[AF-Brandy]

I manage 3 very large (100K or more users each) communities and 3 small up and coming communities.

Topics are all centered around family/pregnancy and the like.

Emotions can be high. When things go wrong, they go wrong FAST and snowball.

While I find that most of the time, our volunteer moderators can and do deal with matters without my input - I do have to be involved a bit and the vast majority of that time is outside of normal business hours.

This hasn't been an issue, until very recently.

So I come to you with this question:

What is a reasonable expectation for 'coverage' for large/active communities? Should there be someone available/ready to respond to issues for the majority of the day?

In your experience, should matters that happen after normal business hours, wait until the following business day?

What about issues that happen at 6 PM on Friday? Just let them float until 8 AM Monday?

We're having some difficulty defining what is appropriate as far as management/oversight - and I'd like to hear how some of you deal with this specific issue.

I realize, this may be unique - as I do this as a full time employee who works normal business hours and it looks like a lot of you maybe don't - so there is that complication.

Also: Historically speaking - none of our users seem to be the 'report a post' kind - I can count on one hand the number of reports I've had in the last 7 days - however, I've deleted/edited/moderated more than 200 posts (we had quite the fire) and banned several people.

I guess I'm looking for a 'standard' here. Should more active forums have someone that can be available at a moments notice?

[AF-Brandy]

Wow, it looks like AdminFusion has kind of died since the last time I visited...it used to be so...much more than it is now.

Such a shame

[Moelman]

I definitely don't think you should make users wait the entire weekend before a problem is solved. You shouldn't have too many moderators, but you should have enough that issues like this don't have to wait long before someone can respond. As you've demonstrated, no one likes to wait for responses.