Moderation Staff to Member Ratio: What's yours?

[Cedric]

I’m curious to know how many moderators you guys have in relation to the size of your community. Obviously, there isn't a one-size-fits-all as some niches require more staff than the other. But finding the right staff-to-member ratio can be tricky—too many mods might feel overbearing, while too few can make it hard to manage things effectively.

Questions to consider:

• How many moderators do you currently have compared to your member count?
• Do you feel like your current ratio is working, or do you think more/less staff would improve things?
• At what point did you feel it was necessary to bring on additional mods?
• What do you look for when deciding to add more staff members to your team?

Let’s share our experiences and see how different communities approach the staff-to-member ratio!

 

[Bryn]

I have three staff members in amongst a community of 65 members. That's okay, isn't it?

 

[Cpvr]

I have three staff members in amongst a community of 65 members. That's okay, isn't it?

That’s a solid ratio. With three staff members, you have enough coverage. Every community is different—some can manage with just one or two moderators, while others may need more depending on the activity levels. It sounds like you’re in a good spot based on your current size.

 

[Cory]

I'm flying solo with nearly 2000 members.

Granted, my board is not very active in posting since it's a resource board where people mainly come and grab resources on the go and leave. General discussions are the least of my worries, I like to keep building up the resources as much as possible for other Jcink administrators. It would be nice to have some coders/designers to build up the resources with me, but I'm managing fine on my own thus far.

 

[Ant]

Right now I have about 150 members and 4 staff member at the moment.

 

[fdk]

For me, I always like to recruit one moderator at the outset of a forum, or fairly early on. I'll then likely manage the forum alone with that single moderator until we reach a point whereby we're getting 200+ posts a day. Then I'll probably look for the second moderator. At that point, we'd be pretty much set in my opinion until there was significant additional growth, I personally don't see for the need for anymore than 2 moderators alongside one or two admins on almost any forum that isn't super active.

My biggest forum had 4 admins including and about 8 volunteer moderators who each volunteered set 2 hour periods every few days to complete moderation tasks. That's how we worked on things, anything urgent was flagged via a reporting importance system for urgent mod attention, but generally, our moderators volunteered to do at most 3-4 2 hour shifts a week working through the report queue and performing mod actions. At all other times, moderators were encouraged to be normal members of the community and not worry about the smaller things. This was a forum that at its peak was sometimes exceeding 5000 posts a day though, so this level of staffing with our relatively lax policy on what we asked of staff was probably just about right.

Myself and the other admins dealt with some stuff that was relatively low-level and quick, and our Lead Moderator was often on the site for 4-5 hours a day so managed to keep on top of a lot of things.

 

[Arantor]

I don't think it really matters, I think what matters more is number of moderators vs number of active posts - you can have a member base in 6 figures but if you don't have more than 50 posts a day you don't need hundreds of moderators.

 

[Cory]

I don't think it really matters, I think what matters more is number of moderators vs number of active posts

This sounds sensible because my board has 2,000+ members now and I'm still running it solo. I generally gain 10 - 20 log-ins per day, so having thousands of members doesn't make your board active, but having actively contributing members posting around your board does.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I have 2 staff among 75 members on Thee Zone. On Gex forums I have 2 staff among 40 members. I never have more staff than members on my forums, I think there was one time I joined a forum and there were more moderators than members and I remember getting a promotion immediately after joining the forum lol. I can't even recall the name of the forum.

 

[Bawse]

My forum currently has three staff members including myself. Two admins, and one moderator. I might add one more moderator soon. 230 members.