Staff > 25 and how do you handle it?

[Pug_WD]

19 forum leaders currently, serving 4,500+ members.
Me and three other admins (in case of emergencies in my absense), whereas the rest all have super-mod status, except for a couple who got dropped to ordinary moderator while they've not been so active, as an incentive for the others to show their faces regularly.

We have a private, hidden forum section for admin/mods issues together with at least one sub-cat for mischievous member discussions.
We also have an invite only private, hidden lounge for social discussion amongst staff and respected forum members that's worked really well in binding the core community together.

[john1744]

I run a forum thats built up about four million posts (3 million archived on a db on server) over the last 4 years. We have 4,000 plus members, about a 1,000 active members.

I have a forum for each gaming console (it's a gaming forum) with each of those forums having 2-3 moderators. My other discussion forums have their own group of mods as well. This provides a community ownership feel I believe. I then have 8 super moderators who oversee and manage all the forums. Most are used to moderate the main discussion forum where 90% of the posts take place.

I made my main moderators super mods because I know that they will instantly have the ability to moderate every forum I ever create.

We have six administrators including me, with each specializing in an area.

Myself - Community Management / Feature Additions

Owner - Owns the site

Admin 3 - Designer of styles and Organizer of events

Admin 4 - Network admin, keeps the site up and running, backups, checking queries etc. (approves my edits to the code )

Admin 5 - Supermoderator / Moderator Manager, is the closest to the moderators and knows them the best. He takes them under his wing and teaches them how to work the system.

Admin 6 - CMS / Front Page Designer, implementer, manager. (this guys working towards creating us a home page and getting the forums ready for it)

Most of my Super Mods / Admins are people I have known online for close to 6 or 7 years and trust quite well.

We permban probably a few dozen accounts a year, we ban probably a dozen or more people every week.

So all together

6 Admins, 8 Supermods, 18-24 or so regular moderators with ability to close, open, edit and soft delete threads.

[cirisme]

I don't agree - if you have your moderators acting in a way where they should themselves be moderated doesn't send out a good message eh?

Moderators are in positions where they should uphold your strategy and policies not break them.

Our policy has more to do with moderators being unbiased than anything else. This is particularly important in our forum since we are centered around debate. So if a moderator is involved in a thread, they can't moderate that thread unless there is some extenuating emergency circumstance.

It removes bias from the process as much as possible.

[TheMusicMan]

• Moderators are not allowed to moderate threads where they have taken part in the discussion. Unless it is for a pure technical non-conflict reason (like splitting thread/moving posts etc). If a conflict arises and the moderator is involved, the admin or supermoderator will handle moderation of the thread in question.

This is a fantastic suggestion. We have had this guideline in place since we started and it's one of the best things we ever did.

I don't agree - if you have your moderators acting in a way where they should themselves be moderated doesn't send out a good message eh?

Moderators are in positions where they should uphold your strategy and policies not break them.

[cirisme]

• Moderators are not allowed to moderate threads where they have taken part in the discussion. Unless it is for a pure technical non-conflict reason (like splitting thread/moving posts etc). If a conflict arises and the moderator is involved, the admin or supermoderator will handle moderation of the thread in question.

(snip)

This is a fantastic suggestion. We have had this guideline in place since we started and it's one of the best things we ever did.

[cirisme]

According to the vB mod control panel, we have 36 mods. I'm not sure if this is counting all our staff as it sounds low.

We have a "university" theme where members are students.

We have three owners, "chancellors", each with their own responsibilities.

We have 4 administrators, "Deans" who are responsible directly to one chancellor in day to day work and all 3 overall. We have a Dean of Member Relationships who is responsible for helping members and greeting new members. We have a Dean of Problem Posters who is chiefly responsible for disciplining chronic rule breakers. We have a Dean of Media Relations who is responsible for selecting featured articles that are posted to the home-page, and for cultivating relationships with partner sites. (and he is a backup for the Dean of Problem Posters) Finally we have a Dean of Staff who is responsible for overseeing staff conflict, recruiting new staff members, and helping new staff members become acquainted in our culture.

We have "Department Heads" that are responsible for particular forum categories. They help Professors with problem posters before they reach the Dean of Problem Posters and are responsible for helping cultivate community in their sections.

Finally in the moderating hierarchy, we have Professors. They are the first ones on the scene in moderating posts and report directly to their assigned Department Head.

Finally, we have a "Campus IT" team currently made up of three guys: one who does helpdesk support (though we are losing him due to real life stuff), one who assists me in server maintenance, and another that helps me in hacking vBulletin and templating stuff. Campus IT staff are technically outside of the moderating structure, though most of our IT staff double as Professors or Department Heads.

Yes, we had a lot of fun with naming things on our forum. We like it a lot. And we think our staff structure works out really well. A key part of our moderating philosophy is the use of a warning system to help bring objectivity to the system.

[Chousho]

...

Thanks for posting this! It has given me several ideas now

[TommyBALL]

Leader stats
46 moderators
1 supermoderator
1 administrator (me)

Forum stats
Created: Summer of 1999
Threads: 12,954
Posts: 185,300
Members: 2,384
Active Members: 842

Other particulars

• All users are required to enter their full real name during registration in a user profile field. The content of that field is only seen by other registered users.
• Since 1999 about 20-25 users has been banned. 1 temporarily due to a lengthy period of antisocial behavior (he later returned and has since been a “good citizen” ). 3 for spamming. The rest due to false registrations (breach of real name requirement).
• Since 1999 only 1 moderator has lost his moderator status (after abusing his power and not being sorry for doing so).
• Personal attacks are close to nonexistent. Level of politeness is high.
• The forum is publicly open (registration required to post)
• The primary discussion forums have a high requirement of staying on topic and behaving in a professional manner (that is... do not get personal).
• Personal conflicts are redirected to PMs.

Moderators, moderation and rules

• When selecting moderators I look only for good people skills. The technical stuff can be taught. Posting frequency is not considered at all. Being logged on frequently is required.
• 1 moderator per forum (with a few exceptions for the general forums)
• Moderators are under strict rules not to abuse their power of moderation as part of discussions.
• Moderators are not allowed to moderate threads where they have taken part in the discussion. Unless it is for a pure technical non-conflict reason (like splitting thread/moving posts etc). If a conflict arises and the moderator is involved, the admin or supermoderator will handle moderation of the thread in question.
• Admin meddle as little as possible in the moderators running of the forum under their responsibility. Some exceptions for a few of the general forums.
• The role of my moderators is to be helpful and guiding like a parent in the background, not to play rock stars.
• Admins role towards the moderators is to be helpful and guiding like a parent in the background, not to play rock star.
• The super moderator only step in for technical reasons when admin is unvailable. Super moderator does not police the other moderators.
• Moderation complaints are redirected to PMs, or a special "Poke the Admin" forum if necessary (where only threadstarter and Admin can see thread/posts).

My forum basically run itself. I never have to worry about it when I'm off on a vacation .

Regards
- Tommy

[WurkAnimal]

I'm the only one on my website, hardly any people get agressive.

[Wayne Luke]

I edited my post above.. not sure if you saw it..

Anyway, about custom usergroups. Yeah, it is an issue. The site I run now is for a private game organization. We don't want everyone to see everything, just enough to know we are active in the game. Doesn't help to plan an attack on a rival faction if the public can read your plans. So usergroups are a necessity. I usually use a category permissions approach. All permissions are applied to the category and the forums inherit them. After that, any special needs are further edited. This way I can guarantee that when I create a new forum, a minimum of people see it right away.

Then again, you can always set a new forum's display value to 0 until permissions for it are set. Then no one sees it.

[ThorstenA]

One problem that arises is with having multiple usergroups. Of course each moderator group has a private forum. Some moderators have access to different forums, each based on their usergroup. But if I add a new usergroup, I have to set up new forum rights in all forums where I have special forum rights. It's somewhat hard and you have to know exact which forums there are. Otherwise if you open a new Usergroup "Miserable Users" with forgetting about setting new forum rights, users in this group have access to all restricted forums!

[Wayne Luke]

My own personal forum at this time only has 60 members so I look in on it once a day. I am the only active moderator though there are about 6 officers which actually have super-moderator status. Really have to do no moderation though. Once in a while, I have to change a new member's permissions so they can see the hidden forums but that is it.

When I was in charge of running SitePoint's forums we had positions for 30 Advisors (supermoderators) and 30 Mentors (Special Group) in 5 teams. Each team had a Team Leader. The Team Leaders ran their teams and reported to me if they needed further assistance. Teams were divided up by the categories of the site (Design, Programming, Hosting, Managing, Community). There was also a second Administrator that helped in the control panel. If a section was busier than others (say programming over managing), they had a larger team.

The teams worked like this. All Advisors would police the entire forums and respond to reported posts. In their specific areas, they were responsible for helping people with answers and generating content if needed. Mentors were not moderators but more like interns. They combed their team's area and also answered posts and generated content. If they saw something out of place they would alert the Advisors. New Advisors would be chosen from the existing Mentors by the current Advisors. New Mentors would be chosen from the general membership by existing Mentors. Advisors could suggest a new mentor but couldn't vote for them to become one. People could switch teams with Team Leader approval and if there was a spot open.

Basically it was simply a top-down management style that worked very well for the site. I believe the same system is still in place now but haven't really checked. However the site works well with a minimum number of staff. Aside from the expansion of the Marketplace and the new Content category in the forums, they haven't changed much since I left in 2002.

[---MAD---]

It's active enough. If the new setup I've just implemented takes off then it will be time to take on some more staff, but it all depends on how busy it is and the ratio of idiots/spammers/trolls to regular, more mature members. If we have any problems our members simply report them.

Ah I see. Well I guess if your community is targetted at older and more mature people, the problem with rule breaking is much smaller (like with vbulletin.com) although there are a few spam threads every now and then.

[peterska2]

It's active enough. If the new setup I've just implemented takes off then it will be time to take on some more staff, but it all depends on how busy it is and the ratio of idiots/spammers/trolls to regular, more mature members. If we have any problems our members simply report them.

[---MAD---]

25 moderators - that will be the day!

I have me, and my co-admin. That's it. At one point we had a team of 8, but over the years we have fired them off. It works well with just the two of us and amazingly we have hardly any trouble.

Wow, is the forum you 2 run active? I don't see how 2 people managing a whole very active forum would work .