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New administrators?

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ONLY NICE THINGS

07:27 / 21.01.03

Hello darlings,

Just in case, could we have another half-dozen or so administrators? Temporary measure, but they might come in handy in the nearish future...possibly one from each forum?

wembley can change in 28 days

08:09 / 21.01.03

Difference between administrator and moderator? If any?

ONLY NICE THINGS

08:22 / 21.01.03

An administrator has the same powers as a moderator, but can propose and agree/disagree with moderation suggestions anywhere on the board. Basically, they exist to speed up response to mod requests that don;t require particular knowledge of a forum - HTML errors, double posts, trollery, that kind of thing, as I understand it.

08:59 / 21.01.03

I don't reckon there's any immediate cause for alarm...

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:15 / 21.01.03

Oh, nor do I. I do think it's best to be ahead of the curve on this one, but assuming that creating and removing administrators is pretty easy I would suggest only that Tom could possibly have a think about the possible names of a few emergency shovellers in case things get messy.

09:33 / 21.01.03

Yeah, possibly - depending whether the next couple of days start to look shitstormy. At the moment, there aren't many Moderator Actions being generated, but this may reflect forum-specific mods being particularly efficient within their own spheres.

13:41 / 21.01.03

I don't think it's a bad idea, but I agree with 'Nesh in that it's doubtful there's much cause for alarm on the present. On the other hand, I don't want poor Tom getting overwhelmed and cranky a la the bleak days of the Knodger...

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:02 / 21.01.03

Perhaps we just need to make sure that Tom knows that if he needs us, he just needs to blow the Horn of Gondor and we will be there.

Unless we're down at the river throwing stones at Gollum.

15:25 / 21.01.03

Indeed. Assigning temporary administrators in times of emergency (trolls at the gate!) is a fine idea, good in that the promotion is temporary and life goes back to normal again once the situation is resolved. Kind of like Barbelith going on alert.

15:32 / 21.01.03

Code Teal! "Seriously Concerned"

14:08 / 22.01.03

Well, I don't mind doing that sort of stuff. I'd like to see a picture of the Administrator Hat, though.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:08 / 22.01.03

It's fucking enormous. And teal. As I say, on reflection if the mechanisms are easy I suggest Tom maybe gives some thought to a shortliest of maybe one person from each forum who could lend a hand to the wheel if a situation developed that would otherwise involve lots of heavy lifting for the moderators or for Tom himself.

15:17 / 22.01.03

15:18 / 22.01.03

Those are early prototypes of the current administrator's hat.

15:58 / 22.01.03

So that's Tom in the center, yeah? Leading a new administrator through her training?

16:48 / 22.01.03

This is a good idea. I've also thought that it would be good to be able to lock threads again, to leave them to perish naturally. Either that or have a relegate function that either keeps a thread from being viewable in the forum headlines on the main page. At least then we have a signal/noise filter which allows for trollish ones to not dominate the top of the forum. Or am I being over-paranoid about said potential shitstorm?

Matthew Fluxington

17:28 / 22.01.03

I'm around my computer a lot lately, and have no problem taking on some administration duties. If you want me, you got me.

17:40 / 22.01.03

I'm not convinced that there's any need for more administrators. Surely the number of moderators in each forum covers any possible problems? This all seems like a bad case of overkill.

I'd like to see the return of the ability to lock threads, though.

ONLY NICE THINGS

19:47 / 22.01.03

I love your optimism, Randy. But no. The number of moderators was not sufficient to handle the last serious trolling of the board, and Tom had to get personally involved, in a way that is a) antithetical to the distibuted moderating model and b) not much fun.

For example, in the Head Shop the mods are Tom Coates, wembley, Deva, Nick, CherieLaBombe, Mister Disco and me. Tom has a lot of things to handle, Nick is currently absent from the board, Disco and Deva are very rarely present, Cherie has limited access and I am not online at the weekends much. So, on any given weekend there might not be enough people to authorise a move or delete thread request, even counting the two administrators. And you can do an awful lot in a weekend....this is a concern, I feel, especially as the firts reposting of a deleted (as offtopic) post has just occurred, which is the thin end of the trollspam wedge....

Locking threads would also be good, of course.

20:51 / 22.01.03

As somebody who obviously spends his working day writing and not surfing the internet, I'm obviously not available if you need administrators. Obviously.

20:58 / 22.01.03

Y'know, there's a part of me that thinks focusing back the same tactics back on the originator is justifiable. Imagine: a concerted moderator effort to edit all hir's previous posts with random preachy links from all manner of sources, so that it disrupts the flow of even his disjointed multi-sourced ramblings. Interspersed with "This is what you're doing to Barbelith. So we decided to do it to you."

Common sense says that wouldn't be wise, but I've just read the whole damn Conversation thread and it's put me in a mood for a pissing contest. Thank God you're all here to talk sense to me.

Jack The Bodiless

21:52 / 22.01.03

Might have helped if all the people who helped the thread in question get to four fucking pages in five days stopped enjoying the sound of their own 'voices' and ignored the silly bastard. Maybe making a pertinent comment elsewhere (here, for example), or by private message to someone capable of doing whatever it is you think should be done about it. And yes, yes, you've all put hir down for being wanky, and been wery wery amusing doing it. Shall we put the 'DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS' sign back up now and stop being so self-righteous? Thought not.

Ever thought there might be less need for more administrators if some of the behaviour that encouraged this crap was taken in hand? It's not like no one's mentioned the idea before...

(sigh) Never mind. It's like talking to cheese...

Jack The Bodiless

21:54 / 22.01.03

post script to say - obviously not a retort to darling brother, or everyone on the board. Equally, a hell of a lot of people should know better, and appear to have a lot of time to waste being sarcastic in the same old ways...

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:26 / 22.01.03

Actually, Jack, I took care to explain at some length to the boy why his posts in the "online activism" thread, which is the only one currently preoccupying me, were being moved for deletion, and asked him to suggest a new title and topic abstract. Flyboy did something similar in the "Boycott 8 mile" thread. The evidence from his response to these rather polite and fairly standard mod actions, and the entirety of the "er...boycott Barbelith...it stole my posts" demonstrates to my mind fairly conclusively that the moment any attempt had been made to disagree with the boy, sugest another viewpoint or ask him to moderate himself, much less do the job for him, this situation would have come into being. "Concerned Concentric Citizen" is just a byproduct, however pokey and silly people are being. Personally, I stand by my belief that it did and does not belong in the Head Shop and anyone who had spent a moment thinking or investigating Barbelith before posting would have realised that if they had even a picogram of sense.

The boy has the methods of the Greenland Posse and the attitude (cries of freedom of speech, accusation censorship, threats against the person, demands to be "left alone") of vintage Knodger. Do you honestly believe it was ever *not* going to turn into this?

01:20 / 23.01.03

Checking out instances of past behaviour might be useful at this juncture...

02:37 / 23.01.03

Haus> Maybe it's time to look at the Head Shop moderator list with an eye to getting a few more people involved? I don't see much point in Tom being included there, for a start - surely he receives all moderation requests anyway?

ONLY NICE THINGS

02:48 / 23.01.03

Yes - Tom has administrator powers in effect, so can indeed mod anywhere. We coudl certainly do with a few more head shop mods - I suggested LLBIMG, but he wasn't up for the hassle (speaking of which, whatever happened ot him?) Alternatively, we could campaign to get Nick and Deva and Mister Disco back, thus solving the problem and making the world a better place.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:28 / 23.01.03

The "standby" admin idea seems the most sensible and least heavy-handed.

Cheers for that link, 'nesh... makes very interesting reading. (my favourite response being "ExcuseMySarcasm" on the subject of the "8-Mile Boycott"- "Saw it 143 times in the last hour alone.")

12:07 / 23.01.03

Um...I know it's not really the answer we want, but if a certain recent addition to the 'lith takes things to the point where the board begins to suffer, can't Tom just ban the offending IP address?

12:11 / 23.01.03

Yes, suits can be banned. Again, though, we're far from the point where that can be justified.

Drop the gun and step away from it.

12:36 / 23.01.03

I'm not finding the present situation to be so bad... I'm not going into the threads in question, and there's still activity on good threads across the board. I think that was not the case in the last crisis...

But I was wondering, do administrators have the ability to stitch together threads? What I'm saying is... if threads are being disposed of in Conversation ---and the subject and style of these threads is basically similar-- then can they be made into one megathread? Nothing would be destroyed, except perhaps continuity --but that's already not a striking feature of these threads, is it? Then we would have to deal with one giant Hydra head rather than lots of heads and the other Convo threads would have a better chance of getting to the top of the pile? But the other thread would still be open for business, for all or any comers.

13:43 / 23.01.03

Apparently Tom has this power, but it's a major hassle.

I'm not sure there's any problem that administrators could solve that couldn't be solved by just having more moderators in each forum. Or at least making sure that all the moderators are more or less "awake," or "active" or whatever.

14:53 / 23.01.03

But I love the sound of my own (virtual) voice, Jack.

I don't really cotton to the idea of locking threads too much - reminds me of the Christian BBS. On the other hand, if things got of hand it might be a worthwhile ability. I don't think I'm around often enough to be worthy of administrator status, but I know plenty of you are.

That said, Jack has made an excellent point with "Don't Feed the Trolls." I suspect some attention-hounding here.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:01 / 23.01.03

Grant - generally, yes, but I'm thinking specifically of times when the board is being overwhelmed with lots of things that need modding simultaneously. Think of it like this - there are 12 forums, and it takes 3 people to authorise a thread move or delete. Therefore, you'd need 36 moderators (realistically fewer, since some people mod more than one forum, and the greater your likelihood of being online, as a rule of thumb, the greater your chance of modding more than 1 forum) to delete an offensive thread if it were posted in every forum, if we had no administrators. Comic books, say, would probably take several days minimum for each move. With two administrators, it would take 24 moderators and 1 administrator, or 12 moderators and 2 administrators to be online, which stikes me as a reasonable balance. If Tom gets involved, we have three administrators, and theoretically while they are all online a thread doesn't *have* to have any moderators active at all. The more administrators there are, the fewer moderators need to be online to keep fora clean of attacks. The smaller the chance of an attack or other situation requiring a large number of people with the power to moderate, the fewer administrators are essentially needed.

In general, I agree that some fora either have fewer mods or fewer active mods than others, and in the longer term this should hopefully be rectified. I'm just suggesting temporary contingencies for a situation that hopefully we will not need to deal with.

16:46 / 23.01.03

Cherry> I look on thread-locking as being useful if somone starts up a thread about a topic already covered, but does so with a first post worth keeping, or in those threads like 'Concentric Citizen Concern', where it's for the best if that thread isn't allowed to take over the forum (or the board), but deleting it may backfire. Sure, CBBS shows just how badly (well?) thread-locking can be misused, but I don't think anyone here's likely to use it simply to try to shut someone up.

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