Unsolved Mysteries gave up on how art became a mod.

Anyway, most mods were either elected by their own forums (regional) or most were picked by Swamper.

Take a look at the unknown tracks section. They needed a mod who answered tracklists (which I did more of before search came in to use). So I got picked and then there was a hole to fill, so we suggested andih (the unknown tracks id machine). Most mods have been around a long time (since 2000 or 2001). Neo, Myself, Jayd, taha, tu_face and others have been around a long time and swamper trusts most of us. Take a look at the forum leaders section which shows all the moderators, most of us have insanely high post counts and have been around before sept 2001.