Meet the staff: Norah Casey
Learn a bit about the modest moderator and anthropologist
1. Norah, thank you for agreeing to being interviewed. Tell us a little about yourself: your background, what brings you to the Bay Area and to HubPages, and your interests.
I'm one of seven children, my mother is a nurse and my father was in the special forces. I was born in Brooklyn, New York during a hospital strike under a full moon on Friday the 13th. This was a sign of things to come. We moved all over the country during my childhood, until my parents inexplicably settled us in Arizona. I have absolutely no melanin, so it was only a matter of time before I either evaporated or escaped. I could not afford to attend college after high school, so I went straight to work after graduation. After five years I cashed out my 401k, quit, and moved 200 miles away to go to a state university. I met my boyfriend on an internet dating site and after my college experiment failed, we moved to San Francisco to immediately strike it rich in the gold mines... er, at an internet start-up. Of course it worked out exactly as we planned. I write this from a tropical island, waiting for the my next umbrella drink to arrive while supervising the off-loading of my 1969 COPO Camaro from the smaller of my yachts.
I have a very bizarre collection of interests. When I'm not reading about genetics or anthropology, I'm skimming muscle car restoration articles, specifically old Chevrolets. After losing my first major restoration project in a fire, I have been hesitant to 'get back in there.' I'm saving money and keeping my heart open for the car that will teach me to love again. I adore reading, particularly 19th century novels.
Once my boyfriend received a decent salary, he wanted to support me while I finished school. He is a great guy, I'm very lucky. However, I'm no housewife. After a year and half, I started looking for work. I had only applied to a few places before I found a HubPages ad for a community moderator. I didn't think I was qualified and knew the market was flooded with applicants, but I was excited by HubPages. I wrote a carefully worded cover letter and spent the remaining four hours of my flight back from Boston reading hubs. Two thorough phone screens and numerous email exchanges later, I was interviewed by five HubPages staff members before being offered a position. Needless to say, the process made me feel special and respected before I even started working.
2. Tell us what's involved in being a HubPages moderator, "a day in the life" as it were.
My work day starts out with reviewing user-generated flags on hubs and other content. Before addressing the hubs that require review prior to publication, I go through the team inbox and respond to as many emails as I can. Afterwards, I review all the hubs that have been modified (or not) and determine whether they meet HubPages' terms of service. Once the queues are empty, I skim published content on HubPages and look for any content that does not follow our terms of service. Rinse and repeat.
Moderating at HubPages is a very fulfilling job. That may sound strange, but I've moderated elsewhere and it usually feels very much like trimming a field of grass with a dull knife. HubPages gives moderators more tools and resources than many startups with a social networking component. It is still an uphill battle, but being given the resources to do the best that I can makes it psychologically easier. I don't subscribe to the opinion that the internet brings out the worst in people, but it does make it easier for jerks to harass others with some degree of self-satisfying anonymity. Moderating requires a certain level of callousness, and perhaps a bit of a compulsion towards enforcing rules.
3. What kinds of things keep the job enjoyable and amusing to you? Anything you can share with us?
I have a Google doc that is filled with bizarre phrases generated by article spinners or automated translators. They are usually nonsense words jumbled together into an utterly incomprehensible sentence, but sometimes what they form is a comic gem. This is a recent favorite at the office: "I am not a metallic bug. I am not a Limitation Oil partisan." That hub has been taken down, but its misunderstood genius lives on in my documents.
4. What has surprised you about the type of writing you find on HubPages? Any standouts you'd like to name?
The first hubber whose work I got into is Jen's Solitude. I have an as of yet unidentified neurological condition that shares traits with MS, and reading through her experiences was comforting and informative. Those hubs perhaps exemplify what I found so striking about HubPages articles. The high-quality hubs provide both personal insight and detailed information that puts the humanity back into writing. In contrast, news articles feel very bland, formulaic, and corporate.
5. Tell us about your studies and your academic plans. What intrigues you about anthropology, so much so that you plan on getting a PhD in it?
Currently, I am finishing my bachelor's degree in History of Science. After I graduate, I plan to do some additional course work, including some lab-based genetics courses and achieving fluency in a second language. I've learned a bit of several different languages, but I have yet to learn one language through to fluency. Bilingualism is a crucial component for the PhD application process at many of the Anthropology programs I plan to apply to, so I need to get focused on that without anymore procrastination. Starting tomorrow. Or next week.
My interest in anthropology came about very gradually. I have always been interested in science, and usually did better in my advanced science classes than in the 'no-brainer' classes (I failed home-economics). Both my grandmother and my mother wanted me to be a doctor. Unfortunately, I have had too many heart-to-hearts with my physicians to ever consider practicing medicine. Part of my interest in paleoanthropology likely comes from my disdain for prejudice. My mother taught all of us to value the differences we find in others. I took "all people" even further, and realized as I learned about Neanderthals and our hominid ancestors that they are also the subject of discrimination. Lessons often suggested that Neanderthals were incapable of creative intellectual thought or personal relationships, assumptions that have been supported for years by prejudice in the research community.
6. Tell us your impressions of life in the Bay Area, and how it compares to your hometown.
People in the Bay Area walk too slow. It isn't nearly as bad as Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, or any of the other places I have lived west of the Mississippi, but I was hoping a bigger city meant a faster average walking speed. I have places to be! On a more serious note, it is nice to live in a city that values the diversity of all individuals. Also, the food is good. The sushi will be something I will miss when internet millions finally roll in and we move to a villa in Monaco.
7. What do you like to Hub about, and what kinds of Hubs do you like to read on your own?
Getting a degree in history has provided me with the opportunity to learn more about how people interact with one another. Exploitation is a theme I notice I have a great deal of interest in writing about, and that has certainly surfaced in my hubs. I have a peculiar fascination with the Black Death. Eventually I will write a hub on that topic. Prior to HubPages, I wrote about muscle cars for a small publishing company and may write about that here in the near future. Though I am almost always working on a book, short story, or film script, I rarely share creative works with anyone.
I try to comment on at least one hub each day. I prefer hubs that are well-written and offer me a different perspective on a situation I have some familiarity with. Life is all about broadening horizons. Unless it is a hub about Fords. I have zero interest in broadening my horizons in that direction.
8. What do you think makes an outstanding Hub?
Outstanding hubs require a great deal of planning and thought. One hub that came to mind is A Brief History of Graffiti by Nemingha. The text was informative and playful, while the images of graffiti spanned eras and geographical locations. An XKCD comic joking about bathroom stall-scrawls sits below a photo of ancient graffiti found in Pompeii. Each image has its source, and a small description with its background. The tags and category are relevant to the content. One aspect that is perhaps lacking in this example is the amount of interaction the author has with the commenters. Some might expect an author to respond to comments on their work for a more personal touch.
9. One silly question: if you could be reincarnated as a vegetable, which vegetable would you want to be, and why?
Whatever the most universally disgusting vegetable is, I want to be that. I'd want to be something so unappealing that it wouldn't even be considered as a garnish. I've watched enough zombie movies to know that being a food stuff is an unpleasant experience.
10. Any parting thoughts as we draw this interview to a close?
I am far too boring to have a response this long.
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