Choosing Forum Staff

Below is a guest article from Sakura. He will be contributing regular articles to The Biggest Boards Blog. We encourage you to check out his website and check back often for new articles from Sakura in the future!

Choosing Forum Staff
By Sakura

Over the years I have joined many forums.  On each forum I make a point to investigate how the site’s Admin (aka the owner) has their staff set up. I am here to give you my opinions on choosing forum staff.

First off let’s start with choosing Admins and what they do about the forums.

The Admins are in charge of the whole forum and have Admin Control Panel access. They can change the forum settings, change themes, etc. This MUST be a person you trust.

The best way in my opinion is to pick a good trusted friend to help you run your forum board. Someone you actually know in real life (offline) and have a long history with is normally the best way to go.  But in many cases a person like this is not available. For example in my case I chose a trusted internet friend who I had a known for a considerable amount of time online and felt would make a positive addition to the management team on my forum. After some discussion about exactly what being in the position would mean they were made an Admin to help me manage and run my forums.

Choose your co-Admin wisely, because I have seen a lot of careless Admins hire people they barely know as Admin’s for their site just because of their past forum usage resume. As stated above, choose a good friend in real life or a good internet buddy who has experience running forums without any issues for a long sustained period of time. You MUST be VERY clear on exactly what the responsibilities and rules/guidelines for these people will be. Make sure there is no initial confusion so you can avoid problems later.

Choosing Forum Moderators

Forum Moderators typically moderate a single forum or category or section they are assigned to. They can move/close/lock threads. Many times they can also make threads “sticky” (announcements or important threads) in their forum if those permissions are assigned to them as per the site’s Admin.

Best way to choose a Forum Moderator:

Even with the limited ability to make forum wide changes, choosing good Moderators is still very important. This is due directly to the fact that many at many times they are the first people to interact on a regular basis with your members. A negative moderator can drive away many of your members.

Once your forum board is big enough, it is time to start choosing at least 2-3 dedicated members of your forum and ask them if they’d want to become a forum moderator. Look for members with a history of being active on your forums and not involved in conflict with other members or “forum drama”. A member who is a big poster on your forum and is always positive and contributing normally wants the forum to be successful. These are the type of people you are looking for to consider as Moderators. If they say yes, ask them what forum(s) they would like to moderate. I’d only let a new forum moderator moderate 1 forum to start off. Assign them moderator permissions to their forum(s) and monitor who they do. Never just give someone power on your forum and then let them do whatever they want. Especially in the begining with new Moderators you need to watch how they handle the new position very closely. I also recommend having regular communication with all of your forum staff.

Global Moderators

Global moderators or super moderators are different. They can moderate the whole forum board.

They have the same permissions as forum moderators, locking/deleting/closing and more features depending on your choice of forum software but the range of their management coverage is larger and further reaching.

Best way to choose a Global Moderator/Super Mod;

Best way to choose one is to have your forum moderators work with the forums they are assigned to currently, seeing how they like being a moderator. When they do their jobs, tell them they deserve a promotion because they have good dedication to your forum and have kept your forum alive and is now being promoted to super moderator. It is always easier to promote from within, especially if someone has been doing a positive job for you in the past. Remember that this position has a lot of power and again I highly recommend choosing wisely and not rushing to put people in these positions.

These are all the basic usergroups each forum softwares have. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope it has been helpful!

Guest articles on this blog reflect the opinions and experiences of the guest writers and do not necessarily represent the opinions of The Biggest Boards staff and management.

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