board77

Thanks Jny for opening this :mrgreen: The flu has me somewhat fuzzy headed and I need to formulate my thoughts properly on all this before throwing a post in. But I wanted to say one thing now from my point of view:

I would never want to see a mod position created for B77 even if we open our doors one day in the future.

What I would want is having a system set up and ready in case one day we get into the position of needing it - a contingency plan for 'emergies' if you want. And for that we'll need to sort out these questions and I'll get back to you all when my brain feels less like jelly.

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Resident witch

Ow Alandriel... lots of sympathy from here Take care and get well soon!

Get well soon Alandriel, and don't take RL too hard.

So what do we need?

A troll patrol (or a short squad ) - for detecting trolls
or The Éorlingas - for welcoming newbies as a tutoring system ?

A Council (for petitions)

The Stewards ( for Admin-tasks )


something else?

Please, no Steward title... too TORC-like for comfort. :D

Maybe let's not complicate too much. I think all we need is those Admins-shirrifs. Maybe add to that a couple of On-duty Techies who know how these boards work. But no mods in the TORC sense.

We need not worry about power trips or anything like that if they rotate. Seriously. Add a rule that no one may be an admin twice in a row, and it's foolproof.

If we have complete transparency, it doesn't need to be complicated. The public will know about everything that happens when it happens, I don't see an inch of space for an admin to abuse the system.


I mean we want to try complete transparency, right? It's a radical step away from what we knew at TORC but it's a sensible one I think.

There are Stewards at TORC?

sorry then, Ber, I just wanted to find names for the jobs that would be a bit Tolkienesk, as I thought I felt a common dislike against calling the admining job a "Mod".....

:mrgreen:

How about something humbling. Like...Janitors.

LOL, I like janitors
Areanor: mods on TORC are "Stewards of Imladris".

:mrgreen:

LOL, Ber, I really forgot that.........

shows that I'm not paying attention to the Mods on TORC......
:mrgreen:

Good point

How about Rangers?

I like the idea of an all-encompassing jack-of-all-trades to do the Sheriffing (or Rangering) - the necessary board clean up of trolls and keeping the peace, and a band of techno-geeks willing and able to do the technical stuff.

The techies could be a permanent, large motley crew who could be called upon, while the sheriff would be temporary, one-rotation only. And I don't like the idea of hierarchy - it's simply a matter of who picks up the broom for a bit.

How about no mod's, even mod's in nice tweed jackets mascarading as hot dog salesmen.

Much safer, much less open to abuse.

Din, but if you don't have ANYONE who has access to admin functions, who's gonna do stuff like make stickies, count polls, delete 15x posts, upgrade the software, you know, all that shit that needs to be done?

I think we all agree that we don't want a squad of vigilantes, but even right now we have admins. Because we need them. Now, if I know someone is there for three months because I chose them, then I don't want them to be afraid of making a quick decision. Like banning the guy who posts virus links in all the forums. Or whatever. They're rare cases.

My initial draft made them much more involved- okay, I was just drafting. Let's scrap that. No mod involvement. It can work. But there has to be an emergency plan. If like I said earlier, no individual quick decision by a mod/admin/whateverwecallem is final, and has to be discussed openly on the boards (even the banning of mr virus) then I don't see what problem there could be.

It's either that, or give everyone admin status. Someone has to have it, otherwise we'll drown in technical problems.

Tribunes. Tribunes of the people. Elected to do the admin jobs, preside in court cases and speak the law.

Boo, I'm too romanesque these days.

Mummpizz

Will be back with something more constructive.

Tribunes, Rangers, all good choices
And I still think that even if we don't have them, we need to have a Plan B in case we need them.

Rodia wrote:

Din, but if you don't have ANYONE who has access to admin functions, who's gonna do stuff like make stickies, count polls, delete 15x posts, upgrade the software, you know, all that shit that needs to be done?

As far as the stickies, polls, deleting...well just give the mods the power to do so. Heck we could even let normal posters do that if we wanted.

Well.

No mods. That's been our 'dream' from the start, and I think we should try it.

But we do have to have some sort of conflict management (for lack of a better word) on here. And I don't think the admins should be relied upon to do that; they are the Tech People, right? Plus, separation of power and all that. (Leoba's got me going on that one now :mrgreen: )

I have a suggestion. Let's conduct a little experiment. A pre-operating study of sorts, if you will. Right now all this is pretty much a thought experiment. Let's take it a step further. In order to know how to fix things and deal with stuff, we need to know what exactly can "break". Let's:

1) appoint two, maybe three members of this board "troublemakers". (ME! PICK ME! PLEASE, PICK MEEEEEEEEE! *cough*) They would preferrably register a "troublemaker" ID as opposed to using their regular ID, but everybody would know it's an experiment of course, and who's behind the troublemaker ID.

2) have them behave like a) trolls, b) abusive posters harassing another poster (preferrably another of the troublemaker ID people), c) whatever else we think a future real troublemaker could possibly come up with.

3) Come to think of it, we should maybe consider having an experiment forum, because I for one definitely wouldn't want to have it all over the board.

4) And lastly, come up with ideas, solutions, see things we've overlooked, and as a final product, hopefully have our own unique way to deal with things related to "modding" or whatever we want to call it.

Now, I know probably everyone on here has had some experience with trolls and the like, and I don't want to re-invent the wheel here; I am hoping that as we go along we may see problems (and solutions!) we haven't been thinking of before, and one advantage is that we can always put the experiment on pause, discuss what's been going on, come up with solutions, and then start the experiment again and apply them. This would be a group process.

(Necessary disclaimer: This idea may be totally stupid, I freely admit, but if it is I don't see it because I had my sociology class today and I'm on a sociology high of some sort. Chances are I'll re-read this tomorrow and hide under my desk in shame. Ahem.)

Ummm ... I prefer to battle a real troll if he (it?) shows up instead of slapping you, disguised as "troublemaker".

And having you (as "troublemaker") telling me that I'm fat and ugly and don't know my latin (as I am really slender and pretty etc).