I am just curious as to what other people do in relation to this.

So you work hard and build up your site you got quite a few dedicated players and then to help you manage the stories you promote some of the players to narrators/moderators. Things go well for a while and then real life intervenes and a narrator advises they have a busy period coming up. Its happened a few times where these absences seem to never end.

So my question is how long do people normally allow these periods to last before the person gets demoted back to player and you get another narrator in?

Two weeks to a month would have to pass before I consider demoting them :o.

Same. It may be painful, but it's also unreasonable to expect your mods to be there all the time. A good forum infrastructure takes this into account so you aren't depending on your mods constantly being there.

I give my mods a bit of leeway because I realize that stuff does happen and school is much more important than RPGs. Therefore, I don't necessarily demote, but move them to another user group called "Honored Veteran" assuming that they've been there for awhile. Both older members and retired staff can go into this group, so I don't call it a demotion.

Well I trust my staff, so if they say they have a busy month coming up, with loads of school tests or exams, then I won't bug them for this month. However, if they do not become active after that period of time is over, I'm going after them to see what their up to. That's why I always like to have the msn of my staff ^^, so if I don't see them online on the forum, I can bug them there:lol:.

I mostly only demote my staff if they become inactive, and they haven't given up a reason anywhere, not in a pm, or in the away board (I always have a subboard in my staff room where staff can post when their busy or when they won't come online for a while). Depending, I wait around three weeks to about a month and then demote them, in that time I try to pm them.

Thank you all for your input.

I was thinking about a month if they have given ligitimate reasons for being absent. Of course I wouldn't just 'demote' them, but would contact them first either via email or msn to see if I can figure out what is going on.

It's nice to hear what other people do though.