Rate The Administration

Come here to voice your comments, concerns, and questions with the mayor and their aides!

Does the ToO leadership system need to be changed?

Poll ended at Sat Dec 31, 2005 11:09 pm

Yes! - The system is not working!
13
26%
No! - Things are being run just fine!
37
74%
 
Total votes: 50

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Eugene Blackgaard
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Post by Eugene Blackgaard »

I believe we need more people with full admin priveledges. Sometimes, those are exactly what is needed to fix a problem. The person or persons elected would have to be very trusted members of the board.

A mayor and cop have a very specific and important function that goes beyond being admins. An extra admin or two not obligated to the politics of the board and being able to simply help when and where they can would be a good thing.
Jennifer Doyle wrote:
Eugene Blackgaard wrote:I ment elected, I'm sorry. 0_o

Anyways, I disagree minorly because I believe the elected officials, the mayor and COP should be expected to be around constantly, answer PMs, and serve the people at all times. It's why they were elected. Not because they had the coolest sigs or avvies, or how popular they were, we hold these elections to find out who is most qualified to co-run the ToO. At least, that's what I thought the elections were about.
The mayor and C.o.p. cannot be here 24/7, they shouldn't be expected to, period. People have school and jobs outside of this message board, we can't really expect them to stay here all the time making sure everything is perfect.
Exactly why more people would increase the ability to solve a problem when it arises.
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Shadowpaw
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Post by Shadowpaw »

COWBOY OF TEXAS wrote:I don't mean to sound dictator-like, but what if all those elected to the admin position by the people retain some of their power? Like being global mods like Top and EB? That way, those who are elected by the people are in charge. But even though they are out of office, they will not have the full admin privleges as Shadowpaw and the Mayor/Cop.
This goes back to forward thinking... that's fine right now. But a year from now? Having 10 global moderators seems a little excessive... I think leaving who gets to be global moderators up to the serving administration is the right thing to do. The former admins don't necessarily need to be the ones considered for that job... I won't endorse anyone, but I can think of a handful of people who would make wonderful global moderators that have not won an election (or even ran in one).

As far as Top/EB not having global mod positions in the election thread, I've fixed that and they do now have access there too.
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The Top Crusader
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Post by The Top Crusader »

Eugene Blackgaard wrote:I believe we need more people with full admin priveledges. Sometimes, those are exactly what is needed to fix a problem. The person or persons elected would have to be very trusted members of the board.
We will form the first GALACTIC EMPIRE! :pray:
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Jennifer Doyle
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Post by Jennifer Doyle »

Eugene Blackgaard wrote:
Exactly why more people would increase the ability to solve a problem when it arises.
Which is what everyone is suggesting.
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Eugene Blackgaard
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Post by Eugene Blackgaard »

More people in a full power position, that is.
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Post by COWBOY OF TEXAS »

Santapaw wrote:
COWBOY OF TEXAS wrote:I don't mean to sound dictator-like, but what if all those elected to the admin position by the people retain some of their power? Like being global mods like Top and EB? That way, those who are elected by the people are in charge. But even though they are out of office, they will not have the full admin privleges as Shadowpaw and the Mayor/Cop.
This goes back to forward thinking... that's fine right now. But a year from now? Having 10 global moderators seems a little excessive... I think leaving who gets to be global moderators up to the serving administration is the right thing to do. The former admins don't necessarily need to be the ones considered for that job... I won't endorse anyone, but I can think of a handful of people who would make wonderful global moderators that have not won an election (or even ran in one).

As far as Top/EB not having global mod positions in the election thread, I've fixed that and they do now have access there too.
Consider having the former admins as global mods a quick fix for now. But later having only those who have been admins in the previous 2 elections as global mods. That way there is only 4 global mods at a time. (Not ten or twenty.)

Or we could just do what you said and let the admins pick who they want as global mods. ;)

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Post by Shadowpaw »

We'll still need to wait for the results, but I'm thinking the best course of action at this point in time is to leave things as they are and with the next election, add a third member to the campaign teams. The idea of a constant backup admin has merit, but there's no guarantee a backup administrator will be on everytime I'm not or any of the other admins are (thus, we certainly want to elect someone who will be on fairly regularly, if nothing else). As for myself, I just missed tonight's incident by a hair (I was on 30 minutes before and 40 minutes afterward... Catspaw herself logged off just minutes before the post was made). A quarter of an hour here or there, and this wouldn't even be an issue right now.

Unfortunately, since there was a handful of people who were on when Bmuntz, Catspaw, and myself weren't... this turned into a big issue with people who's hands were tied to stop it. If we did have a backup administrator who was not visiting the board at the very minute a problem arose, what then? We would then need to add a second backup administrator for the backup and then a third to be backup for the second.... and so on. There needs to be some logical limits in place, and while I find many disadvantages with having a backup administrator, I can find none by simply adding a third candidate to the election ballot. They are elected, they are accountable, and the 3 admins, plus myself, plus the team of moderators (which currently number 13) should be plenty to handle the few problems we ever encounter on this board.
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The Top Crusader
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Post by The Top Crusader »

I know! Everyone could instantly be granted administrative status upon registry!!
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Post by STRYPER »

Santapaw wrote:They are elected, they are accountable, and the 3 admins, plus myself, plus the team of moderators (which currently numbers 13) should be plenty to handle the few problems we ever encounter on this board.
I fail to see how this scripture applys to anything :headscratch:

:shock: You want to have ToO spies?!?!?!
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Post by Shadowpaw »

STRYPER wrote:
Santapaw wrote:They are elected, they are accountable, and the 3 admins, plus myself, plus the team of moderators (which currently numbers 13) should be plenty to handle the few problems we ever encounter on this board.
I fail to see how this scripture applys to anything :headscratch:

:shock: You want to have ToO spies?!?!?!
For those lost (I edited it shortly after I noticed the mistake), STRYPER is referring to the fact I originally had "numbers 13" instead of "number 13"... so it linked to a passage from the Bible ;).
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Post by Me »

I don't even think that there needs to be another person with admin powers. A moderator would have been sufficient to deal with the public part of the problem (the deleting of the thread). The rest of the fix (ip banning) isn't so urgent, and can certainly wait until an admin happens to get on.

Also consider, that as far as I am aware, this is the only issue like this that we have had in the eight months the board has been operating so far. I don't feel that 45 minutes of trouble justifies the addition of another admin position.
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Post by STRYPER »

just trying to help \:D/
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Post by Shadowpaw »

Me wrote:I don't even think that there needs to be another person with admin powers. A moderator would have been sufficient to deal with the public part of the problem (the deleting of the thread). The rest of the fix (ip banning) isn't so urgent, and can certainly wait until an admin happens to get on.

Also consider, that as far as I am aware, this is the only issue like this that we have had in the eight months the board has been operating so far. I don't feel that 45 minutes of trouble justifies the addition of another admin position.
That's true too... I'm just throwing the three admins thing out there as a compromise for those who feel things need to be changed around here ;). The reason no one had moderator privileges in that board was because it dealt with the election, and many candidates are on the mayoral staff. Not that I don't trust them not to mess with people's platforms ;).... but I didn't think it was necessary.

But I made an oversight with the guest posting... and it bit us. Guest posting is no longer possible on any board and users need to be approved by the administration before being allowed to join (this has been in effect all month) so the chances of a similar occurence are small... unless one of our own members is the cause of it. I still feel that between Catspaw, Bmuntz and myself, we all spend a great deal of time on here... and the majority of the candidates running for the next election all spend a great deal of time here too. This has never been a problem in the past, and like you said Me, 45 minutes before a resolution should not be cause for panic. Things really do run smoothly here (in my humble opinion) and I try to be on as often as possible... this board is my baby and I don't want to see it get hurt :noway:.
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Post by EK »

Oh no I voted yes but I meant no!

Anywho, I think that Bmuntz and Catspaw have been doing a great job admining the forums with great coolness and such. The number of admins should stay the same for now and I think you should at least wait until we have 500 members to even consider making another admin slot, the global moderators should be still put in place and everything because they can delete the posts and the admins can clean it up. Also, with the mayor and CoP I think you should give them a basic idea of how to run the admin panel Shadowpaw, phpBB2 has a BIG admin panel and with all the mods you have its probably even harder to navigate.

EDIT: But I will say that IP checking should be turned on so that mods could report the IP of these users.
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Post by Linne »

I'll add my two cents here. I was one of the first to notice the inappropriate posts last night, and I wasn't able to stay on to see what happened, but I was thinking that something needed to be done a lot faster than was happening. My reasoning was that I was almost certain that at least a mod was on, although hidden, and I was thinking that they needed to be able to take care of it.

But I'm happy with the way things are. If we added any more mods, we'd have more mods than members! Because the admins have other things to do, I was glad they were able to fix the problem as quickly as they did.
Last edited by Linne on Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by J-man »

Eon Spitfire EK V2.exe wrote:Oh no I voted yes but I meant no!

Anywho, I think that Bmuntz and Catspaw have been doing a great job admining the forums with great coolness and such. The number of admins should stay the same for now and I think you should at least wait until we have 500 members to even consider making another admin slot, the global moderators should be still put in place and everything because they can delete the posts and the admins can clean it up. Also, with the mayor and CoP I think you should give them a basic idea of how to run the admin panel Shadowpaw, phpBB2 has a BIG admin panel and with all the mods you have its probably even harder to navigate.

EDIT: But I will say that IP checking should be turned on so that mods could report the IP of these users.
I did the the same thing, I accidently voted yes instead of no. I thought it was the opposite. Anyway, I think the ToO is running fine. And EK, when you have a phpBB that's modified this much, you ave a huge admin panel. The basic ones aren't that bad.
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Post by Shadowpaw »

Eon Spitfire EK V2.exe wrote:Anywho, I think that Bmuntz and Catspaw have been doing a great job admining the forums with great coolness and such. The number of admins should stay the same for now and I think you should at least wait until we have 500 members to even consider making another admin slot, the global moderators should be still put in place and everything because they can delete the posts and the admins can clean it up. Also, with the mayor and CoP I think you should give them a basic idea of how to run the admin panel Shadowpaw, phpBB2 has a BIG admin panel and with all the mods you have its probably even harder to navigate.
Catspaw and Bmuntz can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe both have a fairly good grasp of the admin panel... in fact, I think the only person who had trouble understanding the whole thing was The Top Crusader ;).
Eon Spitfire EK V2.exe wrote:EDIT: But I will say that IP checking should be turned on so that mods could report the IP of these users.
Well, the reason IP abilities were turned off was to A) Protect the identities of the NPCs and B) The mods don't really need that information.

Catspaw has been incredibly diligent in reporting duplicate accounts and I too monitor IPs with every new user who posts... in addition to random spot checks. Knowing an IP address won't really help the moderators in anyway though, at least not a way that I can think of... plus it defeats the purpose of the NPCs if nearly 15 members each administration know who they are ;).

PS We'll keep your mistake in voting (as well as J-man) when we tally the votes in 3 days time!
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Post by Blipadouzi »

Santapaw wrote:Today we had an incident where an inappropriate message was posted (though thankfully removed within the same hour)

However, the member who contacted me indicated the leadership here is too inadequte to deal with the problems that arise and we don't have enough manpower to efficiently address problems.
The problem was resolved in less than an hour...and that's a problem? I mean, is the Administration supposed to have a 24/7 watchdog on the board?

Personally, considering that the personel in the Admin have lives outside of this board AND it is the holiday season, responding in less than an hour is an OUTSTANDING response time.


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Post by Agent Robert Mitchell »

I would say that the current system seems to be working quite smoothly. Although I haven't been on this board long enough to see any difference between the current state and any other state, I would agree that the admins have done a wonderful job. :D Additionally, I would also agree with blipadouzi in his point that the admins do have a life of their own. We shouldn't expect superhuman speed in solving problems.
Last edited by Agent Robert Mitchell on Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Shad Lexer »

Under one hour? That's really fast, unless you expect admins to be on every second of the day. I think everything has been going fine. A couple global mods wouldn't hurt, though.
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