I'm interested in creating my own gaming forum. I know something like hiring extra staff members won't be an issue for an extended period of time, but I'm curious as to how other forum owners and administrators hire staff members for their forums?

I'm creating a new forum at the moment.

Firstly, I will invite people that I already know to join first and then from among them, I will chose 1 or 2 that I trust completely to be my first mods.

After opening up the forum to new members and running and monitoring members for a while, I will then chose further mods from the new pool of members.

I won't need lots of staff for quite a few months, but if might be different for other forums with more popular content.

How ? I hire them by who they are, what can they do, and how they react to different situations. If they prove themselves intelligent, determined, loyal while having a good sense of humor - that pretty settles it. I chose them over the time, never immediately.

Mine is a tech forum, so they need to have an in-depth knowledge of computers in a certain field. They also have to be active for a certain period of time before I promote them to a trial mod. They also have to be active in posting.

Well, I normally monitor their activity, behaviour, posting standards and how well-known that member is on the forum before I consider someone to become a moderator.

I judge them according to their attitudes and how often they are in my site. I also preferred active members.

kjmj14 wrote:huhwhy please stop doing that, that's considered spamming and spammers are given a punishment of being banned here.

What are you talking about?

Your first staff members should be people you know and trust.

how i picked mine are simple... I'm doing a forum for Android phones for the themes/roms you can do. I've have broken it down to each of the major rom/themers get there own section. So they mod there own.I have also enlisted friends who i pretty much have told there going to mod since they are also on a couple G1/Dream sites.


allandroid.your-board.com

Niels wrote:Your first staff members should be people you know and thrust.

Im Sorry You May Call This Off Topic & Spam, But I Couldn't Help Myself This Time:

People you know & "THRUST" LMAO!

Creepiest typo of all time.

hahaha!!! sorry i had to leave this as a reply!!!

I like to make a thorough mod application and such, so i can tell all their past experience, and also so i can see how trust worthy they are.. Then ill give them a week trial or such to see how they pan out, before making it permanent. Mods run your forum, in the absence of the admins, you need to have trustworthy, and help/nice people in those positions, or you might aswell kiss your forum goodbye.

Choose based on a set criteria that I post in a thread in the Announcements. They have to fill atleast two of the criteria before becoming a moderator.

when my site was new, my friends were staff. Aftre a while when people registered, we had a list of details to be a mod:

have at least 200 normal posts.
have no infractions/warnings
have been a member for over 3 months
has not spammed.

On my site, I choose trusted members who have no warnings to join the "Jr. Mod" group I created. This way, they can get used to being a moderator. If they are good at this job and they don't abuse their power, I add them as full moderators.

Just see if you can trust them, if their good on your forum, ect. If they look like they can do the job properly, then hire them.

Actually, trust isn't the main issue in hiring mods in the first place, IMO, since there people you can trust that are not active enough, not consistent enough that they follow through with what they say.

IMO, finding mods who are dedicated will be your most treasured people of all. Finding trustworthy mods are easy. Those who are dedicated can easily surpass those trustworthy mods with sheer dedication and you can have only a handful of those and your forum can run smoothly.

Its hard to find those kind of people though. I've been searching for 2 years.... Oh well, I guess finding dedicated mods for an RPG style forum with a handy numbered battle system is hard......

Finding mods....

I actually try to find them wherever they may be, IRL or internet-wise. Based on experience, mods who have a long time of being a participant in a particular genre you're forum is in and plays it with an obvious passion is your best bet. They can be found on MMORPGs, forum RPGs but not really on hire forums.... I didn't find any dedication there.... They leave when things get really hard[in my case, balancing a game system]

Hope that helps...

OnlineWrestlingNET wrote:

Niels wrote:Your first staff members should be people you know and thrust.

Im Sorry You May Call This Off Topic & Spam, But I Couldn't Help Myself This Time:

People you know & "THRUST" LMAO!

Creepiest typo of all time.

Rofl... xD. I didn't see that.

I see who is the most active, in the least trouble, nicest, & most loyal. I don't really see why people say you need to keep your cool when there are spammers and trolls and stuff. It's not like you are ever going to see them.
I also have a hidden thing forum for mod nominies. I have spamming, trolling, everything they will do to fix it and then see how they did.

Well when i started off, i did it all single handed until i asked my best mate to join. He did and we got new members in. Then some one who was active, asked to become Mod, we got chatting, then over time we played the xbox together, Msn ect... Now he is a Adminastrater of the site.

For Mods, i just active members, but they are all resposable. Got there Msn so we can talk ect... But once we had a soemone, who was all sound on the outside but banned members for a laugh. We only found this out because we had a feature, email our forum email, and thats how we found it out!

Head of sections is like head of the Call of duty topics. They are just Mods promoted, because they want the role and i can trust them.


Its all about trust, trust them and you will do well!

I usually first pick my best friend to best friend to be a moderator. But I do tests.

First, I make a testing section. Here I test their skills. They have to follow the rules and lock topics, etc. And they can't ignore it just because they have friends who break rules. They need to know that it doesn't matter about friendships but about what they do. I also look at their posts and make sure they use proper grammar and such. I also look to see if they have offered other good advice before they became a moderator. They need to have no warnings or temporary bans! They must also be strict and tell them what to do and why they got whatever happened. Must be active as well! About the test.. I make an evil account and a test area. The evil account posts spam topics and so, and the moderator must lock these topics. I check to see if they can specify why it was locked and tell them some advice or something. I also make the account ask questions, and I see if the moderator answers the question well.

Etc.

Hope I had enough.

well i'm a member on quite a few other forums, so my "E-pals" from those sites are normmaly my mods
or if i don't know anyone good for the job of a mod
i'll normmaly create another account, and use it to break some of the rules of your forum, then the member who reports it shows that he/she is responsable so he/she would be a mod!

my was is every 3 months we re elect council members and then every 3 months we have a vote for the person we would like to be a mod thenthe 2 winners go on to another vote and the winner usialy becomes a moderator and the council dicides who should be moderators and who should not

This not easy if you are about to select those whom you will meet via the internet.

If you select from known friends on the web or family members it helps.

But I do believe choosing someone from the same Forum who is participative, mature and relatively efficient will help.

Even so, Moderators too have to me monitored by the Forum Owner(s).

yeah i moniter my moderators

I usually use staff applications via email form for my forums, then those who are the best candidates are put up for election and are chosen by the users. I usually have staff elections every "Site Year" Which is about every 3 months so that way I have an ever fluctuating staff. It also helps with training users to become better admins and mods so when they move on to newer places they have the skill to cope with the job.

You can check out My help wanted page
http://www.clubfairshare.com/About-Club-Fair-Share-Employment-h32.htm

I too get active, friendly members who help others and sound normal. And I also set up the report system to see who reports the best reports. Who knows when something is wrong and what needs to be fixed.

Based on their knowledge and how committed they are to the forum!

Eh... I'm wery strickt for this...
1st I don't give position to anyone who crys for it...
2nd I always, always mee tthe person well before hiring
3rd I am always sure to give all the "orders" and what can be done or not.