Expanding on the other thread, what is your moderator to whatever ratio you use, ratio? I tend to keep my staff list slim, maybe a mod or two less than I could probably have. I don't have an actual ratio myself because I think it depends on the amount of posts that actually require moderation (you could get 10,000 posts a day and 1 closed thread a week). But I know some people have their standard ratios and I'm curious to see them.
I'm with Nick on this one - it really does all come down to the activity level(s) in which your board is receiving. Sure, you could set a specific ratio to go by, but it may not always prove to be effective.
I don't go by ratio, I let my mods tell me if they need more help. Even though my mods are all super mods, they do have specific forums that they watch over. If they feel they need more help in a forum, they holler and I act.
i use mods mainly to promote right now...i have 1 super and 2 regular. That way one is always around.
I tend to go with the flow on this one. On one forum we have a few mods, though as soon as we can spot some of them not doing as much we'll get another in. On another forum we've had the same couple of mods for some time and as the activity increases they'll recognise that and increase their activity. I think it's paramount to explain to the members generally what's going on when a mod makes a common action. This way the members stop posting in the wrong forum, or stop 'feeding the trolls' and so on. So providing you have good mods, they'll generally copy with more activity. We have a couple of regulars who know the score so well that although they're not moderators they will report posts and so on, which then get noted in the mods forum, and the first mod with the permissions for the said forum will take the action required. So I'd never have a ratio set. I think the bigger the forum, the easier it can 'sometimes' be to run. Providing your regulars all know the rules and help point those that don't in the right direction.
I don't see why you would want to add moderators based on the number of posts already made; presumably they've already been checked. I could understand basing the number of moderators on the number of new posts per day, though.
We have 600,000 + posts, that would be a lot of moderators. Heehee. But I like the idea of having a metric to go on.
I base it off activity, I'm able to overlook all the posts at night so I don't need many Moderators right now.