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How many pro tem moderators are chosen for a beta site? I know for Literature.SE there were 3, but does that always apply? Could there ever be 4, for instance?

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  • I've seen sites with 4 or two mods. Some of them beta (though those may be SE 1.0 upgrades which grandfather the mods). Not beta, but [stats] has 2. Ill look for others.
    – Manishearth
    Commented Jun 7, 2012 at 18:00
  • @TimManishEarth Stats has 3 mods.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Jun 7, 2012 at 18:06
  • @anna not according to the TL bot O_o
    – Manishearth
    Commented Jun 7, 2012 at 18:12

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The question about the initial number of moderators has been answered already. I'll add a bit about the number of pro-tems in general.

While three is the default number of moderators, you shouldn't hesitate to ask for an additional moderator if you need one. The number of moderators is determined by the demand, if you make your case why the current number is not sufficient, you can get additional moderators appointed. Three active mods is usually easily sufficient for new sites, but it can get a bit tricky if some mods are less active temporarily.

On Skeptics we asked for a fourth mod when two of the three original mods were busy with other stuff at the same time, and we got a fourth mod. There will always be real-life stuff that gets in the way of moderating, if you communicate that to the SE team you can ensure that they know about any bottlenecks and they can appoint another moderator.

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    Good point. This is especially useful info to me since we're right now considering who the pro tem mods for Chess.SE should be. We may need four, since a couple might not be full-time. But we'll see.
    – Daniel
    Commented Jun 7, 2012 at 21:18
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We always start with selecting three.

If there is higher demand, we appoint more as needed. For example, Christianity has 5 pro tem moderators due to some amount of controversy and increased flag load when the site first went online.

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  • 9
    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?
    – yannis
    Commented Jun 7, 2012 at 18:10
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    I usually aim for one topic expert, one network expert, and one chaos monkey...
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Jun 7, 2012 at 21:13
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    @Shog9: Which one am I? I'm not a topic expert, I've been on the network for just a few months...so, I'm the monkey, no? ;-)
    – Manishearth
    Commented Jun 8, 2012 at 7:17
  • … except for Health, which got four.
    – Wrzlprmft
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 12:16
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    @Wrzlprmft You should read the second paragraph too. ;)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Aug 25, 2015 at 14:38

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