How should I staff my forum?

[Drewz]

I have it set up with myself as Administrator, and only two Global mods. I don't want heaps of Moderators becuase that just makes those who arn't Mods feel left out. 3 of us is enough to keep things running smooth.

[Black Eyes]

i staff my forums very badly i either give away the position to someone who asks straight away or i have no staff at all except me and i can't run the board and things get messsy and i have to put my foorum on mm mode untill i get things under control

[Enchant]

anyone said:

i staff my forums very badly i either give away the position to someone who asks straight away or i have no staff at all except me and i can't run the board and things get messsy and i have to put my foorum on mm mode untill i get things under control

wow.....well at least you are now aware of it, they say recognition and acknowledging that there is a problem is the first step. I suggest reading through this board and learn as much as possiable...you have alot of experience here and could learn form them.... I hope that you develop a more keen sense of staff ideals and have a sucessful forum. Good luck.

[gimel]

i try to be careful about how many mods i have, and try to keep the ratio at some point where i have enough to keep the number of active members,ect in line or whatever. however since the number of actually active members is less then the number of total members, sometimes theres guesswork involved when i try to determine how many of the current members are gonna be active enough to worry about. i usually also like setting the ratio before hand ( like 1 mod for every x active members. or whatever) makes it easier i think.

[carry]

Well when I started my forum I brought about 50 people from another, now non-existant forum with me...3 of the people that followed me were moderators of the old forum, I also offered them the position on my forum, as I knew they were reliable people... 2 kept posting on the old forum before my time there, and before any members showed up, the admin was gone, just to keep it alive LOL...
So with those I was happy for some time, well not very long as one disappeared never to be seen again... I started my forum at the end of September 2006.. his last log in was October 9th... I sent several emails and waited 2 more weeks and then I removed his mod status.

As my board grew fast... 460 members now, although many lurkers... I had to appoint other staff. Its a very controversial topic my forum is about, and so flame wars are easy to happen.... has not yet though
I run a Death Penalty Discussion Forum... so I decided from the start that I would make it fair, there should be staff that supports the DP and staff that opposes it. I myself oppose it...

So I asigned more staff as people came on the board, and I saw that they were posting heavily and getting along with people etc, and one staff is a member that does not post as much, but is very active in the abolition movement....

I do not have g-mods, mods and admins... When I asked someone to be staff, I asked them to pick a custom title... and I set up a group with that name... therefore I can adjust each staff members power individually, also I hate people having the titles, I do not even use admin on my board... LOL

As I have 3 main categories... Death Penalty, Crime, and Anything At All I decided that it might be good to have 3 staff members for each category... Me and two of my staff are at the Death Penalty area, and for the other areas I have only 2 staff right now, because I have not seen the right person to make staff yet. Of course all my staff can step in everywhere if they have to....
And I discuss almost all decisions with my staff... recently we had a member with a sort of offending avatar... I thought it would have been ok, another staff member said it should go, I put it into the staff section for discussion, and well the majority wanted it gone... so poof its not there no more...

My staff have all abilities to delete posts or ban members... if a member is banned I could see it in the security log, which I check daily, and also if I disagree I could let them back on... Has yet to happen... Actually the only things I do not let my members do is manage categories and boards (as a renegade staff member could delete them), delete members, modify ranks, general settings...Those are the basics that none of my staff has... a few do not have others, depending on if I think they need them or not... that is why I like creating my own groups

[Koran]

Too many powerful staff will turn users away form a forum... but, I have thought of a clever work around.

If you think you have too many admins... make a new categorey with admin powers, yet name it as Moderator or another less powerful staff position. it works, and no-one will suspect it... although if some advaned moderation goes on while only they are online, people will get suspicious.

[♣Ty¢ho♣™]

What i did was i put up a form, and whoever signs up will be carefully watched by me for at least a month or two. If i see they got what im looking for than i will give them minor powers. Actually that is the plan, i haven't got any staff at all yet lol.

[Shentino]

No matter how you set up your staff, make sure that you are on top. Don't let yourself be pulled into a political fight with your staf, or tolerate a mutiny. You're in charge, and you should be the one whose decisions are the most final. The only forum politics around should be those in which you are on top.

Case in point:

I was listening to a story of an ex user of a chatroom. He was having a convo with the chief admin, and one of her lieutenants netbanned him in the middle of a convo just to be rude. However, that lieutenant forced the chief to choose between letting a user eat an arbitrary ban or losing the lieutenant. The chief, not wanting to lose her staffer, elected to let him snub the user and he wound up banned for life.

This is very much a wrong thing. If your staff refuse to be loyal, start conspiring, or defy you or otherwise threaten to leave you high and dry if they don't get their way, then cut them loose for mutiny. Letting your staff push you around is only going to send the signal that you are a weak admin who is quick to yield. Be tough.

Of course, to run a big board, you need staff. There's just no way to keep up otherwise. But you have every right to demand loyalty.

Sure, there will be differences of opinion, but don't let it extend beyond disagreement.

The farthest any staff conflict should extend is a dissent. Going beyond that is pure mutiny.

[animeanimal]

I agree with it one-hundred percent! Very resplinsble aadvice, I have also thought about that for a while, and decided to do exactly that.

[NS]

I love my forum's staff.

I have 3 Administrators, and while I make the final decisions and have the final word, I consider all of us equal. I have known these people for a long time (over the net) and I have been through 3 different sites with them, all of which we are on staff. We keep each other in check, and before I do anything I always check with them.

I have 3 Jr. Admins who just kinda monitor the whole site, and I have 2 RP (roleplay) Peackeepers, to watch over the RP specifically and make sure people are following the rules of roleplaying and not killing people and so on.

It works.

[Gamoc]

Yeah, it does work. You should always trust your staff, if you go to a site that has almost half of their members staff, then, I wouldn't stay there, that doesn't mean that all of them are trustworthy enough to be staff. You only need 3 to 7 staff members. A little more or a little less is okay, depending on the size of the forum. ProBoards Support is the only forum that should really have this many staff, they are constantly having to reduce the size of their members they get so many, actually, all of the featured sites are really understandable to have quite the bit of staff, but most sites do not need 20 staff members. People beg me to be a staff member all the time, but I always say no, I like the staff I have.

I have two admins, a mod, a universal mod, and an RPG moderator. That also works for my forum.

[sbrep86]

Staff members should always be somebody you trust to do the required job/s for you, not some new guy, and certainly not a bully who is inactive.

[Moira]

I staff my forums simply. I'm the admin, unless I co-create, then I'm co-admin. I have a GMod or Mod of some type if I need, but thats it. My members are usually not that bad that I need a load of staff, but I've got some small forums, so we're really a big group of friends who know nothing about each other aside from generalised personal issues and such.

I don't staff people I don't know in real life, unless I have someone who's only power is to create skins and put up some codes, because I know they can't do anything but that. I monitor them closely, too, although it is generally unnecessary.

[WilburyMania!]

My friend and I have 2 admins (us) and one moderator.

The moderator is somewhere between global mod and a moderator. They can do all the boards, but they CANNOT ban people, view IPs, etc. I'm not sure what to call that.

So, if we need another moderator, she'll ask a trustworthy member if they want to be one. If we need another admin, we'll give it to one of the moderators.

[Sàm]

Hm... From what I've read on the first page, so far, I agree with most of it. Although, sometimes it may depend on the type of board. Let's use role playing message boards as an example. Normally, people would come from a different to a new one, having experience role playing on a ProBoard. That would be an easy way to determine whether this person is reliable. For instance, you could try asking an/the admin from the ProBoard you know the person came from. Still, I agree with people saying that staff positions should only be given to people you know you can trust.

I won't go too far with this, but there are times when people get onto other accounts; somehow, my back-stabbing ex-friend from school (heh heh) got into my admin account. So, really, you never know whether or not giving a certain staff position with only certain limitations is still a very effective thing to do, although it is most of the time...

Normally, I've noticed, admin positions are sometimes given to help the non-administrative members with problems, because the main admins tend to want to do the other stuff. And, sometimes I've noticed that they don't really classify their moderators/admins as such, because they don't give them jobs any different than "staff" members.

That's a good thing to look at when you so much as want to be an admin/moderator, whether or not the main admin is a good person, and you would be treated as such. It's a waste of time getting all worked-up about being that person when you're just like everyone else.

I say this because the moderators are supposed to help other members in a way that's different than the other regular members are supposed to help, right? So, wouldn't you have to be both trust-worthy and hard-working?

My ProBoard is mainly Harry Potter role play, so of course the staff members are people who "teach". The staff members that I "hire" do go through an application thing, yes, but I really only hire them because I do know them. The people who teach are people who go to Harry Potter message boards and other ProBoards, and that have convinced me of their abilities to teach. Plus, if something went wrong, my board has died anyway.

I can be strict, if I need to, so I need not worry about trouble as much as most people would. If I get any difficulties, I can just ban and/or delete their username, or just go through some other means to get rid of them.

There is one thing about IP Addresses that can be worked around. Sometimes, people use two different computers. Therefore, you do not always know whether or not one username belongs to the same person who owns the other. It is sometimes important to understand how your members are when it comes to their typing skills, or grammar, or what not. Staff can be a good thing to use in keeping those things in mind as well. =]

Anyway, I'll continue reading pages two through four, now. =]