It has been a year and a half since I applied for staff.
During that time the number of staff I think has dropped by 15 or 20 (maybe more), yet the number of forums and members have greatly increased. This means that staff are given much more to do that the time requested can reasonably accomplish.
This workload level does two things:
[1] it causes some staff to be way overworked resulting in burnout and sometimes impatience when situations call for some patience to resolve.
[2] it results in many reports getting burried and not receiving attention (actually or from the viewpoint of the member). This causes a member who only has reported a few posts to think mods ignore reports.
I know that it takes time to recruit, train an manage staff. So flooding CF with new unqualified or untrained staff is not the solution.
For CF to meet it's goals it is imperative to expand the staff, but only as rapidly as can be done and still get qualified and committed volunteers.
So I recommend:
[1] A review to identify forums that have few participants yet generate many reports proportionatlely. For these forums have two Admins review the situation to see:
[a] if the mods assigned are doing well or if reassignments are needed;
if there are problem posters there that need to be given 3, 6 or 12 month FSBs.
[2] Rethink the whole sock puppet account rule to:[a] penalize more severely members using multiple accounts to disrupt CF;
reduced the max allowed number of socks to no more than three with none used to disrupt. E-ban additional socks as discovered;
[c] require staff to register their sock accounts in a reference thread open to staff and disallow a staff member from debate posts in a forum they moderate (either using their main or sock account).
[3] Stop adding new forums and features (ex WIKI) until there is sufficient staff to support them without reducing staffing levels in other forums.
[4] Do not add features such as Public Appeals before the process and protocol has been established more and members and staff know what the rules are. Public Appeals, for example, could have been opened as a beta test program, where a few appeals were selected to test the idea followed by a review and revision before launching the full feature. Allow these beta testers the option to reappeal if the protocol in the final version changes in a way effecting the outcome of their beta test appeal.
Ideas launched prematurely cause frustration and tension between staff who have incomplete protocol and members who conclude staff are making up protocol to disadvantage them.
drstevej