Spreading yourself too thin

How do you prevent yourself from spreading too thin? What I mean is, as your board grows, it will become harder (and eventually impossible) to read and respond to every single post like you did in its early days. How do you begin to part with this nurturing of your site, but without making it seem to your members like you aren't interested? They probably expect you to be everywhere at once, which obviously isn't possible.

 

I simply respond to a few posts in each board everyday, or try to at least read some. I depend heavily on my moderators to help out, and promote a sense of community.

 

There is only so much a person can do in one day. People just have to accept that fact. I stopped trying to reply to every post or even every thread a long time ago. When your getting 10 new threads a day, ok you can reply to all of them. But when your getting a couple of hundred new threads and 2,000+ new post a day. Dont even try to keep up.

 

As kevin said, there's only so much one person can do. I reply to the posts that interest me, and leave the rest to others who are interested.

 

Definitely respond to some each day, to show the members you're active. You could also ask your moderators to alert you if they come across a thread they think you should personally respond to, i.e. a feature request.

 

I've been coaching a team of moderators to be sure threads are responded to.

 

My forums are only small at the moment - so I am still able to answer all threads and posts that are made, however if it picks up (like numerous marketing experts I have paid top dollar to look at my site predict) I will respond to threads that interest me, get my moderators and admins to respond to threads they come across and to let me know if there are any threads they think I should personally respond to.

 

Do you have some specific method that you're implementing, in order to ensure that every post is read (for the sake of knowing rules aren't being violated) and that every thread is responded to? What's your secret, if there is one?

 

It is not 100% coverage but we do approve everyones first post, and reply to every post in the Hello forum (like you do).

We are also looking into a Thread Notes system which works much like User Notes (vB mod) so we can post thoughts about the threads. For the moment we are using the thread note feature to point to discussion threads in the mod forum.

Thread Tools -> Edit Thread: is a line of text that can have an url, but that is not a hot link and needs to be copied & pasted into a browser. That way things are scalable for any number of moderators. See a strange thread? Look in the thread notes to see if something has already been discussed in the mod forum.

We really don't have any rules, they are just told to 'play nice'.

 

I never understood why the "thread notes" text box was only one line. Is it meant to be used like you do? - Pasting a URL to a remote discussion thread?

 

It is not intended to be used that way at all. I'm not sure what they were thinking.

Sometimes I cannot figure out "why they do the things they do" at vB.

 

Its easy at the start but as the forum grows its impossible. If youre limited to around 2 hours a day on your PC you have no chance of keeping up.