Place a link to each forum's moderator at the bottom of the forum index page,
perhaps using CSS to change the color of the link per on/offline status.

This would assist in quickly contacting the moderators via PM for site issues of
concern (unenumerated here).

That is a great ideal. I would see this being pretty helpful.

Because there is a link to a moderators list at the bottom already called View Forum Leaders, wouldn't it be easier to list the forums each mod oversees next to their names on that list? It already tells you who is online and off by the green dot.

that's not uniformly present in all forums, which is why the suggestion

I would support that. Infact, I thought at one time there was a display of the moderators of each subforum you were in..

Although, having said that, I know that 2 incidents today were dealt with via PM and Report to Moderator with a maximum time between notification and action on it of 10 minutes.

I reported something today and it was handled within 5-10 minutes indeed. Good work !

making the moderators more readily available can reduce that exposure and notification time to find one and get the word out

All moderators are actually super moderators so reporting your posts will be the easiest way to reach anyone (including myself) who has permission to check what is going on. The only exception to this is Momok who only mods the Security and the Web forum.

I'll be specific; the following forums do not show any moderator(s)

Storage & Netwoking
Windows OS

whereas Security and Web does

A super moderator means that he can moderate ALL forums.

clearly

issue remains; finding an admin when one is needed.

The report system will email everyone capable of helping, shouldn't that be enough?

Unless one of the moderators is seen online (looking at the forum homepage's who's online now) still the easiest way to go is to report the post, email vs. PM, in my case email wins.

ok, my last comment and then I'll shutup

the issue is WHO IS A MODERATOR, so that I can contact one and then what's the preferred method?

Report system? not self-evident either; do you mean subscribing to a forum for changes?

I guess I'm just plan dumb and can't follow instructions --

Click "View Forum Leaders" at the bottom of the Index to view the Moderators, and click the "Report Bad Post" button to send a mass email to anyone that is responsible for Moderating that forum (pretty much everyone as they're all Super Mod's according to Julio).

that certainly clarifies the issue.

I'm typically at least one level deeper into TS (eg TsOpenBoards->$forum name)
and there's nothing like that there.

live and learn. again, thanks Jeff

A great motto indeed. Glad I could help...

vBulletin offers the ability to show the moderators on the forum index next to the last post on the right hand side, and in the selected category at the bottom of the page (next to the users looking at the forum) .

It does, but I'd hate to crowd the forum index table more than it already is. Oh, and if I activate that, only momok would show since the rest are all supermods.

I'll second the motion with jobeard. I happened to go looking for moderators on a couple occasions and it became a non-obvious task. AT LEAST, put information on how to find (a forum moderator or any moderator) in the user FAQs