How to recruit forum staff

As your forum grows, you'll need more people to help you maintain the site. You essentially have two options for recruiting forum staff.

1. Post a public application for members to apply
2. Privately invite members to join the staff

If you have a small community of dedicated members, then posting a public application will work fine. But if you have a large community or if you don't know the members very well, I suggest privately inviting members to join your staff. Otherwise, you'll waste time going through applications from unqualified members.

Then the question is, who do you invite? Watch for members who:

• actively post and contribute to discussions
• answer other members' questions
• welcome new members to the site
• suggest ways to improve the community

Members who already show an interest in your site and care about the community will continue to do that as part of the forum staff. You can teach people how to moderate forums and how to deal with rule violations. But you cannot teach them to care about your community, so look for that quality first.

Other qualities to consider as you're looking for candidates:

• Clear writing. The principle form of communication in online forums is text, so you want forum staff who can express themselves clearly in writing.
• Objectivity. Part of the fun of online forums is that you get to debate and discuss topics with people from all over the world. You want forum staff who can participate in conversations, but who can also remain objective and clear-headed when arguments heat up.
• Cooperation. Forum staff members have to work together to maintain the site and deal with problems that come up, either from members or technical issues.
• Integrity. Depending on the set up of your forums, you'll be giving a lot of authority and power to your staff members. Make sure they are people who will use their position responsibly and honestly.

Watch members in your forum and make a list of potential staff members. Your list should have a few names beyond the number of staff members you need to add, so that if someone declines your invitation, you have alternatives.

After you have identified the candidates, send each one a personal message. Tell them that you're looking for new staff members to help maintain the site and explain their responsibilities. Let them ask you any questions they have about joining the staff. After they've accepted, change their settings and assign their areas and duties.

Following these steps will help you build a dedicated forum staff whose first priority is the community on your site.

If you're interested in more blog posts about online forums, please check out the forums tag.

Telepathy is a good supervillain power

I wonder why more telepaths aren't villains. Think about it: he has the power to see what people actually think, what they keep inside their heads that no one can criticize or judge. He knows whenever someone lies to him or talks behind his back or takes advantage of people. He can't ignore any of it. He gets angry at the world for not being honest, and so he messes up things for the people who lie to get ahead.

And when he turns to a life of crime, his power will be a huge help. He can sense when police or superheroes are near. He knows what everyone in the room is thinking and can use that to his advantage. He might be able to manipulate their thoughts.

I did a quick Google search and found a few telepathic villains: Saturn Queen, Esper Lass, Mentallo, and Black Mamba.

That's all well and good, but I'd love to see a movie where telepathy is misused. Chronicle showed us the bad things that can happen when normal teenagers develop telekinesis. Do the same thing, but with telepathy.

Reading ebooks doesn't mean you have to give up printed books

Every now and then I see arguments on Tumblr about printed books and ebooks. The comments go both ways. Ebooks aren't "real" books. (You can't smell them, turn their pages, feel their weight in your hands.) Ebooks are better for the environment. Printed books don't need batteries. Somehow, the words you read on a screen are less genuine than words you read on paper. And on and on.

Reading an ebook is not the same experience as reading a printed book. That's true, but a book is a book. Who says reading ebooks means you have to stop reading printed books? And when people were able to buy books, did library patrons argue that you shouldn't own books? I wonder.

I've been thinking about the books I read and where I get them. Below is a list of the books I read this month, plus two that I'm currently reading. Next to each, I noted the format.

- Start a Freedom Business by Colin Wright (ebook, Kindle)
- Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (ebook, Kindle)
- The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon (printed, purchased)
- Sandman Volume 2: The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman (printed, checked out of the library)
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss (printed, checked out of the library)
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (printed, purchased)
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (printed, purchased)

That's 2 ebooks (on the Kindle) and 5 printed books (two from Barnes and Noble, one from a used book sale, and two from the library). Guess what? I enjoyed them all. It's possible to buy printed books as well as ebooks, and still use the local public library.

We shouldn't criticize people for reading. So many people don't read for fun. They think of reading as assignments they hated in school and not something you can possibly enjoy in your free time. That's the tragedy—not that someone reads screens instead of printed pages.

Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation

I watched Terminator Salvation for the first time a few days ago, and my favorite part of it is Kyle Reese.

He's only a teenager in the movie, but the actor (Anton Yelchin) captured the personality and spirit of Kyle Reese in the original Terminator movie. He's resourceful, resilient, compassionate, loyal, and hopeful.

The way he takes care of Star and his instant concern for John's safety mirror how Kyle protected Sarah Connor. He's easily the most relatable character in the movie because he's in the war's crossfire and doing his best to stay alive. But he's not bitter or angry about his situation. He just focuses on survival.

Constellation Prize

When I was in elementary school, we had carnivals twice a year, one in the fall and one in the spring. Family nights, basically, where we went to the school for a few hours and played games, ate hot dogs and cotton candy, and entered raffles. Everything was in the gym and on the playground.

One year, the prizes were themed after the solar system. There were posters, freeze dried ice cream (remember that?), key chains…things like that. If you won, you got one of those "good" prizes. If you played a game and lost, though, you still got a few glow-in-the-dark stars (the kind you can stick on your ceiling).

Those stars were at every game, so I played and lost a few times, and still had all these plastic stars and planets.

I heard one of the teachers explain the prizes to a parent. I thought I heard her say the stars were the "constellation prize," and it made sense to me. Of course, I could take these stars home and stick them to my ceiling in formation. I could make the Big Dipper and Orion. That was pretty cool.

It was a few years until I realized the prize you get even when you don't win is the consolation prize. Misunderstandings like this have happened to me before then and since (more on that some other time), and "constellation prize" is one of the better outcomes.

Stiles is not a sidekick in Teen Wolf

Even though he's set up to be just the sidekick. Take a look at the core group of characters on Teen Wolf:

Scott - the teen wolf
Stiles - Scott's best friend
Allison - Scott's girlfriend whose family hunts werewolves
Derek - another werewolf/mentor figure for Scott

Out of these four characters, Stiles is the normal one. He doesn't have superhuman abilities and people in his family do not lead double lives. Stiles is intelligent, socially awkward, and loyal. He could easily fall into a sidekick role. where he's just around to help Scott.

Stiles could be a minor, underdeveloped character, but instead he's often the one to figure out what's going on. Stiles solves problems that come up. He investigates on his own, and he calls the shots. Instead of following Scott, Stiles is equals with him.

It's good to see a show with supernatural elements that can ground itself with an ordinary, competent character.

Beyond Hollywood Films

I watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tonight and enjoyed it, so I went to its IMDB page to check out discussions about the film. I know that comments on IMDB tend to be negative. But even so, I was surprised to see entire discussions that said the movie was overrated, poorly made, slow and boring, and that the plot was hard to follow.

People are free to dislike movies of course, but I can't help thinking that these comments are coming from people who primarily watch Hollywood blockbusters (and in doing so, have a narrow view of what makes a good movie).

The complaints I saw weren't so much about the content of the film as they were about the way it was made. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is not a typical American-made spy movie. The explanation for this is simple—the movie wasn't made in America. The actors and writers are British. The director is Swedish. They filmed in England, Hungary, and Turkey.

If the film was poorly made, it would not have received nominations and won several awards. What people see in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a kind of film they are not used to seeing, and that puts them off.

Even if I didn't know anything about the movie, I could tell within the first few minutes that this wasn't made in Hollywood. The opening scenes are slow and feel sparse. I had to pay close attention because the characters speak in hushed and sometimes mumbled voices, time passes without clear indications (until you realize what's happening and are prepared for the jumps), and sometimes very little action is happening on camera. These things don't make the film bad. They make it different from what I'm used to seeing (and from what most Americans are used to seeing).

So if I'm used to Hollywood films, why don't I have these complaints about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? I did think it was slow and I had trouble following parts of it, but these things didn't take away from my enjoyment of the film. The reason is, I've seen a bunch of films that are outside of Hollywood's typical style. I've learned to appreciate different kinds of film making.

I used to think that in order to appreciate foreign films, independent films, and older films, people should take a film class or at least read a few books on film criticism. (College film classes are what got me into a wider variety of films.)

But I don't think that anymore. All you really need is an enthusiasm for movies and a willingness to watch different kinds of things. Twenty years ago, people had access to a lot of movies at the local video rental store, but now with Netflix and the internet, we have access to even more. If you're  watching only Hollywood blockbusters, you're missing out on other styles of film and other ways of thinking about movies.

Watch movies made in other countries. Watch films made by young directors, by women, by people who live outside the U.S., by people with tiny budgets. I'll keep doing that too. Then maybe the next time a movie lacks explosions and quotable one-liners, we'll be able to find something else about it that we liked.