the DA community, more about the art in their gallery, more about the reasons it is so difficult to keep DA categorized, and more about the people who miscat, why they do it, and how to reduce the problem from the beginning.
Perhaps, the ultimate good that comes from this is that there will be more personalized attention to miscats, maybe a system that will count how many each deviant has could be implemented and those who did so more than once could receive a message explaining the problem and telling them to be more careful.

Adding gallery moderators to Deviant Art would truly be a blessing to all of us who hate the miscatigorization of art on this site.

Thank you, Galen