So here's a question for people. In your opinion how many staff are too many staff? Here is how I decide. I currently have on my forum the following: 4 x Administrators 3 x Super Moderators 3 x Moderators This is for a forum which has around 30 people online perminantly, almost always actively posting content onto the forum So why so many? Here's the real breakdown. 2 x Owners 1 x Community Admin 1 x Tech guy that works with me 3 x Super Moderators that generate content on the forum and look after moderators 2 x moderators in UK which is where the biggest activity is 1 x moderator in US where we are gaining in activity on an almost daily basis So lets have a further breakdown of the admin and moderators and admin by UK Time 2 admin on UK timezone who work 9-5 ... So active from around 6pm-12am 1 admin on Amsterdam timezone so catches the late nighters in the UK up till about 1am-2am 1 admin who works nights so is online from around 7am-11am and 3pm to 6pm 2 x super moderators and 1 x moderator on uk daytime So active from around 6pm-12am 1 x moderator in uk works early mornings, so online from around 2pm to 10pm 1 x US moderator who is on all night uk time Therefore in short, we have all our tech areas covered, 2 admin covering what the mods do, and moderation 24 hours a day.
Wow, that's an army I have one admin: ME. Absolutely NO reason to let someone else in my kitchen. The only way we're two in the admin panel is when I work with my best client and I'm actually the 'main' admin, while he needs access there since it's his forum. Otherwise, one boss, the owner. Anything else can indeed be handled by the mods and I presume you have a lot of activity or a huge forum, otherwise you'd be able to handle it easier. My rule is to go as much as I can without any help since I barely get any spam in my forums. The members are well behaved, so I'm cool so far. Otherwise, getting a small team in place would be needed. I really hope I won't need to have people work in shifts though, you do seem to have a lot on your plate there
I tend to not have any staff until the forum gets to the point where I can't keep up with the moderation. Then I like to have at least one staff member in each timezone. That way someone is always online to cover problems. I have seen some new forums go way overboard with staff.
Think small forums doing it, do so more than anything else just to have more members posting at the start. So offer staff positions to fill. Same as you, I would never add staff on forum before unless feeling I couldn't cope alone anymore, then I'd do the same and pick a person with opposite time-zone to me.
I don't have any staff, do it all myself. It is easy though as there is very little traffic at the moment.
Wouldnt consider us a smallish forum LOL ..... We may not have the memberbase a lot have, however we are active 24/7 and the team we have not only have the responsibility of moderating but the responsibility of keeping activity going on the forum through way of events etc. If they dont want to do that then they have no interest in the forum, therefore they are not staff. To be honest I think its one of the main reasons for our success.
