Staff members on your site

[Floris]

Do you have founders, owners, forum admins, super and normal mods, trusted members or mega premiums, or community managers or whatever else is possible?

Let us know how you organize your team of paid or volunteer staff.

 

[Mikey]

I have two.​

​

Admins = Me. No one else, I am the sole admin, this makes me the only one accountable for banning and anything else to do with managing the forum.​

Staff = Two others, before I bought out a community and merged them, this was 0 others, I was the only staff, now it is simply the two admins from the imported community (which is now integrated with mine) which are staff.​

 

[melbo]

I was just thinking about this as I get ready to migrate my vB 3.8.6 site to XF.

I have :
Admins
SuperMods
Content Mods (I call them Forum Editors)
Site Supporters
Founding Members
Forum Leaders (Not mods but designated as experts in their area)

I don't 'stack' all of these forum titles but would like to be able to stack a few of them even though my test XF doesn't have a way to honor these groups in the profile bit...

Example:
Founding Member
Site Supporter
Moderator

 

[Floris]

You can tell who is a team member on this web site, because under their name it says [Trusted Member]
This is done using custom css and a template conditional.

 

[iTuN3R]

Everything is Volunteer works but as Appreciation of their work we do send them random gifts on special occasions

Admins > Moderators > Contributors .

 

[melbo]

You can tell who is a team member on this web site, because under their name it says [Trusted Member]
This is done using custom css and a template conditional.

Can you stack a few of those?

 

[Floris]

Yeah, just repeat the if conditional, but make it recognize the other usergroups, I guess.

 

[Michael Dance]

I have:
Director
District Manager
Technical Manager
Sales and Support Operator

I'm thinking of doing VIP soon to increase income.

 

[Myster Dude]

For me there are several positions, think root of a tree growing in branches (btw this is in a chapter of my book "Business & Team Management."):

Management:
Root Admin - Founder, Director, or CEO
Sub Admins - Managment Team member/or co founder/director, head developer or head designer.

Sub-Managment:
Super Moderator - Sales or Tech Support (Has access to some administrative power so that they can fix any sales or tech issues.)

Volunteer Services:
Moderator - To fight spam, to eliminate trolls, and preserve the safety and continuity of the board members, as well serve support.
(If applicable.) Public Relations - Help with members, be their friend and advise them when needed, get feedback from the members such as issues getting around or being apart of the board. (peer advising mostly.

 

[boatswife]

All the crew on my board are people that have been on the forum for a long time and people that I trust.
I have myself and another for Admin. I also have 6 super moderators.

 

[Martyn_imported]

You can tell who is a team member on this web site, because under their name it says [Trusted Member]
This is done using custom css and a template conditional.

I believe something like this is usless any chance of getting the know how pleasee??

 

[Floris]

If it is useless, then why do you want to know how it's done? --- sorry, not quite sure what you're asking.

 

[Martyn_imported]

ment usefull! i actally dont have a clue why i wrote usless.. lol... forgive me ..

 

[Floris]

haha NO problem.

It's a bit of css and a template customization. I can't find the thread on xenforo.com where it was done
But .. I customized it anyway. I check against the helper ismemberof if the user is a team member, if so, remove the normal usertitle, then use a div with class teamTitle and put the css of it in extra.css
(and else, the normal usertitle).

.teamTitle {
	display: block;
	width: 108px;
	margin: -2px 0 5px 6px;
	padding: 2px 0 3px 0;
	border: 1px solid @primaryLight;
	border-radius: 5px;
	background: @primaryLighterStill url('@imagePath/xenforo/gradients/tab-unselected-25px-light.png') repeat-x top;
	text-align: center;
	font: 11px verdana,sans-serif;
	text-decoration: none;
	color: @primaryMedium;
	text-shadow: 1px 1px 0px #fff;
	outline: 0;
}

 

[Martyn_imported]

thats the only problem with xenforo forum its not easy to find stuff!!

 

[Floris]

Well, it was called user rank css, or something . .. I just can't find the thread right now, it's 1:12 AM and I am nodding off, lol.

 

[Martyn_imported]

only 12.21 here am im half asleep! all battered an bruised from the accident! maybe ill go have a reset now!

 

[Vincent_imported]

I try 'n keep it simple.

We're with 3 developers, we have the same rank and the same access. The only thing they don't have is access to my xenForo account, yet their account is linked to my customer number.

If we'll ever need moderators they'll get their permissions and we'll see how we set them at that time
One thing I'll never give (except if we have serious spam) is Full Delete rights.

 

[Lucifer_imported]

Just me. And I've promised my members I will pick a moderator once we get a thousand threads.

 

[trilogy33]

Here's a question then for you.

What's your procedure when there's say, two or more Mods on board, so that they can avoid duplicate Moderator actions? For instance, a simple correcting of a dead/malformed link that a user has posted up.
1. The mod edit - I did this red text method? or
2. To use the built-in Report function?

Personally, I'm of the tendency towards the first option as submitting a Report for every single little teeny issue would be an overkill, so...views anyone please?
Or indeed is there a third way of tackling those?

 

[Floris]

Keeping tracks of active and inactive reports is as confusing as teamwork, or editing text.
Two mods could edit a post at the same time for example.

A communication between mods via a staff lounge forum, an irc chat room, or IM services like Skype .. seems to work for us quite well.

It's a tough one. I prefer to not edit a with a msg "got edited" ..

On XenFans I try to report a post with @mod - can you ..
Or I poke them on Skype or IRC chat.
Or if not too many are online I handle it myself directly if no discussion thread in the staff-lounge is needed.

There are also situations where I open a personal conversation with the community manager and the user in question, .. that way the site's contact point knows what's going on - in case other mods contact him/her about a thread.

 

[trilogy33]

So, let's say if we don't Skype and we don't IRC etc. and a.n.other form of contact, please avoid Facebook... it's just another thing to keep tabs on.
The best solution all round for, only if you have a few issues per week, is to use the in-built Reporting System (RS). Let that RS take the weight with it's most excellent and methodical processes and all "should be" ok.

It's not written in stone that the RS should be only for "major issues" - on the other hand, if you've lots of small niggling things to correct every day, then your RS system will have, guess what? lots of reports. However, at least they're kept away in a Mod only, separate place for safe and focussed review.
Sounds about the best way to me. So far.

 

[Floris]

Fair enough

I consider irc the virtual office. It is just handy for asng others questions live

 

[trilogy33]

*downloads Skype again* may put it to some use one day.

This is a good thread
I've skewed it into a comms thing. :oops: Probably worth it's own thread?

Staff and the comms thing, I have a tendency to keep to the site's internal messaging as to not overcomplicate - depends on your niche really. A computer technical or forum related forum such as XenFans, XenForo, etc. Staff probably would be more used to using external services such as IRC, Skype and the like.

I do remember the IRC days, quite well, (mIRC, lots of laughs) - explaining IRC protocols may be a little more than a "sledgehammer to crack a nut" as they say; that is unless they're already comfortable using it.

Answering questions live and not threaded, for Staff I guess that's passable.
For users global; coupled with a smaller board, could be an opportunity missed in that; content isn't being indexed, it's just being answered once, so needs repeating over and over per user, or per Staff member. So, upsides/downsides.

Anyways, yes: Staff.

Founder/Admin - Me, solely (super, if I may say so myself)
Mods (all super!) - 3 (technically "Staff" with a few more perms and a Usertitle)
Staff (super too!) - 3 (premiumed, because frankly, the work they do is outstanding)

Mods of single forum nodes: 0 (i.e. not Super Mods) > later expansion perhaps.