- Joined
- Apr 22, 2005
- Sythe Gold
- 23
- Messages
- 7,825
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.
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 ^_^
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...
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...
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.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.
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.
wow guys.. since the new mods have come to play, i realised the Report a Scammer section has virtually no threads.. nice to see its actually getting done.
Thanks to all the mods who do this, you are really doing a great job!
Vouch.I'm not allowed in the admin staff lounge, but his work has definitely been trickling down to my low section of it. If you want proof of Govind's great work, look at the spam and scam reports... There are almost always zero now. His overhaul (and continued modification) of the mod logs quotas has been huge.
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
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)
