When is the right time to have staff and moderation team?

I have started a forum last month and have got about 50 members (most of them are active) and about 500 posts.

http://www.webmastertradecenter.com/trade

I have realised that if I am away then I dont see any activity on my forum and If I am spending time then their is lot of activity. When do you think its good to have staff and modeerators and what is the best way to get them?

I know it will vary forum to forum but Is there any guide line of terms/rules or something like that is avaialble for having staff on your forum.

Please advise.

Thanks!
Chodhry

 

I don't think the main purpose of staff is to post. Should they be active? Generally yes. But they're here to aid in management and so forth. Anyways, as to when to add, it depends.

I have three forums launching in the next 3 weeks. One, because its a revival of an old board, is going to have the two old moderators. One will have probably no staff until traffic demands it. And one is for forum admins, so it will have an odd staffing system with along of people just modding one specific section since we've managed to get some software developers on board.

 

eek, questionable domain name you have there

But anywho...I would agree that the purpose of staff is not just to post...the purpose of staff is to handle community issues and converse with the members. You don't want your staff in there talking to themselves - that doesn't look good. The best indicator of when you need staff is when you find that you cannot handle all of the forum issues yourself in a reasonable amount of time. I've actually written a pretty thorough article on this issue here...would probably be worth a read.

 

If you are going away for any length of time it would be a good idea to have somebody cover for you, even if your forum is small. If a small forum ends up with a nasty flame battle while you're off enjoying the beach or something, you could be very unhappy when you get back and it could have turned off your members/visitors. You can hire moderators/admins or you can offer existing members who do a good job on posting some incentives or maybe just ask for their help. I'd read GTAce's article, he's got some good info/ideas there.

 

Thanks guys for the suggestions. I sure will look upon them.