Team Leaders, Managers, etc.

[Cosmic]

Does your forum have any kind of management structure? Is there a specific person, whether they are a global moderator or admin, who is in charge of managing the moderator team, or some other aspect of the staff team?

We use a system like this on FeedbackExchange. The moderators are lead by the Community Director, who is an admin, and the reviewers are lead by the Review Director. It provides a pretty good division of labor, I think. There are 10 people on the staff team, which makes it pretty difficult for one person to manage everything, and it makes sense to assign a particular admin or GMod to manage each team.

Do you do something like this on your forum? 🙂

 

[Cyber]

I've been trying to implement a ranking system but I need to find time when every bodies available and it'll fit in they're schedules to discuss it.

(They as in staff)

 

[Cosmic]

Makes sense. 🙂 When I first designed the current FE rank system, I used software called MindNode to make an organizational chart type thing. Worked pretty well and conveyed the point easily.

 

[Hissae2]

I don't, and there's not really any need to for small forums with only one staff group - the moderators. It's definitely useful when there are many teams, like on promotion forums, though.

 

[Tucker933]

We have 11 staff members in 4 groups: Admins, Managers, Moderators, and Editors. They have quite specialized jobs, but they don't tend to need much management, because I'm extremely picky with my staff. I handle any necessary management myself.

Each usergroup has an orientation they can refer to for basic questions and job descriptions, which is really all they need.

 

[Lorcan]

I think its only really ever useful on promotion forums, I think its a bit obsolete on other forums, and just not needed, you could just have your admin team and then your moderators and your forum would be fine.

 

[Captured Enigma]

A lot of places I have worked (I like community based roles) have had head of community, head of moderators (sometimes community or head of community is the head of moderators) and head of each team with a team under them.

The managers have been in charge of the whole thing And they don't really have much community relation jobs as its the community team that does that kind of thing

 

[Cosmic]

I think its only really ever useful on promotion forums, I think its a bit obsolete on other forums, and just not needed, you could just have your admin team and then your moderators and your forum would be fine.

I think you have a good point here. Promotion forums have very high staff turnover, which means that whoever manages the team may not be qualified to be an admin. In most circumstances, someone who manages a staff team might as well be an admin.

 

[Migi]

At a manga forum I used to help, we applied similar system although not officially. One global moderator overviews a few local moderators, especially in areas he/she frequents in, help them with whatever problem they have, and help to maintain activity and moderation issues, beside looking after the whole forum. Then regularly we report the status of the sections and local moderators to the administrators. It's beneficial to have this kind of staff level each with their own scoop, although I agree team set up is mostly important for forums which use lots of team, namely promotion forums.

 

[Deleted member 7467]

I like to look at forums like Wal Mart. With more and more activity, you can add pillars as needed.

Basically, the main administration team divides responsibility equally. One admin might be in charge of moderation while another is in charge of an events team. (Obviously change teams based on need). The administration team would have a focus but would work closely together to help make sure everything is running.

If the forum gets large enough to where the administrators need more help, you can either add another administrator or create something like a staff manager(s) (junior admin of sorts) who can coordinate paid/volunteer efforts with the assistance of the administrators.

If the forum gets larger still, moving into a more -> administrator -> Staff Manager -> Asst. Manager hierarchy is acceptable. Like in Wal Mart, the lower you go, the lower the overall responsibility so in essence, this is the team leader stage.

If the forum gets so large that this system isn't cutting it, add in the department specific managers who assist team leaders in one area.

That's my preferred hierarchy with names and roles changed to reflect the actual position but the authority structure remains the same.

 

[Cosmic]

I guess that makes sense, although on the really large level, I don't think a moderator team needs a very complicated management structure. Once you have a large enough moderator team, the team is able to police itself pretty well, self-critique, etc. The admin team can select a group of senior moderators to make sure everything run smoothly, and make all other moderators equal. That doesn't work as well on a medium sized forum, though, because your team requires a good amount of institutional experience for the model I described to work really, really well.

 

[Deleted member 25872]

No, I am in charge of my forum. The moderators are the same as the other moderators. If there are any problems they will speak to me! 🙂

 

[Scorpio]

To start off with I'll just have the key basic groups: Administrator and Global Moderator and I'll have an administrator be in charge of a specific group so at the start I'll have 1-2. I normally have myself as the Admin group leader an will assign the other admin to be in charge of the Global moderators. Then as time progresses I'll implement a moderator to become team leader and add any more groups needed with there own team leader and assign admins to larger tasks. As the staff teams grow, I'll add a Team Leader assistant Or Leading Helper to each group. Eventually I'll add a AdMod group who will do away with group leaders. (Advanced moderators)

 

[Migi]

I guess that makes sense, although on the really large level, I don't think a moderator team needs a very complicated management structure. Once you have a large enough moderator team, the team is able to police itself pretty well, self-critique, etc. The admin team can select a group of senior moderators to make sure everything run smoothly, and make all other moderators equal. That doesn't work as well on a medium sized forum, though, because your team requires a good amount of institutional experience for the model I described to work really, really well.

In that case, wouldn't it be easier to appoint one moderator from the team to become leader/manager and overview the rest of team members instead of few senior moderators? Since senior moderators denote that basically they are all still same level, only some have more experience than the others. But there is no real level difference which may be needed to handle special cases.

 

[Reverse Flash]

I don't really use that system on my forum. If a mod has any questions, they ask one of the admins. If one of the admins have a question, they ask me. 🙂