MyBB Community Forums

Community Tips #1 : The use of staff

I felt like I needed to post an article on this forums about the use of staff. I see many people trying to hire staff when the truth is they just do not need it. I will be looking at the actual use of staff and why people feel like they need staff. I understand that sometimes there are behind the scene issues like vacations where you need to hire staff for cover and you will someone to keep the forum alive and moderate any spam you get.

Administrators - They have the most power on the forum and are roles you should not give out often or to people that you do not completely trust. In my opinion there should only ever be 2 administrators on a forum so that they both can help each other out with administration duties if the other admin is offline. The reason why hiring other admins may not work sometimes is because it can cause conflict between each other and the members. No one is to guarantee that you and the other admin will see eye to eye and you will want changes that they don't want and visa versa. Although sometimes it can be rewarding it can also cause a lot of stress as they should be entitled to half of everything because they are doing the same job as you. I would suggest to not hire more than two admins on a forum no matter what the size of the forum is.

Moderators - These are useful and help keep the forum clean. They can also supply with some great content and even possibly advertise. Most people starting out new forums think they need staff to 'get active' and supply content. This is not true. The reason for you hiring staff should not be for you to get content, it should be just for moderating the posts and helping the members. Moderators should not be hired in my opinion until you are up to a point where you need an extra hand in managing content. Having you and moderators on the forum to supply content could have the opposite effect as a member would not want to register on a forum if it is full with staff.

Hire on a basis where you are only hiring staff if and when you need them not because you want extra content. In the long run this will cause issues for people wanting promotions, payments and even arguments between the staff because of having there just for the sake of it.

I hope this little tip/guide helped and if you liked it I will keep on making more.

Great info, thanks.

Thank you, this is a point I always try to post, even in my guide (check sig). But I'm glad someone made an article on it that goes more in depth. Have some rep. ^_^

Thanks for the comments. Think I may make some more articles in the near future.

Vow..never thought of these kind of roles in a web world. Your description of administrator and moderator is really comprehensive.

Your banned now and think it was a spam post... but thanks? xD

(2012-07-24, 10:39 AM)Roach Wrote: [ -> ]Your banned now and think it was a spam post... but thanks? xD

It's impossible not to have thought of them in a "web world" if you're posting in "Web development and Administration

Anyway, a nice guide, should help some people out I'm just about to go and read number 2 now.

Thanks for the comment Charlie. Just trying to give back to myBB