I disagree, Reverend, about a private forum being replaced by emailing. If a forum is set up in an orderly fashion, then information can be retrieved from it in the future.
Well, maybe yes, I would agree by retrieving information in the future... Still, what use of private forums when it's much more interesting to read many views of the point you are talking about?
Past discussions can be very helpful and can be easily updated on a private forum. Also people tend to be a bit more open about private matters on a private forum than they are on a public one. Of course, a small forum may also become deserted after a while.
Are you participating in any private forums, BTW?
Moderating a big forum is a hell of a lot of work even if you set up a group of moderators.
Not as difficult as it may seem like. Setting up takes something like a week, or a bit more to test if everything is working, then moderating - not more than 20 minutes a day, and you can still moderate it 3 times a week if you want.
Unless you make a forum accessible through a fee or full of banners which pay you some money, you cannot hire anybody.
Your forum must be REALLY good to earn something on banners. We have a forum, discussion on Christianity hosted on the Web site of one monastery in Ukraine. There are more than 100 visitors daily. We used to put a Google Adsense there, and it earned around 10 EURO per month, so we took it off there, since those ads were a bit annoying...
If you set up a fee to join a forum, I think very few people would choose to pay. Earning from banners, or context ads is more preferrable, but forum has to be really popular to earn at least 200-300 USD per month.
