More Mods / Less Mods

[D'Godown]

Forums are flooding around, It seems half of the websites bacame forums :smash: So it is logically no much charm in having a new forum now unless one has a lot of Repute, mind and money to advertise.

Well now my point, Whan a forum starts right, with like 30-40 personal circle users, Is it better to make a lot of Mods out of them to make then visiting regularly? I wonder this way can we get people attatched to the forum?

What would be the negitive side of making lots of mods in a non-technical general/Social forum? I happen to agree that its better for a good start, maybe it will attract high ratio of activity then having just 2-3 mods and all other members.

What do Veteran admins and other members think about it?

[TheDPQ]

Well now my point, Whan a forum starts right, with like 30-40 personal circle users, Is it better to make a lot of Mods out of them to make then visiting regularly? I wonder this way can we get people attatched to the forum?
Having a lot of bored mods is bad. SO unless you need a lot mods you are just asking for trouble.

It may be better to have a 'helper' system to allow people to help out without giving them any real powers.

3 mods for 30 users seem sort of high.

[D'Godown]

^ Well its a part of strategy, To make everybody on forum a significant part, to make them loyal members and once you get a little crowd, You can easily remove the oldies and replace them with real leaders/moderators.

I know 3 mods for 30 people seem sort of high, But to be honest I have seen same thing on a forum, 15 out of 25 members were Mods, One of them was me myself :) , I guess it worked for that very forum and in 2 months it picked up satisfactorily. Now that forum have just 2 Mods.

What are the bad points of having many mods in starting? any suggestions?

[Jan]

Well I think for the general forum viewer, seeing more mods than members would be off putting. I personally wouldn't join a forum like that as I would think the particular forum enlisted a heap of mods just to get a member base.

A forum's membership should be ideally based on genuine signups. If you have a forum that might attract members world wide, then get one moderator in a different time zone to yourself, so you have someone to cover possible trouble when you sleep.

Moderators are members also, if you aren't getting new members in to discuss, then they, as well as any other members, will soon get bored and seldom return. Concentrate on some search engine optimisation, the path you want to take your forum to and build from there ;) Take it slow, one day at a time, one member at a time and you will soon build up to possibly needing more moderators.

[TheDPQ]

Your problem of not keeping members won't be because they aren't mods. You can get people invovle without giving them mod otherwise it is a powertrip waiting to happen.

If you go from 15 mods to 2 then you have 13 potential pissy people to start crap on your forum. It isn't really worth the risk and as mentioned above, i would never go to a forum with a structure like that.

[Frets]

I agree hire then fire is a bad policy.

Mod's dont' get pissy for lack of something to do. However if they don't understand there are obligations with the title it can lead to complications down the road.

A mod's first role isn't that of tech support. Zealous mods are too quick to post responses. A mod with all the answers first all the time is not good for the community. You can't develop a community if you don't let them interact. And you can't develop a forum without moderators. Promoting a moderator makes a place appear dynamic and that there is potential for upward mobility based on effort. If your starting team and your team two or three years down the line are the same... you have problems.

Having less mods is not always a good thing. Sure forums can act on skeleton crews. The only major issue about mod to member quota's is when you have mods that should never have been. If someone doesn't want to join or stay at a forum because there are too many mods usually it means that person has a personality disorder or is just plain acting out a bit too much.

Forums with less moderators over reaction occurs. what could have been resolved with something like a slap on the wrist turns into an instant ban because it's a faster way to resolve the situation.