Post by ∞ ConqueringWolf ∞ on May 31, 2006 15:31:55 GMT -8
A lot of mistakes that admins make when it comes to staffing their forum is by having "applications" for people to fill out and then making anyone who fills it out staff, giving staff members too much power over the forum, and in general just giving away staff positions to people they do not know and trust implicitly.
Here are some general rules about choosing staff members that should be able to help some of you from making some common mistakes that can destroy forums.
1. Do not give away staff positions to new members who ask for the position. Staff members should always come from a regular active member of your forum that has been with you for quite a while and whose behavior on your forum has been trustworthy and respectful towards others. You don't want to give a staff member position to someone who is rude to other members and in general is a bully. You also need to know they will represent your forum in a positive light.
2. Do not go overboard assigning powers to your staff members. On my own forum my mods can only lock threads and move topics. I do not give the power to delete or modify threads to any of them because I want to be able to see what the original post was before it was deleted or changed. Otherwise an unscrupulous Mod could lie about the original content to get another member in trouble and you would have no proof of it. Giving them the power to move an inappropriate topic to a secure admin board is plenty enough power to keep your forum clean of spam and obscenities. In general I don't suggest giving anyone else the power to delete boards or anything major like that either. Gmods should have no use to have to do that and it also helps that if you have a security problem with anyone else's account for any reason that you don't have to worry about your boards and categories being deleted and losing all your board content. At least it would be secure except for cracking of your own main admin account.
3. Give mod positions to active members who will be on your forum daily to perform their duties and also those who wish to help keep your board active with new content. If you have a movie review board and you assign someone to be mod of it then they should be responsible for posting reviews of movies that they have seen and keep the content of the board fresh. You wouldn't want to assign someone to be a mod of a board in which they have no interest in the content.
These are just a few suggestions which should help out when choosing staff members for your forum and hopefully keep you from running into many of the common problems that can occur from making bad staff choices.
Here are some general rules about choosing staff members that should be able to help some of you from making some common mistakes that can destroy forums.
1. Do not give away staff positions to new members who ask for the position. Staff members should always come from a regular active member of your forum that has been with you for quite a while and whose behavior on your forum has been trustworthy and respectful towards others. You don't want to give a staff member position to someone who is rude to other members and in general is a bully. You also need to know they will represent your forum in a positive light.
2. Do not go overboard assigning powers to your staff members. On my own forum my mods can only lock threads and move topics. I do not give the power to delete or modify threads to any of them because I want to be able to see what the original post was before it was deleted or changed. Otherwise an unscrupulous Mod could lie about the original content to get another member in trouble and you would have no proof of it. Giving them the power to move an inappropriate topic to a secure admin board is plenty enough power to keep your forum clean of spam and obscenities. In general I don't suggest giving anyone else the power to delete boards or anything major like that either. Gmods should have no use to have to do that and it also helps that if you have a security problem with anyone else's account for any reason that you don't have to worry about your boards and categories being deleted and losing all your board content. At least it would be secure except for cracking of your own main admin account.
3. Give mod positions to active members who will be on your forum daily to perform their duties and also those who wish to help keep your board active with new content. If you have a movie review board and you assign someone to be mod of it then they should be responsible for posting reviews of movies that they have seen and keep the content of the board fresh. You wouldn't want to assign someone to be a mod of a board in which they have no interest in the content.
These are just a few suggestions which should help out when choosing staff members for your forum and hopefully keep you from running into many of the common problems that can occur from making bad staff choices.