Go avoid the word “Trusted” in the name, how about Liaison? Maybe “Forum Liaison” or something of that nature.

My lil forum is over at http://www.rcnitrotalk.com

You touch on what I was saying - this doesn’t become necessary until you hit a certain level, but it could certainly work on a smaller board too.

Put it this way: When you have thousands of posts made per day, it’s simply impossible to cover every section at all hours of the day to make sure they things are running smoothly. Likewise, deploying an absurd amount of mods is also a bad idea. (Trust me, 9 is not absurd at all!) That’s where this group comes in.

I will definitely report back. As of right now, they are voting on changing the name to avoid the word, “Trusted.” So far so good, though.

What’s your forum, Michael?

Don’t get me wrong I see your point, however I just don’t see the benefit of it and this is something I’ve considered doing myself in the past as well.

My forum has nearly 7,000 members with a total of 9 staff members including myself. I personally don’t see that as to many “cooks”.

For my I don’t see the benefit of having another usergroup that doesn’t have any power to do anything other then really just reporting the post/thread in question. Which all members have access to already.

On my site we have a “supporting membership” group which is for members who have donated to the site, I’ve found these tend to be the most loyal members and more times then not the members that care the most about the site. If there’s a problem they nor many others on the site have no issues using the Report Post function of PM’ing one of the staff members.

I hope you follow up on this posting in a few weeks or so as I’d still be interested in hearing how it’s working out for you. I’ve noticed your site has many thousands of members than I do so this may benefit you as a larger forum then someone small like myself.

Be careful of too many cooks in the kitchen… Give too many people Mod powers and you can end up with a mess - no matter how well-oiled the machine.

@Peter:

Yes, I thinks it’s very similar. I like the term “Mentor.” We have struggled a little with the term “Trusted Member” because of the *possible* leap that other members aren’t trusted, but the members have received it well. I always believe in not reinventing the wheel, and this is just another example of that.

I will report back with progress. So far, the first 5 members have elected 5 more to complete the founding TMs. It’s great to see such enthusiasm!

I will report back once I have some results.