Hello everyone, my name is AbsoluteDestiny and I'm a forum administrator.
/end AA
I decided that since the workload has reduced recently I'd quit being invisible. I get enough IMs about tech problems the last thing I wanted was being pestered about every decision done by every mod on the foruim ever. It shouldn't be so regular now though, so I figured it was time to say hi.
<b> About the forum administration </b>
There's a heirarchy of responsibility here at the org, which hasn't really been talked about in depth. I thought it might be useful for members to know what different groups do on the site and the sorts of things the Agents (or mods as they are affectionately known), Forum Admins and Site Admins do on a daily basis.
<i>The Agents (Forum Moderators)</i>
There are a whole bunch of people who you can't see called Agents who are responsible for the day-to-day cleaning of the forums. The Agents have the ability to move, split, lock and delete forum threads, edit forum posts (such as removing links to porn, warez and so on).
The Agents also have the job of policing uploaded videos. Whenever someone reports an abuse of the Donut server, agents have to download and watch each video. If it contains content that is in contradition of the Donut policies it is marked as "Uncool" and becomes undownloadable to all members.
<i> The Forum Admins </i>
There are a couple of forum administrators, of which I am one, who do everything the Agents can do but can also do things like change elements of a user's profile (such as signature, avatar, forum title) and can access the ban control options.
<i>The Site Admins </i>
Obviously the head administrator is Phade and most of the more serious choices of forum and site control are made by him. All of the Agents and Admins are answerable to Phade and he gets to make the final call on any judgement.
Site admins have the added ability of changing things such as video information and other non-forum database entries. However, it is currently a cumbersome and arduous process and software is being written to ease this, allowing the Agents to help with cleaning up the database.
<b> Things I do </b>
Most of the time I spend on the org is as a normal user, replying to topics, downloading videos etc.
Of course I spend a lot of time doing general tidy-up. Moving threads, removing links to things that shouldn't be linked to... whatver. Then there's reading the posts in the mod drop box and addressing those.
Then there's the bad videos. This is a <i>really</i> time consuming thing. Every duplicate, non anime, violent, porno etc video that we find has to be downloaded watched and then removed. There's no tool for me to remove it from the database, or change anything about a video information. It's just a case of removing a video after seeing it. God damn, there's a lot of crap put on the servers. I found someone uploaded Caldwell's Phantom of the Opera video today claiming it as their own. It was identical to the one already on the donut. baka.
The stuff I do less frequently are things like thread locking, user banning and so on. I generally only ban users that are obviously only on the forum to spam or troll. Occasionally, if a user has already been warned about their breach of site rules, I might temporarily ban someone but most of the ban decisions are left to Phade.
One of the things that Agents and Admins are not allowed to do is to remove or edit someone's personal opinion. If a user posts something in General Anime saying "All Yaoi is EVIL" then there's not a great deal we can do about it except maybe laugh, wait for the thread to drift off topic then lock it. However, if someone posts in general AMV saying "Creator X is a Kiddie Raper" then that can be moderated and the user taken out and beaten with big virtual sticks. Personal attacks are bad, m'kay? There's been plenty of people banned for making personal attacks on other users - more than there have been for people who have posted porn. If people have an accusation against someone, they'll have to do it in email or face a potential forum ban. (So try and keep joke insults to a minimum - it can be hard to tell if someone is serious or if the other person will take it seriously, ok?)
<b> What you can do to help me </b>
Well now that you know that I can do various things on the forums I don't mind being messaged occasionally - but <b>I would much much rather people use the Moderator Drop Box</b>. I might not be free to help but an Agent or a different Admin might be able to.
Also, I can't do you favours. Just because I can make your video announcement a sticky doesn't mean that I will. Stickies are put on threads that are of benefit to the site. I also don't have uber mod powers to fix people's bad html either (unless it's causing some big problem). If I see something typed wrong I might fix it if I feel like it but there's more important things for me to be doing with my moderator time.
I can't fix any video database issues as I dont have the access. I can't remove bad reviews.
Oh and I can't bring back the OT forums - so don't ask
Many decisions are not mine to make, Admins and Agents have to follow rules too.<b> Me the Admin and me the regular user </b>
Most of the time, the opinions I have and the things I say will be personal and NOT site policy. If I recommend someone to use a David Bowie song for their video, they don't "have to or face a ban" or anything
However, if I post a message with "- Forum Administrator" at the end then that is me emphasising a forum or site rule and posting something in an official way. I'll use that title when adding comments such as the reasons for a locked thread, informing someone that their 200x200 avatar has been removed and that they should read the site rules and so on. If I don't say "Forum Administrator" then it's just my opinion as always.Anyway, enough from me - I have work to do.
AD
- Forum Administrator
