When I first started my forum, it was very difficult to keep up with some of my forum guests as they lived in England (while I live in America). So our schedules are much different. As I was getting ready for bed many of my forum members were just coming online to check new threads. I was lucky to find a forum admin who was also from the UK so she had a compatible schedule as the other forum members and could keep them entertained until I was able to get some sleep and be back online. If you have forum members from all over the world (coming online at different times of the day and night), you might want to hire forum staff from varying time zones. That way there is always someone on forum to talk with forum members as they login.
Staffing your forum at all hours
- Thread starter Beverly
- Start date
charleskay
Familiar Face
Great Idea..but how, where, when do I get to hire the admins.
Thanks!
Thanks!
THF_Martin
Addicted
It's a good idea in practice but not too important. It is impossible to always have a staff member online really. Just get what you can and try and cover the most active times and it will be OK.
Hiring staff is an extremely easy thing to say to do... But in practice it's actually extremely difficult in most cases.
In terms of having staff on site at all hours... In most cases that really isn't necessary. Most sites don't have enough issues to warrant staff being on at all times. Often they just aren't big enough to need all those staff.
And as long as one admin can create content, having additional staff isn't absolutely necessary.
Don't get me wrong though, having staff can really help. And if you can find people to help then that's great. But don't presume that just because you have a site that someone will want to join and help out.
There are places like on FP where you can advertise you're looking for staff or people who are looking to become staff have topics... But even then not many people actually get staff from it. Let alone staff that stick around and actually help out for any length of time.
I mean if someone is joining from outside your community to become staff on it, what are the chances they're going to be committed to your site? (Realistic answer? Pretty low.)
So in many cases they just vanish once they're expected to start doing work.
I mean if someone is joining from outside your community to become staff on it, what are the chances they're going to be committed to your site? (Realistic answer? Pretty low.)
So in many cases they just vanish once they're expected to start doing work.
In terms of having staff on site at all hours... In most cases that really isn't necessary. Most sites don't have enough issues to warrant staff being on at all times. Often they just aren't big enough to need all those staff.
And as long as one admin can create content, having additional staff isn't absolutely necessary.
Don't get me wrong though, having staff can really help. And if you can find people to help then that's great. But don't presume that just because you have a site that someone will want to join and help out.
ForumsGroup
Resident
Its nice to have staff online at all hours of the day, but its not necessarily required. As long as you've got a report post button, you can wait a few hours to handle a situation.
Spam might build up in some occasions, but that's why its important to have some sort of spam protection system set in place. You don't want to have to spend every hour of the day moderating a forum. You want your relax time, otherwise managing a forum can be a headache.
Spam might build up in some occasions, but that's why its important to have some sort of spam protection system set in place. You don't want to have to spend every hour of the day moderating a forum. You want your relax time, otherwise managing a forum can be a headache.
Whether you need staff, and need staff online at all times, depends really on how big/active the forum is, and how international its membership is. Currently on mine I only have me, and I'm only online when I'm online - if and when the forum grows, staff will be appointed. It is an international forum, with members from all over the world already, but I can't cover every hour in every time zone, and even on huge forums with international staff it's not realistic to do that unless you have such a large and unwieldy staff team that they probably aren't able to communicate and operate effectively as a unified team (and consistency of action between different staff is important on a big forum).
The key thing, really, is that members understand that you can't be there 24 hours a day, so sometimes they've just got to get on with it without you (and that means they can't expect an instant response to reported posts, and so on).
The key thing, really, is that members understand that you can't be there 24 hours a day, so sometimes they've just got to get on with it without you (and that means they can't expect an instant response to reported posts, and so on).
In another forum I'm a part of, the management also considers the timezone of staff members, but this is mainly a consideration for global moderators and administrators. Because their duties are mainly general management and to assist members and sectional moderators in organizing the forum. It works in general, we have coverage almost on every hours, except if the staff members are busy. It has proven to be helpful because usually there are always things to do. But that is because we are a big forum. Coverage is important but I don't feel like it's very mandatory. You can have moderators to assist you.
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