Lack of staff.

This is in no way flaming/ranting/complaining < Read this part before you reply.

Exhibit A:



6 > 800+

I know the staff handle things well, but how can 6 people (At this time) maintain 800+ people. A lack of staff in different time zones means things are left standing at times when there's no staff online, meaning the scam artists, rule breakers, spammers, malicious link posting persons are left for X amount of time to do as they please.

I'm not going to tell people how to do their job, so I'll leave this as it is with my point/question.

Discuss.

 

1. Some staff members use invisible mode
2. Guests can't post anything so your number (800) is actually closer to 300.
3. Moved to the correct forum.

 

There are moderators consistently online across the entire 24 hr span of the day, every single day

 

1. I've seen threads left for 3 days.
2. 400+ Potential users (The majority of guests are in the process of creating an account and/or browsing the forum to add people's msn's and attempt a scam)

3. Sorry for the wrong forum.

 

I've never seen a time when no mod was on.

You can't assume that every unregistered user is going to scam. Someone might have logged out and left the browser open.

 

There are probably less than a dozen (maybe 20 at the most) legitimate guests browsing Sythe. As with any vBulletin forum that has millions and millions of posts, there are hundreds of searchbots looking for email addresses and such. These "guests" require no moderation power, whatsoever. Just ignore them, the most they do is add a little server load.

Anyway, on to your topic: There is always a good reason to have more staff members; however, there are also reasons not to have more staff members. More staff obviously means things are handled in a more expedient manner. However, more staff also means allowing even more people to have a lot of trust which is, in some ways, completely arbitrary. One of the biggest things we look for in promoting someone is if they can be trusted with (A) the information in the staff lounge and (B) not to use their rank for scamming or other mal-intent.

We keep an eye out constantly for someone else to join our ranks and help reduce wait time for spam reports and scam reports, but we have a high standard when looking. We can't lower our standards just because the numbers are presently a little low.

 

I understand that some staff are appearing offline, I understand the high standards that have to be met in order to be appointed or even considered as a staff member. Just I tend to see (Not naming any names for obvious reasons) staff that appear to just be posting in general/and or a favorite section of theirs as apposed to filtering scam reports/spam reports/cleaning up topics ECT. I know fully well they dedicate their time to the forums and do a good job of it, but there's always something that needs attending to. Hence the reason I've posted this topic.

@ tckr I used the word 'majority', not every.

 

I think they do a perfectly fine job, a scam report isn't as quick as look then ban. In most cases the "scammer" is contacted and after a certain unresponsive period the "scammer" is banned. In most cases from the proof it isn't easy to figure out if a scam occurred which takes up even more time.

There is also Ban disputes, Account Recoveries, High pardons, etc. Also most mods do business over Sythe as well which occupies time.

but I've never seen a time where no mod was sitting on forums doing nothing or a time when no mod was online, I've seen several mods in invisible mode dealing with reports.

 

I'd say there's probably at least 10 times that many. It's easy to see by checking the IPs of online guests.

 

What I'm pointing at is the time zone differentiations between staff, there needs to be more variety. I'd like to see some sort of chart/table regarding the time zones of staff and who to contact at certain, most probable times so we can know who/when we're dealing with them. This would benefit everyone trying to get hold of a staff member.

 

Just PM whoever is online.

 

I personally think that the current selection of staff is the best group since I joined and became an active member. Almost all of the the current staff are people I would pick if I was an administrator myself.

All of them seem quite trustworthy, intelligent, and hard working. Consequently, they have kept the forums fairly clean as far as I'm concerned during the past month. Of course, more moderators of similar quality would likely only help, but I can definitely understand why it may be beneficial to have a smaller selection of staff.

 

Dude, the staff cope fine. Trust me. You've been here 3 months? You've seen nothing.

 

I've not been here 3 months, add another 4 and a bit years to that.
This is a fresh account, as my other one was from my immature/trollish days.

Edit: The quality over quantity aspect is right in the sense that the level of service is up to par with all standards set, there just needs to be a little more quantity that matches the quality.

 

I kind of agree. I have seen a few reports, that I've made, go un-answered for HOURS (5+ hours)
And those reports were not spam reports, no.
They were not people being idiot reports.

They were virus links, posted by people.

I wish there was something we could do, so the links get autohide, or something.

Is it possible to set a certain amount of posts a user needs, before posting a link?

 

Bummer, would be a nice addition.

And the only thing I have a problem with, is just the malicious stuff that gets posted here, it's like.. every day there are tons new. Yea it's a lot, but it's worth the time and effort to remove them asap.

 

I went on vBulletin.org to check the matter if it's possible to restrict certain things for different post counts or usergroups - and it seems there is a solution!: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=122942&highlight=posting+rights

Anyways, no matter how many moderators you put, you will always see spam and advertisements. What changes is the interval between the time it is posted and once it is removed. Not to mention, the moderators are volunteering so you can't really expect too much although you do see much more than you expect from them.

I know I'm not bringing anything new to this discussion, but in my experience, as Kero said, it's better to recruit an honest member whom everyone can trust with everything than to recruit a member to the team just because extra staff members are needed.

Although I definitely understand your concern. =)

 

The staff should be judged on quality not quantity. They are doing their job just fine.

If there are only 6 staff members on at a time and the job is still done well that is just a compliment to how hard and well organized the staff team is.

 

This is technically on the DNS list.
Previously, the staff was not doing an amazing job. But with the promotions of rsprod and wulfspade, and with the help of increased activity by the globals, the spam reports were cleaned out (100s of pages) and the forum is running very well.

Of course more staff couldnt hurt, but good and active staff members are hard to come by.