I was a moderator on a major site for a while, until I left due in no small part to a personality conflict with the administrator. What I took away from the experience (aside from a bunch of friends among fellow mods) was a shopping list of what not to do as an admin. Specifically, I decided to be open with my mods, democratizing the relationship as much as is practical. I'm not all-knowing, and I certainly don't feel comfortable with my word being taken as gospel. It took a while to convince them to relax, but I think it was a good move and it seems to have worked well.
As mentioned in the title, the point I want to make is specifically related to how to tell when members are ready to be promoted. Your mother probably told you something about strangers on the internet, and it's true, albeit with a lot less paranoia in the equation. You never do know who someone you're talking to online really is, but honestly, I don't care. If someone is reliable online, I don't care if they're a pedophile or serial killer in real life. I'm going to be dealing with their online persona exclusively, so the fact that I can rely on them online is all that's important from a staff perspective.
When I say recruiting your friends is a good idea, I want you to understand exactly what I'm talking about. These people need to be first and foremost the community's friends, but you're going to be working with them on a daily basis. The staff needs to be a strong team, and when there are conflicts, there's a problem. Besides, if you're doing your job right, you have nothing but friends in the community, and not the sort that come with being a figure of authority.
What I don't mean is that you should have your friends from real life or elsewhere on the internet join up and be promoted almost immediately. In this case, it doesn't matter how long you have known them or how much you trust them. The community in general has to trust them as much as you do, and they have to be committed to the community. That's not to say your personal trust isn't a great asset, but it can't be the primary factor. I did make that mistake once, allowing an online friend to join up and be promoted after some token site activity. As of this posting, he hasn't been seen on TorrentFries in over a year. He didn't do anything reprehensible, just disappeared one day. Just because someone is trustworthy doesn't mean they're committed to the site.
The other point I want to make is regarding timing. Moderating a site can be a big job, requires some serious team effort, and has its lulls and periods of frantic activity. I see no sense in hiring "enough" mods while leaving others on your waiting list in case you need them. People have lives, and it's nice for your mods to know they're free to take off whenever they need to without crippling the site in their absence. Hell, I could do that if necessary, since my mods had all the power needed to ensure that the site kept going on a day-to-day basis. These days, the only thing none of my fellow staff members have access to is the money, but that's a story for another time.
A side benefit of this duplication is that any of the little day-to-day issues that need dealing with such as trolling, spamming for porn sites, general rule violations and so forth can be dealt with very quickly. Even with "enough" staff members, not everyone is going to be online all the time. The more people that have the power to deal with this sort of thing, the more likely it'll be that someone will be able to deal with this sort of offense immediately.
Okay, one last thing. This shouldn't even need saying, but: if someone asks to be promoted, for fuck's sake don't do it. If it becomes apparent that they want or expect the position, a big black mark goes down beside their name. This sort of power-hungry person is going to be unreliable at best. The best staffers are the ones that will be baffled to sign on and find that they now have a ton of extra buttons on the site.
That's enough for today. Tune in tomorrow for... uh, something else. I'll work it out later.
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