2019-07-08 05:31:43

I'm starting out with the assumption that all staff will be becoming admins over the next little while because why not.
Back to the point though. I think we need a new type of staff member.
These people would be administrators in the forum software, but be given a specific rank title to denote their different rank. I’m calling them forum maintainers, but that can obviously change.
What these people can do.
1: unrestrict members.
2: move topics around.
3: close topics that have gotten incredibly out of hand to await moderator intervention.
What these people cannot do.
1: hand out punishments of any sort. They can close a topic, in case a thread gets really bad, think one of the Redspot threads, but a moderator can reopen it if it was deemed to be a mistake. If they start closing too many threads needlessly, then they’re kicked out.
2: vote on staff issues or see the main staff list.
3: speak for staff in any way.
Because they cannot issue punishments, a lot of long-time forum members who would not be comfortable with being actual mods could easily fill these positions. They would technically have the power to ban a user, because of how the software worked, but as mentioned by Jayde in another topic, anything a rogue administrator does can easily be undone. The kinds of people I invasion being in this role are people like Ethone, Defender, Ironcross, Basically any long-standing forum member who doesn’t act like a 12 year old, because they’re not required to make serious moral judgement calls and just exist to make things run smoothly.
Why, you ask?
1: we’d need less moderators as these maintainers would keep the forum running more or less smoothly on a day to day basis.
2: It would make the forum look more organized.
3: if something really did get out of hand, a topic could be closed before it went too insane, even if no moderators were around.
These stafff would be treated the same as regular members when it came to warnings and bans, with the addendum
that if they overstep their outlined role, they're instabanned for at least a month.

2019-07-08 06:19:34 (edited by Ethin 2019-07-08 06:20:13)

And here is where we hit the limits of this forum software. To my knowledge the software possesses no form of privilege delegation. The last time I used PunBB on a server I ran, a few years ago -- around 2017 or so, you were either a member, moderator or administrator; there was no in between. This could be managed via an add-on, but then we hit the language barrier (the website that allows you to acquire the forum software is not English to my knwoledge).

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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2019-07-08 08:20:55

Hi.

As far as I know Richard and Sendermen are both from the netherlands, the forum is hosted on a dutsh server,so I suppose the main interface would be dutsh as well, it shouldn't be to hard finding someone who can speak the language a tad better then me.

in fact, I know a hand full of people who are responsible and know the language.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2019-07-08 12:42:24

That would require code changes to my knowledge. Something that cannot be done unless Richard and Senderman do it.

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2019-07-08 13:08:05

Exactly, and as admin we can't access server side stuff anyway. And as i have said many times, the hosts are not responding to emails what so ever.

2019-07-08 13:18:08

@1 thumbs up. just a shame that the owners of this website won't respond to emails.

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2019-07-08 13:55:17

With the number of admin we actually have now, I don't think any of the things cited will actually be a problem, honestly.
So I feel this suggestion, while well-intended, is a little pointless. It also can't be done, for reasons others have already gotten to.

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2019-07-08 15:55:49

Any reason why the forum couldn't be moved away to another plattform? I'm not entirely sure on how high the server costs are currently, or how they stack up against those of other hosting providers, but having admins not responding to emails from the forum admins is quite worrysome in my opinion.

Greetings Moritz.

Hail the unholy church of Satan, go share it's greatness.

2019-07-08 16:18:06

Actually, making custom ranks in punbb is possible, from the administration panel if you're an admin. Feel free to contact me if you need more info on this.

2019-07-08 16:34:46

@8.
I see what you're saying, I've made this suggestion with absolutely no idea how many staff members there are. What it would do though is reduce the workload all around. If it's not doable, then oh well. I put it out there in case it'd help.

2019-07-08 20:04:14

As I remember you can indeed make custom ranks, however you cannot delineate privileges within that set of ranks. So, you could create another rank with moderator abilities, EG the ability to stick/unstick topics, move topics around, ban members and edit posts, but not the admin abilities like changing member rank status from restricted to full members, but you couldn't create another custom rank with some of the admin abilities and some of the mod ones, and since  the crucial ability, for unrestricting members is an admin ability,  any custom rank you created would effectively be another administrator with the same abilities as any admin, and the same access to the forum's back end, which manifestly you don't want to give to just anybody.


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Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2019-07-08 21:13:09

@10, many have suggested this, but I don't see it as being possible. Unless the Owners are willing to give us control of the forum DB so we can move the posts too. If we can't do that though,the only option would be to start fresh... which may or may not benefit us in the long run.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
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2019-07-08 21:15:16

Sorry but I had to giggle when the term access to the forum's back end came up.
I'll show my 12-year-old self to the door now.

Much less active on this forum than in the past.

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2019-07-13 00:17:50

quitte troublesome that the site owners aren't responding to emails... Are they even still around?

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2019-07-14 03:59:20

@1 this is a good idea. however idk if the site owners cenderman and richard would even do it. they have not been active in the forum.

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2019-07-14 08:50:26

If we ever did have to start over, first of all I would hope that the existing forum could be kept around as a read-only archive because there's a ton of history here. But second, I've been looking at PHPBB, another web forum system, and apparently one of the more popular ones since it's the first Google result for PHP web forum. PHPBB does allow you to define various moderator roles, which means you could have, say, low-level moderators who could only, say, close and move topics, approve new users, possibly edit posts (to remove links to cracks/clones/etc.), but not do anything else. PHPBB also includes a mechanism for giving warnings to users, and a user feedback mechanism so staff can keep notes on troublesome users, etc. It also allows for forums (what we would call rooms) to be only visible to certain users or groups, so there could be an on-site staff discussion area that mortals couldn't get at.

2019-07-15 12:37:56

@16 hmmm. interesting. is it accessible though?

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2019-07-15 15:05:37

@17, yeah, though we'd need to modify the themes a bit.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github