A Message From the Administrators

There has recently been some confusion over the roles of administrators. Our duties are delineated here. The admins' roles vary greatly, so I'll briefly elaborate on our constant efforts to improve the site. Though we always want to interact with our users, we must sometimes focus on behind-the-scenes work in order to maintain the community we all enjoy. Because of the nature of our roles as administrators, these efforts are often difficult for users to measure, but rest assured that we work constantly to make your experience as enjoyable as possible.

I'll show just a few of the duties of two administrators to emphasize the magnitude of our important, but often latent, work.

Govind (administrative supervisor)
Since October I have written...

• a vBulletin plugin
• two Admin Control Panel scripts, and assisted with the creation of another
• a desktop application to assist other administrators with their duties
• template fixes
• minor additions to the database
• so many standalone SQL queries that I've lost count of them
• various other technical improvements, generally assisting Sythe and Matthew at their request, etc.

Most of these developments are very sensitive and cannot be elaborated on in this thread; they involve, for example, methods for tracking ban evaders.

I'll elaborate on the least-involved and least-sensitive development recently implemented. The satisfaction of the community is our most important goal. To keep the forum clean of theft and spam we must ensure that our moderators remain active and helpful, but monitoring moderator activity in such a large forum is difficult. vBulletin regrettably lacks a tracking system suitable for the very specific needs of this site and its users. Staff activity is measured each month and demotions for inactivity are based on these monthly reports.

I find it regrettable that, without a clear understanding what it did, and what its primary intention was, the "Moderator Log" system built into vBulletin was selected as a way to measure staff activity for the past few years. To clarify, the purpose of Moderator Logs is for investigation of unwanted actions of moderators, and to reverse damage done in the event of a break-in. When using moderator logs to measure activity, only inline moderation is logged (meaning that bans and infractions are not), and resolving a scam report would earn a moderator the same merit as resolving a spam report.

Recognizing this shortfall, Matthew and I took the initiative to develop a new system called Mod Scores, which helps ensure moderator activity with functions tailored to the needs of Sythe.org.



Those activities which take more time and effort to resolve than others are multiplied by an appropriate coefficient; scam reports are worth a certain number of spam reports, for example.

These posts were all made in Staff Feedback shortly after the new activity system was introduced.

This development, though time-consuming and important to site maintenance, is invisible to ordinary users. Despite this, it benefits them by ensuring the moderators remain accountable for cleaning the site and assisting the users - and the result of it, as you can see, is not as latent as the reason behind it.


Verts (general administrator)

A general administrator's role, very different and equally important, is similarly difficult for users to assess.

As a friend of hers off-site, I would say that Verts has undergone several challenging life experiences of late, but her determination to fulfill her responsibilities as an administrator on Sythe.org is reflected in her continual work. She has extensively helped the site despite these challenges, sacrificing what little free time she has to help the community. She continues to accomplish her duties more than adequately, which include...

• IP bans
• distributing TwC ranks
• assisting the other administrators in staff management
• adding and altering forums as necessary
• contributing to staff discussions

​

Again, these are only a handful of ways that we as administrators help the community at large. I've only delineated the duties of two administrators, but you can find each of our unique tasks here.

It's important to understand that we often need to sacrifice time we would love to spend interacting with our users in order to complete a wide array of duties that are important to the safety and efficiency of the site. We show our appreciation to you by tirelessly working at tasks that often go unnoticed, and enjoy working together with our users to continually build a better community, and we wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Happy holidays, Sythe.org ^_^

- Govind (on behalf of the administration)
​

 

Thanks for clearing this up. I appreciate the work you are doing and I think it's great you've laid some of it out for people to see. I do, however, think it is essential we have administrators (general administrators that is, not those on the technical side) who are all in touch with the community so they can best fix the community's issues and lead the site in an effective manner.

 

Good to know.

 

Thanks, cleared up some stuff.

 

Nice that you posted this to clear things up.

 

Cool, thanks for posting Govind. Very informative and cleared a few things up.

 

Nice govind, thanks 4 clearing this up for EVERYONE

 

Good to see this cleared up.

 

Great post Govind.

 

Good post, is Verts giverny btw?

Also, very nice work you've done BTS.

 

Yes, Verts is Giverny.

 

Thanks for the clarification. Solid post, Govind.

 

Thanks for this.

And happy holiday to you and the rest of the staff.

 

Great post Govind, very informative, thank you!

 

I can safely say that Govind is one of the best administrators Sythe has ever seen, and I hold him in high regard alongside Sin, Clash and Steph. Through my whole banning ordeal, no other staff member as willing to assist me and reason with me, other administrators *cough* Finn *cough* just passed me off, leaving me feeling stranded. I can safely say that I see Govind online through major periods of the day, and is always willing to assist. The fact that his dedication to the site came under question really aggravated me. He has been a good administrator for quite some time now and I believe he will perform admirably in his new role of administrator supervisor.

 

Good post, Sir. Happy holidays to everyone else as well

 

Excellent post, finally now we have documented (without any secrets) proof of how active our admins have been and what their actual roles are.

 

Solid post and theres never been a doubt in my mind you guys were working the whole time anyways. The Modscores system has been a major improvement all by itself.

 

Nice post indeed, I can most definitely vouch for all of our admin now that they have all been doing a fantastic job, this is surely the strongest our Staff team has ever been. Keep up the great work.

 

It saddens me that a post like this was necessary in the first place, but I suppose due to the nature of recent events it was needed to clear things up. Well composed