A "Super Forum" With Many Admins

[Salt]

Has anyone thought about joining forces with other Forums Admins from here and creating a "Super Forum" together? I think the biggest struggle is the initial launch and getting organic members that are not part of posting exchanges.

I think with a group of 5-10 admins who will work together and help promote, post, and push the forum could help a forum take off? We can all share knowledge, themes, add-ons that we've paid for to help advance the forums.

I think a General Forum would work best and we can each have targeted areas, but obviously contribute to the other spots.

Example would Gaming, Movies, Music, Sports, Dating, Anime, etc... and we each pick a few of our more interests and lead the category.

If anyone is interested in this idea, post here and we can see if we can get the ball rolling.

 

[Jerlene]

Too many admins will cause too many problems. Trust me. There will be a lot of heads butting. Plus, how do they figure out who hosts things, who the top dawg is, etc.? I wouldn't do it. A few admins and a few global moderators and you're good.

 

[Dan The Man]

This has bee done and failed many times.

 

[overcast]

Agree with Jerlene. Flat management system does not work in real life. Hierarchical system is proven to work. Plus more leaders more they want to branch out to their own thing. And so they should not be tied forcefully into something that has no financial outcome. It'll only burn them out with all the drama.

 

[simonweb]

Too many cooks spoil the ... forum? 😉

 

[Katrina]

If I weren't so heavily involved in Christianity Haven I would want to do this.

I noticed that you said that each Admin would have a targeted area...kind of like Manager of that topic, right? That lessens the alpha mentality of everyone trying to rule the entire site. So that's a plus!

You'll find there are Admins who cannot work well with others because they have a strong need of control. I'm not saying that's bad necessarily. But you'll find some Admins who don't mind doing the menial tasks no one else wants to do just because they need to be done. The humble Admins might be hard to come by but they're out there and you can find them 🙂

 

[Rick Ace]

I think the issue with this concept is that a "super-forum" requires "many admins." On the contrary, any super-forum requires many members to use the forum/service and technical staff to keep things running. When was the last time you saw a moderator or admin speak on Facebook or Instagram? Yet, both continue to run.

The solution for a super-forum lies in the concept and its ability to gain an audience, not in the number of "forum admins."

 

[Azareal]

This seems a lot like a... Let's gather everyone together and we'll build something far greater than all the crumbling sites which pop-up every now and then.
There are many factors involved in building a "super forum" and simply adding admins won't solve them.

A real "super site" doesn't rely on "paid themes" or "paid addons", but actual custom work. If a site doesn't have it's own resident developer, then it usually has a foot in the grave, unless they get really lucky and get enough traffic to pay for one on demand.

I can tell the admins on here to write a custom theme or to build a custom system or partially custom system, but without the technical know-how, I am just screaming into the wind. Any sort of real high-end work involves some level of development.

With a developer, many of these $200 features, $700 themes, etc. can just be tossed out for essentially nothing, completely suppressing the competition.

I've seen a fairly successful "super forum" which arose from three or so co-founders on shared hosting and a really shabby custom theme. Two of these co-founders were developers. And the third managed the business aspects.

Also, even then, it's only a few extra administrators on-top of that after growing a looot and they're their employees, not equals. And one could also argue that they got lucky by seizing the right opportunities and entering at the right time.

When was the last time you saw a moderator or admin speak on Facebook or Instagram? Yet, both continue to run.

The last I heard about the moderators on Facebook, it was in a news article where they were mentally traumatised by the sick content on there and how they were really understaffed and underpaid.

They got so much bad press from it that Facebook pledged to double the number of moderators to five thousand or w/e.

 

[Deleted member 44219]

Too many Admins from what I've been told will cause a lot of chaos. Especially on newer forums.

A "Super Forum" controlled by tons of Admins isn't Utopia but it's Dystopia. A new forum with 1 - 3 Admins is enough but a new forum that has around 8 - 17 Admins upon opening is too far. It will cause havoc among your forum community and people will probably barely say anything other than a simple question.

Not to mention that some Administrators are biased, racist, sexist etc. and may not agree or take very-kindly to what a User has to say and thus' will have their account deleted.

Start a forum by yourself or with a couple of friends then once you start expanding, you can then start having more Administrators.