board77

Hey everyone - Estel here. I'm creating "Groups" to put everyone in (so that when we do permissions on a new forum we can just do it for everyone at the same time, rather than each person, one at a time). Anyway, to create groups, we need to designate someone as "Group Moderator." Rather than picking one of the admins, and then having to change it every time the admins rotate, this "Administrator" id was created so there would be a permanent ID for things like that. It's something that's been discussed on and off since I became an admin, and I finally just decided to go ahead and get it done, rather than wait for the boards to open to do it.

Just wanted to let everyone know what was going on.

How does the ID work? I assume it is accessible by only the current admins, of course.

Sounds sensible - certainly would streamline some repetitive and monotonous chores (that's tautologous isn't it - repetitive and monotonous?)

Yay Estel!

T.E.D. to (try to) answer your question: most probably Estel created the ID with a 'secret' password stored in the 'secret' section of the admins and hence only available to Admins. My guess is that the password would be updated/changed on a regular basis in synch with Admin changeovers to avoide 'abuse'

Good call Estel I hope this will go a long way to stop having to do all those manually (what a pain that is/was)

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Resident witch

I think Estel made an excellent choice to create it. Streamlining the work into one ID is a good idea.

Thanks for trying to explain, but I think I'm a bit thick here at the moment:

So, the Administrator ID is the group moderator, and if an admin would need to moderate a group, they'd go to this ID - which I assume only has group moderator powers? Or full admin powers?

And what are groups, in the first place? I don't think I understand the concept of groups.

Yeah, the idea sounds nice and seems to make things easy, but I'd like to hear it all from Estel. Thanks for trying Alandriel! And what you said does make logical sense.

Groups are just that - groups of posters. You define a group (e.g., "all members") and then apply a property to that group (e.g., "access new forum", when a new forum is created such as the Music one, etc.) and that means you don't have to go ticking the permissions from "off" to "on" manually for each member, which was easy when there were 20 something of us, but is incredibly tedious and time-consuming now (as Estel knows only too well ). Bear in mind that for each forum there are switches for seeing the forum, reading its contents, posting in it, editing posts, deleting posts, adding polls and voting for polls. And all those switches have to be flicked for each and every member, every time something changes. See the point of groups now?

Edit: here's a snapshot of what my permissions look like, to clarify this point:

Thanks, Ber - that makes sense!

I was wondering what kind of groups we could be having here, I guess that apart from the Thinking of England forum and the Jury Room, "all members" is very much the only group, so that confused me a bit.
LOL, yes, switching on multiple permissions for 150 people at a time individually sounds like a bit of a headache.

As to the password for the new ID, like Alandriel said, I suppose it needs to be changed whenever an admin leaves the ranks.

The constitutional panel could also be one group that could be easily enabled to post in the Jury Room, as well as people who are undergoing an arbitration... there are several possibilities.

Thanks for the explanation.

Just a note: I've added this information now to the B77 FAQ thread in welcome.

I think it's safe to lock this and unsticky it
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Resident witch

Thanks Alandriel.

'Tis done.