I'd just like to do a quick survey here of what everyone thinks. At what point do you NEED?
- An additional admin?
- A global moderator?
- A sectional moderator?
And also as a follow up question, when can you tell when you need to "step it up", so to speak?
There are to many factors to just say you need 1 global mod for every 1000 members.
(2012-12-28, 04:11 PM)Alex Smith Wrote: [ -> ]There are to many factors to just say you need 1 global mod for every 1000 members.
Well exactly, that's what prompted me to get some thoughts on these. If no one of those 1000 is active, why have any moderators? I hear it all the time; "why do you have so many staff members?" (not asked to me, but to others) What is a good amount then, how would someone tell?
Again it greatly depends. If you don't have much a spam/bad member problem you don't need many at all no matter how big your forum is. But, if you constantly have problems you may need more. There is no set standard and you just kind of have to use common sense and make a reasonable judgement.
A lot of people start a new forum and before two month (or sometimes days)
all of their Internet friends are smods and admins. Apparently you don't want to fall in that category so propers to you.
One thing a lot of people miss out on when considering
who to promote is that their time zone is really a large factor. It doe no good to promote 3 new mods that all will be online at the exact same time.
As far as how many moderators you need, only you can really know that.
Think of your forum as a 'business' and you and the staff are there to take care of 'customers' . . . is anyone not getting taken care of? Are you waking up to spam on the board and having to spend a lot of time backtracking to be sure you haven't missed anything? If yes, then probably time to look at adding some new staff members.
If not, then don't muddy the waters. Some people make wonderful members, but just aren't cut out for moderation. If you promote someone and they are so bad you are forced to demote them you will see that this is not something you want to go through
Just my thoughts . . . cheers.
- When moderation is too much to deal with on your own, add 1 staff member.
- When moderation is too much to deal with for you and your staff member, add another staff member.
And so on and so fourth, it's that easy. Only promote someone to staff if moderation is too much to deal with for your current team. New forums with only a few thousand posts or less don't need ANY staff members.
It is an interesting question - I think it depends on the site and the niche as that will affect how much spam you get and may mean that more posts need moderation - for example, a debate site.
I think that the perfect team on a new start up is two staff - one is the site owner and should be out there hustling for members and generating content. The other is the site developer who should be taking care of technical stuff and user problems.
It is a very good point about Time Zones - when I move to hiring staff I like to try and get an Aussie on staff to balance out my UK and US staff. In the meantime I have a senior member group who have the right to report a post to unapprove - this is one of the easiest ways of preventing spam on the board in the mornings without having to promote mods
Another nice approach is to not have an application process for new staff but to actually headhunt among the members - looking at their post activity and so on and then PM them asking if they would like to be a mod.
If the admin is not able to moderate his board in its early stages, he probably isn't right to be owning it. When the activity becomes so much that he's unable to handle his moderator responsibilities & admin responsibilities (updates and such), it's time to get some help. That may be quite a while, though.
For sectional mods, they should only be added when a few forums have constant traffic but not enough to warrant another global mod.
As for additional admins, having another one at the start isn't bad. Then, hire them if you think that their skill set pertains to what you need at the time, and are lacking in.
(2012-12-31, 05:18 AM)Leefish Wrote: [ -> ]It is an interesting question - I think it depends on the site and the niche as that will affect how much spam you get and may mean that more posts need moderation - for example, a debate site.
I would also assume you believe it comes down to personal preference. That's what I believe.
Look at Master24, for example. He opens sites on free domains, Hires 5000 staff members (Hoping they'll be active on a board with... no activity) and ends up demoting them soon after. Take a guess why.
That is the perfect example of what
not to do, but it is his preference.