What should you look for?

[sunken]

If you were going to hire a paid poster to post regularly, what do you look for?  I would think good communication skills would be a must.  But beyond that, a person who may be a bit less grammatically correct and far more knowledgable would certainly be of more value in my opinion.  What is your opinion?  Is quality speech more or less important than first hand knowledge?

[admin]

That's a good question.  I would argue that knowledge trumps good written language skills in most cases.  I'd rather have someone post 1 message on my board that was thoughtful and creative and than 10 posts that were boring but grammatically impectable.  Of course, if the topic of the message board was something like writing or literature and the audience was used to reading perfect English, then the opposite might be true.

[jbruce]

Knowledge or even an interest in the topic is a must.  A general interest in the topic might even be better than someone really knowledgeable in the subject because they will ask a lot of questions that could spark a good conversation among the other posters.

[RYF]

I would look for correct grammar usage, but even more than that, great spelling. One of my biggest pet peeves among forum posters happens to be ridiculous posts that make no sense whatsoever, so I would be sure to refrain from hiring somebody who made posts like that.