Improving the Moderator Recruitment System

I'm not sure if anyone has said anything about this in the forums; I tend not to go to them too often unless I have to.  I would like to suggest a few things to make moderator recruitment a little clearer for the recipient, though.

If you're going to time the message to expire, include a time limit, or at the very least, suggest that the offer doesn't extend forever.  While I was debating whether or not I had time for a job that I didn't quite understand, the opportunity disappeared.  I think it was about a week.  This is irritating, because:

The job is never characterized.  I still don't quite understand what moderators do.  When I think of moderators, I tend to think of them patrolling forums making sure people play nice, but apparently their work extends to editing.  Regardless, those of us on the outside don't know what the job is like for those on the inside.  I think people would simply say yes because they would think it would be cool to get the offer, but my hesitance wasn't from lack of eagerness, it was from lack of the willingness to disappoint the people who run the site.  I wouldn't agree to a job if I didn't know what I was supposed to do, because I don't like wasting people's time.  (Since this was an automated message that I received, it wasn't as if I was ignoring a personal email from anyone, I wouldn't look at it as leaving someone hanging.  I wanted to ask questions, but didn't know if I could even ask the people in the CC section of the message).

A statement of expectations on the part of Giant Bomb would have been nice.  That might weed out the people who are eager to jump in but may not have the time, inclination, or drive to actually do the work that needs to be done.

So, while I dealt with other matters in my home, and trying to figure this out, there it went.  Oh well, right?  Even if the thousand point barrier was the only barrier I could have crossed as a user, and that now I'm basically in limbo, I guess others can at least take this as a warning about what to expect should you suddenly get a PM from Brad.