How many moderators is enough?

Well I haven't run across this but I figured it works on some type of ratio...like one mod per 200 members etc.

I'm always up for banning spammers :devil:

 

... and ...

I disagree. It depends on what kind of environment you want to create on the staffing side of your board.
Some administrators want to be able to sit back, take time off and know that things are being taken care of. In this case, I agree with what you've said.
But other times, administrators don't want to necessarily pass the work onto the moderators. I, for example, take an active role in moderating my forum. I don't expect the moderators to do everything. We all have equal duties and responsibilities. The only difference is that I have AdminCP access and they don't. Otherwise, I'm a moderator too.

Being an administrator doesn't mean starting a forum, getting it off the ground, and then taking off when everything is under control whilst continuing to fund it and maintain the backend. It means remaining in touch with your community and maintaining an active role in both member relations and moderation. That's how I think of it, at least.

Nah, I disagree. Maybe only 100 of those members are active, and only 20 of them post.

If anything, it would be a moderator to posts-per-day ratio. That seems to be the most logical to me.



FMB, as others have said, only you really know when you need more moderators. You also need to decide if you want individual forum-based moderators, global moderators, or both.

Personally, I wouldn't use both. As I think you mentioned, it all becomes a game of "who has more power". If you were to keep it slim with forum-based moderators, this wouldn't be an issue. It will ensure that each section is monitored equally and receives as much attention as the others.

If you have a community that's generally lax and doesn't require much moderation (like my forum) then you only need a handful of Global Moderators. I have 4 Global Moderators that take care of all sections of the forum. This is how it's been since I started, and it has proved to work very well. My team has recently expressed the need/desire to bring one or two more onto the team - so that's something we're working on now.




-- Wow, sorry for such a long post. --

 

Ya, that really sounds good systematic way of dealing with it.

 

"sort of" in my case.

If the person in charge of the backend, enhancements, hosting, etc needs to read every post, and there are hundreds of posts per day, and there are other things that need to spend time on in 'real life' such as work and family then some of those things will not get the attention they deserve.

I am trying to get my forum to run on its own and training people and setting up policies so I do not 'need' to read every thread but still frequent the forum.

That is how I did it. When the crucial items on the to do list where not getting done & lack of sleep caused lack of clear thought I got someone to help. That person quickly had the same symptoms and got 2 more. Things have stabilized for the moment.

 

To tell you the truth, I was handpicked by prettylykSIN purely on a basis of trust. As for how many there are, there's me, Anjeru, ILoveGoatse (you don't wanna know where he got he name from) and Dream managing about a little over 1000 people on there with about 60-130 people online at the same time.

As many others have said before, there can only be so many mods to keep on you at a given time given the size of the community and what kind of activity there is. If a mod ain't doing his job, then why bother keeping him/her around if all they're gonna do is slack off and just disappear? :shrug:

I suppose it has something to do with the overall content of the site, FMB.

 

my biggest forum has 3 mods currently for 70 members, although one is mostly a reviewer (for games, at its a gaming forum). the mods were picked in a discussion between admin and the other mods in the staffroom, they were picked because they were active members on the forum and were polite and helpful to other members.

the other is a small forum, there are two mods, and that is enough, even though we dont get much trouble. in the early months of the forum, we had two female admin and a female mod, so we needed someone to moderate our men only section. after a bit of a discussion we decided on which male forum member would be a good mod for the men only section, in a thread in the staffroom. the one we chose was trustworthy and an active member, who we have known for a while. our other staff member was hired after an admin resigned and one mod was promoted, then two staff members both had to go offline for a few weeks, so we decided to make another active member a mod to look after the forum while we were gone.

the other has no mods cause we havent even finished making the forum yet

 

There's just three SuperMods. The site is very active, but not for more than 4 Mods. So I'd say, if your site is active, but not CRAZY active , than no need for more than 4-5.