Hire the active poster? Why it's not always a good idea!

[Shole1]

We all owned a forum at some point or were an admin or team leader in one, and we all know the hardship of hireing a new member. Of course we all have some certain requirements for people to joing our awesome staff, but why is it sometimes wrong to hire the most active poster?

My innital thoughts were that they drift off and start doing more staff jobs and stop being so active as a poster, but then I thought about it a bit longer and came to the conclusion that the end goal has been reached.

By end goal I am referring to some people seeing everything in an achievement/goal like scenario, if I am the best poster I win, after that if I get selected to staff I win, and most stop at getting selected as a staff member. I know from my experience as soon as my name was bolded and in another color, it seemed like I made it and don't have to put the effort in anymore. But that was my old and wrong approach.

Usually from my experience I tend to avoid getting someone from the top posting ranks, but as in everything in life, there are exceptions. It won't always happen like the scenario above but I wrote this for some new onwers to be warry.

How would you deal with such a new staff member? What are your staff recruiting requests?

 

[Blessedsam60]

In everything in life, there are Advantages and at the same time there are a lot of Disadvantages. But to me hiring an active poster should be a plus to a website if managed well instead of becoming an issue.

 

[Shole1]

In everything in life, there are Advantages and at the same time there are a lot of Disadvantages. But to me hiring an active poster should be a plus to a website if managed well instead of becoming an issue.

Care to elaborate your answer more? What would be the biggest benefit ?

 

[Kane]

Hiring paid posters on a long term basis might cost you financially. having paid posters on your site means your site does not have organic activities, and when you do not have organic activities, your site is not generating traffic and you are not earning revenue. Hiring paid posters on temporary basis can be good, though.

 

[linux.poet]

Hiring paid posters on a long term basis might cost you financially. having paid posters on your site means your site does not have organic activities, and when you do not have organic activities, your site is not generating traffic and you are not earning revenue. Hiring paid posters on temporary basis can be good, though.

I don't think the main poster is talking about paid posters, they are talking about internal hiring on forums for staff.

I think, if I was hiring for staff on my forum, I would have prospective staff members fill out an application to see if they match what I need for staff. I would look for a level-headed temperament that is able to balance their own interests with the interests of others, and is able to think about how their words and actions appear to others. It's not about being an active poster, it's about whether they can handle the responsibilities of the job. Do they want to spend hours reading forum threads? Can they handle disputes with staff and other members?

A lot of members quit when they become a moderator because they don't know what the job entails and they are thrown into the shark tank with no training. It's about matching posts against rules.

Another problem is that members who have never been mods - they develop resentment toward the mods for "impairing their free speech" as a member and so they self-sabotage their new mod role. It's really common for members who don't know how forums work to take moderation actions against them personally. Some of them don't think about the interests of the site that they are posting on - all they can think about is themselves. So I would look for an absence of these qualities.

On the other hand, suck-ups are just as bad, likely to abuse their power as soon as they get their hands on it. By far the most important quality a moderator can possess is a healthy sense of professional detachment. Follow that up with a sense of genuine helpfulness and communication.

Conversely, the active poster can be the most emotionally invested in their forum and least likely to master the detachment necessary for a mod job.

 

[Kane]

My Bad, I missed the main thesis!
If you are paying incentives for posting, a lot of staff will divert from their role because they will focus more on earning through posting; however, when there is no incentive for posting, staff will not bother much with posting and they will limit themselves to forum jobs only. When I hired a staff for my forum., one of the clauses was that the staff had to do x number of posts per week apart from the usual forum management job.

 

[Ja sa bong]

Make the terms of the job you're hiring staff members very clear in the beginning. If that's agreed upon, they will not go against it because it means they may lose the job or not get paid because they breached the terms of the deal. If posting a certain number of posts is in the terms of the deal, when it's time to pay, if they didn't do that, you will not be obliged to pay them.

 

[glitch]

I think most new forums can benefit from this. It helps create a good amount of content that new members can participate in. If you open a forum and no one is posting, people are very unlikely to join.

 

[Kane]

If someone is posting a lot of content on your forum, it also means that this person is truly dedicated to your forum, hiring this guy can help your forum in the long run. Hiring someone who is not active can be risky because they already have a lack of interest and they might not give a lot of importance to the forum.