It's easy to forget 5 years down the line that the guy you fired did many things to sabotage your site. Maybe you added the info to his usernotes? Maybe you have some threads in the private staff areas?
I think it's best to keep a record of people who served the site for a few months or years, good or bad. But keeping a private thread in the staff forum seems like the best way to air out grievances.
as of now no, since my forums only had the same 3 staff members since day 1.
were i in a position where i was swapping out staff members though then yeah, i probably would keep at minimum a text document on my PC to help me remember.
I haven't thought about that yet. But I guess, if someone was good for the forum, it wouldn't matter to "rehire" them later, and if they weren't, you would log it somewhere in user notes or a thread. We do currently have 2 threads about users in our moderator area, one is an "keep an eye on..."-thing to just be extra careful as we're aware of tension in another place, and one is an "hmm... perhaps this member isn't as good a fit here as we thought".
It is an important act to do. This is definitely going to make some of the forum owners keep track of the activities of former staff on their forums. As long as the relationship didn't end on a bad note, there is no big deal with keeping records and having a check up on them.
I never have had too many staff on my forums and I can remember my staff without having to maintain a record. I do not keep a record of my former staff.
Only a few times have I needed to keep a record of staff on my forums I have owned over the course of the last 20 years, where i needed to make sure records were straight for future reference. I've had trouble staff in the past, and it helps to keep a file on former staff, for current and future staff to know that they might need to keep an eye on a particular former staff member.
I believe it is wise to keep track of those who were staff on your forum as well as other details you feel are necessary so that you can go back to that later on if you need to.