I start out - usually - with three admins (my trustworthy two companions I call them ) and two mods.

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No trees were killed in the making of this post. However, many trillions of electrons were however inconvenienced.

I find that a lot of effort and work and more importantly need for mods can be taken away if you instead make your members self-moderating themselves.
If possible allow every post to have a Report to Moderator button so that every member of your site will be able to report any suspicious post, leaving you free to just moderate as and when you wish to.

If you know a select few members that are regular visitors and posters then ask them to look out for any trouble and report it to you. Your job will then merely be a case of going through the reports each day dealing with any that stand out as a problem, rather than trawling through pages and pages of posts.

An odd nasty post buried on Page 7 of a forum board is hardly worth having a moderators time browsing through when hardly anyone is likely to see it. And if someone does stumble upon it and is offended then the option to Report it by the member saves you a great deal of time and also gives your members a great deal of peace of mind and security.

With a Report To Moderator button it is often worth much more with 100's of self moderating members moderating each other in confidence, than hiring 4 or 5 full time moderators that can become lazy, opinionated, stressed or demanding over time.

I myself use the Report Button and have 1 Moderator to oversee any clear obvious problems that are brought to light while browsing in general.

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