One mistake I see new forum owners making is hiring people just because they are his/her friends. And thats another reason for their forums doing so poor. Do you hire your friends as staff on your site just because of your friendship with them?
Well, I'm only inviting friends in the team of my forum in the beginning, when the site is not public yet. But after that, nope, then I'm using competitions for that =P
My friend is always an administrator on my forums I make. But mostly because he knows what he's doing. But I only hire people who will do the job right and take it seriously, not because they're my friend.
Well this all comes down to like back then would you rather hire your friends/family or someone that knows more experienced. I pick someone with more experience
I don't hire friends as staff unless they're a community builder like myself, or a moderator from another community - and know how to run/manage a forum. If you hire friends - then make sure they're willing to work hard, so that your community can grow and you don't have to fire them.
Only 1 member of staff is my friend but he knows what he is doing and helps me a lot with the ACP as I did not know what to do when I first started
There's a forum I'm on where the 2 admins and mod all are good friends in real life. It's a popular forum as well. I hate when forums do that.
Well as I mentioned if they know what they are doing its completly fine, but most of the time it isn't.
I would agree with Kaiser, hiring friends as staff just because of your friendship with them is not the right thing to do.
Yes, this is a common practice for me, as I trust them. However, sometimes it does backfire and damage your friendship when they let you down without notice
Friends usually help out a lot - I have some that aren't even moderators, and they focus on driving more activity to our community. Friends are great.
I normally hire people based upon experience. The one time I tried giving one of my brothers power, I soon learned he had next to no administrative experience, and let spam slide just to mock the spammer. So yeah, I would pick experience over loyalty.
Yea thats my main point to this thread... experience over loyalty. If my friend has no experience im not hiring him just because of our friendship and I expect him to understand.
Maybe having a friend as the other admin, like creating the forum together is okay, but theres no need for the whole forum team to be your friends. If you argue with them, are you going to fire them? Just to re-hire them if you begin talking again? On the whole of this topic, I would base the forum team on experience and knowledge.
I do not hire friends because I don't like to fire them when they stop doing anything.... And yeah I think its a bad idea to hire your friends....well except they are into administrating a forum then its a good idea. Also if you want to avoid problems the best is to make your friend VIP member
I've only ever had people I know personally as Admins, for one. And in the beginning that's how my moderator team was too. I even met people from the forum before I made them mods. It's worked a charm for me. At least you KNOW you can trust them.
I mean there is no problem if they have experience and know what they are doing but the purpose for this discussion is about admins just hiring friends because of friendship whether they have experience or not.
