On Forum Titles and Roles - Important!

[Lestat]

I vote for a specific user role for being Scottish.

That's about as much as I have to add to this thread......carry on.

 

[Cthulhu]

Oi that's nationalist. By that logic you'd vote me out for being Dutch

 

[Geostigma]

@yopy.

Holy moly I completely forget about podcasts. Sorry @podcast team lol.
Having that in the open is so good too, just for the simple fact we can maybe try and get more people to join over time and also engage the community like for instance having a Pre-Podcast thread where people can discuss potential discussions for the podcast , and even have like questions they can post up maybe like a day or two before the Podcast is to be recorded to add a bit of community flavor to it too. i.e. "Joe from the TLS forums asks if Hojo uses boxers or briefs..." or something lol

Which in turn could lead to a pretty easy segue of "Want to ask a our podcast team a question? Join our TLS forums and Community!" or something lol.

(If all of this happens already I am so so so sorry @Podcast team, I just dont have the time to listen to a long podcast that much anymore ;_; )


Regarding on going/public news. Honestly it's been a bit since we've done one of those videos (our first two-ish) and we've been focusing on some larger scale series ideas primarily lately that this also just didn't come to mind when making those tl;dr posts.

But yeah definitely agree that is definitely something that there would be no issue to be created in the open with broader input.

A concern I have which I think we can fix just by chatting about really, is just I don't want us to accidentally make someone who contributes in a video thread like that to feel left out or like their idea got ignored or something. Rereading those drama threads that was kind of a reoccurring theme alongside the issue of cliques. I think as long as we remind everyone that a million reasons could contribute to why something doesn't get used in a video or doesn't make the final cut it should be cool.

Like for example at the end of the Sony E3 conference we were all around, deflated and one of us had the idea to make the "where are you FF7 remake" video. The way we made that video was very much like building a plane while its about to drive off a cliff or something lol. Once the idea was sparked a million ideas came flying through and I just couldn't use all of them lol, but idk everyone was super cool about it and stuff.

Idk I just don't want to be the reason someone might feel left out by like forgetting to add their suggestion or not being able to. So I would really appreciate maybe like a disclaimer or something idk lol.


@History/ACF staff.

I see where your coming from and just want you to know this site has done such a kick ass job in regards to not being "that".

I also wanna point out like 2 things though lol. We were children lol, I was like in the 8th grade when I first joined ACF. We took everything srsbnzess lol, and in retrospect I know a ton of the stuff I did and people in my team (SO) was really not warranted against ACF staff.

That's not to say they didn't massssssively suck lol, but we had our fair share of unreasonableness for sure.

Secondly. ACF also kind of fostered and encouraged Clique mentalities almost naturally I think. The whole team system really brought that out in people, heck after ACF died damn near every forum I joined after like a day being there the first thing I suggest in feedback would be a "Team section" haha.

Even the spam section had a secret hidden spam section in it that was invite only lol the trade off is Staff named it "deepground" because they knew we were edgy and pretending not to like FF7, and would loath the name lol


We've certainly come a long way. I know there were some scary missteps here too but over all you guys have done such a good job in that regard you really have.

 

[InterfaceLeader]

With regards of Lex for admin. Full disclosure, in many ways he's become an administrator (e.g. given those rights) through the back door, underhanded like. I can imagine this would cause a huge backlash, and I should've stepped in and done something about / with it a long time ago. While I do feel he's got the support and trust of most people (including myself), I think we need to go through an official process to formalize it.

Over the past ten years, I don't remember we've ever had a process of appointing a new administrator, so this is kinda new. What I'm suggesting is a simple poll, a "yea / nay" one, however it can't be a simple democracy - first off, it needs to be a majority vote, so more like at least 2/3rds of votes instead of 51%. Second, there has to be a means of expressing serious issues in a trusted fashion, which each have to be scrutinized and if there's a big enough issue, the whole thing will have to be called off.

TL;DR we can't just admin people through the back door or by a handful of people in a thread verbally going "lex for admin". I'd like some feedback from you guys about the process.

This might be a controversial suggestion, and I am a n00b so please feel free to reject out of hand. Also this is not about any individual people because I don't actually know any of you that well, and so far you all seem like ~super nice!~ people. And did not experience any of this drama you speak of.

But imo, I think the clique danger is not so much about (or not *just* about) needing a really robust initial voting-in process, but about having a balance of power. Rather than having power concentrated in a limited number of hands (especially if those limited number are all close friends).

It's the 'who polices the police' question; who do you go to if you have an issue with an admin, that has power to sort it out?

My general view is that power/responsibility is better when it's diffuse rather than concentrated (and you also reduce risk, e.g. if you have one person who knows how to do something and then they disappear, what happens?)

I like the idea of 'shadow admins', whose job it is to ensure the actual admins do their job well and who are open to listening to concerns/complaints about that admin & that person can also act as a back-up?

I also think you should make Lex a honorary temporary admin to facilitate the move to the new forums asap, and then vote on whether to make it permanent ON the new forums. Because, you know, this stuff takes time to do properly, and at some point the current forum will just get hacked.


I will not be offended if you tell me all my ideas are shit.

 

[Lestat]

Just a quick question
What's an acf and what relevance does it have to the move? XD

 

[Mage]

I've no issue with Lex formally becoming admin since he already is (pretty much). The poll will probably be a landslide but I agree it should be done.

Everything seems fine and logical but with regard to the content creation section, why don't we utilise the 121 feedback section for that? I know permissions and sorting them are a pain but all the content staff could have access and that way it gives everyone a direct private portal to the team without compromising privacy. That way people get to pitch in still, the only catch is with it being a private audience is that ideas can't be snowballed around the member base.

 

[JechtShotMK9]

I think that if Lex wants to be a real Admin, he needs to walk through the Ring of Fire atop Mount Wannahockaloogie.

Other than that, ditto everything else said here. I like the idea of content creation stuff being private till it's done, though.

 

[Cthulhu]

@yopy.

[...]

Re: ACF and shit, I have to admit that FFOF and later TLS probably would not have existed if it wasn't for a clique mentality over there. However, there was also a lot of hostility, and in my view of what happened there, the whole thing shut down in the end because there was a huge disconnect between the people calling the shots and the members. Long story short, I'd like to prevent that.

This might be a controversial suggestion, and I am a n00b so please feel free to reject out of hand. Also this is not about any individual people because I don't actually know any of you that well, and so far you all seem like ~super nice!~ people. And did not experience any of this drama you speak of.

But imo, I think the clique danger is not so much about (or not *just* about) needing a really robust initial voting-in process, but about having a balance of power. Rather than having power concentrated in a limited number of hands (especially if those limited number are all close friends).

It's the 'who polices the police' question; who do you go to if you have an issue with an admin, that has power to sort it out?

My general view is that power/responsibility is better when it's diffuse rather than concentrated (and you also reduce risk, e.g. if you have one person who knows how to do something and then they disappear, what happens?)

I like the idea of 'shadow admins', whose job it is to ensure the actual admins do their job well and who are open to listening to concerns/complaints about that admin & that person can also act as a back-up?

I also think you should make Lex a honorary temporary admin to facilitate the move to the new forums asap, and then vote on whether to make it permanent ON the new forums. Because, you know, this stuff takes time to do properly, and at some point the current forum will just get hacked.


I will not be offended if you tell me all my ideas are shit.

ALL YOUR IDEAS ARE SHactually no, I see where you're coming from, and your idea does have merit, however at the same time I personally don't feel like there's an imbalance of power or like, a lack of trust towards the staff maybe? I mean (and correct me if I'm wrong), I don't think there's policies or rules being introduced or changed that are at odds with what most people agree with.

Also he technically already is a honorary admin type, he's needed it to set up the new forums and I'll give him teh powerz anyway to help me out once we're going ahead with the move.

Everything seems fine and logical but with regard to the content creation section, why don't we utilise the 121 feedback section for that? I know permissions and sorting them are a pain but all the content staff could have access and that way it gives everyone a direct private portal to the team without compromising privacy. That way people get to pitch in still, the only catch is with it being a private audience is that ideas can't be snowballed around the member base.

Yeah I see what you mean, the permissions themselves aren't terribly complicated, but I know from the feedback section you mention that the permissions won't transfer over properly - we'll have to check if Xf supports the "only the thread starter and people in group x, y and z can see and post in this thread first". I don't actually know how communication for that type of content often goes though, Lex & co can probably pitch in there.

I think that if Lex wants to be a real Admin, he needs to walk through the Ring of Fire atop Mount Wannahockaloogie.

I veto in favor of this.

 

[Fangu]

Opinions and shit ~

Admins:
Ideally I'm all for people being voted into the admin position (or at least there being some poll of some kind, encouraging members to voice any concern in their private feedback section or something if they don't want to use a public voting thread) - same with anyone receiving SQL access. The main reason for this that anyone with Admin or SQL access basically has access to read everyone's PM's. (SQL access requires a certain knowledge of SQL, but not much.) When I was working on the old front page, I received the copy of the database to work on fetching comments from specific threads to articles on the front page (this was never finished mostly due to lack of BB code support). iirc it was discussed in a public thread and everyone was fine with it, but it was never presented as 'hey guys now Fangu can actually query PM's from the PM table' (as far as I can remember, at least!) so I'm not sure everyone knew what it meant I was given those rights. Of course, trust is important and I would never violate that trust, but seeing as this is what hugely separates Admins from Smods (in my opinion), it's important that everyone is comfortable with whoever receives these rights.
I'm not uncomfortable with Lex having these rights, I'm pretty sure he's aware that PM's are to be looked into only for very very serious matters, this has rarely happened iirc and the member in question was warned/ notified it was done, and I'm guessing that's still the case, that whenever PM's are read/ brought out, it's for a specific purpose for solving specific conflicts/ problems and the member in question will be notified whenever someone from staff reads them
So, no extra poll needed nao in the case of Lex imo.

Donator colours:
iirc the whole donator colour thing happened when people were still into the whole group thing, and (light spirited) wanted to be part of certain teams. My main reason for being team blue was that I wanted a more neutral colour for my username in Thanks. Xf doesn't have thanks, but Likes, right? Which makes it even less of a deal for me. I'd say we skip the whole Donator colour thing entirely

 

[Geostigma]

Re: ACF and shit, I have to admit that FFOF and later TLS probably would not have existed if it wasn't for a clique mentality over there. However, there was also a lot of hostility, and in my view of what happened there, the whole thing shut down in the end because there was a huge disconnect between the people calling the shots and the members. Long story short, I'd like to prevent that.

Oh yeah absolutely. I think as long as you don't admin Tethar Atrum, SY's friend who had a kid named Kadaj or that one guy who ended up being worse than Tethar out of sheer spite and contempt for the community we might be on the right track still lol

Good god, ACF wtf.

@Ergo.

It means Advent Children Forums. It's where a good chunk of us met and kind of like the grandpappy of this community. It was a really big forum, but unfortunately it was also a really bad forum lol. The last few years there basically everyone argued, there were 5 hidden sections called "Teams" , one of which was called "staff" and if you were on opposite teams you just constantly bitched at each other and then frequently teamed up to bitch at staff. Every day, over any little thing for years. That's not to say staff didn't do bitch worthy stuff either though, but oof in retrospect I'm honestly really surprised the staff/admins didn't just permanently ban the entire team I was on.


FWIW I do kinda think we started breaking the Clique style back then to degree. At some point my team and another one called Fated Children realized it wasn't actually against the rules to join more than one team, and even though we initially basically merged for the "lulz" and to have a post bit that listed multiple teams it did really start breaking down walls especially since Fated Children was kind of like a super try hard "we love final fantasy" team, where as SO was "baby just found 4chan" type of team where we were edgy and didnt "like" Final Fantasy and just wanted to be in the spam section all day.

There were even old guard in the team like The Doctor who came back after a hiatus and lost their shit seeing FC members in SO haha, but yeah I think stuff like that and also teaming up on FFoF during ACF down time to form our "plans" lol, really helped to start breaking that really toxic mentality.

ACF is essentially the root cause for our concern on cliques forming, hell even thanks based issues (yes ACF had that too!) and other basically community breaking issues that ultimately make the place not so friendly with the hallmark of ACF staff being that they handled it all phenomenally bad if they even bothered to address it.

We've had a few close missteps here and unfortunately, but thankfully they were eventually dealt with. None the less concerns about never becoming something like that are very valid.

I think theres still an Encyclopedia Dramatica page about ACF if anyone wants to see how bad it is. It's also worth mentioning that incredibly long page also only covers like 6 months to a years worth of like 5 years of relentless drama.

@Mage,

Are you suggesting instead of a public content creation section we just use private feedback, or suggesting we use it in addition to a new semi public/private content creation section?


Also that private feedback section massively broke in the move to XF lol. Will flattening out the permissions and stuff fix it or will there need to be code black magic stuff to get it going?

 

[Cthulhu]

Also that private feedback section massively broke in the move to XF lol. Will flattening out the permissions and stuff fix it or will there need to be code black magic stuff to get it going?

I'll have to look into it, I'm pretty sure it's a matter of just redoing the permissions and it's just the migration that didn't work quite right for that. Honestly I feel that and the fact every old member got their posts marked as spam were the only snags in this whole thing from a technical POV.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Also that private feedback section massively broke in the move to XF lol. Will flattening out the permissions and stuff fix it or will there need to be code black magic stuff to get it going?

I'll have to look into it, I'm pretty sure it's a matter of just redoing the permissions and it's just the migration that didn't work quite right for that. Honestly I feel that and the fact every old member got their posts marked as spam were the only snags in this whole thing from a technical POV.

I think that there was probably a relatively simple fuck-up on that end.

When we first tested it, all the general users had access to ALL THE THINGS there, but my Admin account (that otherwise had permissions to literally everything else) couldn't see a damn thing in there at all. Then, when I just created my own thread – I could only ever see my own thread, which is how it ought to function for standard users... just backwards.

As such, it seems like there's probably an elegant way to fix whatever permission fucked that up, and get it back to working the same way it does here with very little headache.





X

 

[Flare]

Trying to keep up with this thread, phew

On topic of Lex being admin, I'm behind this motion, I think he's done a good job of it as long as I've been here and I don't mind him continuing with it. I'm also fine with an official voting thread as well, whatever we wanna do.

I don't think we need to keep that many user ranks, just maybe a few instead of 9? One for newbies, one for full members, one for Great Old Ones? Idk Slimming that list down would be lovely though I think. Also like the idea of keeping them invisible, it's never been a big deal to me.

With staff roles, agree with dropping Smods and making it just Moderators.

Site roles: If you couldn't tell I'm all about keeping things more simple and clean (cue music), so yay to flattening them down. I quite like the idea of making them as symbols that you can mouse over to see what they are. That sounds cool!

As for the creative content creation(?) discussion, I think Gabe raises a lot of valid points, but I also think it'd be awesome to have a semi-public thread (for full members here) to post in and bring up ideas an shit, also I doubt we need every one of our creative works to be private until release? A few smaller/more casual things could probably be in the open? Idk I'm a bit absent minded and feel like I'm not contributing much here (on this post in general ) but uh, there you have it!

 

[Cthulhu]

9? Try 37, , amongst which 8 donator alternatives, 12 site-related groups, and (just) four banned or restricted usergroups . I think after the move we'll probably have about half a dozen primary usergroups - unregistered, registered, banned, moderators, admins, donators, etc. I hope we can set donators as like a 'status' instead of a primary usergroup, but that depends on what Xf supports, we do set higher limits for e.g. PM inbox and such for donators (although TBF I don't think those benefits would be enticing enough for donators, plus we're small enough and the server big enough that we don't need to put strict limits on things like that).

Anyway as has been said before (@X), we'll probably just have to redo all permissions when we move, and if we can simplify the groups on here already that'll save a bit of time. Just a bit mind you, I don't mind doing it after the move.

Speaking of which (and this is probably more relevant to the other thread), we should probably clean up the user database, remove the thousands (?) of spambot accounts we have - insofar as we can find them. I think there's probably plenty of (spambot) accounts with 0 posts too. I'd be hesitant to just purge all 0-post users though. They don't do any harm I think, they just pad the stats a bit.

 

[Lex]

Everyone decides to get active on these discussions when I'm not around

I'll give a full read and respond to some stuff when I get time (likely tomorrow), for now I've skim-read the stuff that's here and I just want to say @Fangu I don't know/ think I have access to the SQL database - if I do I've never used it. I know there's a "mySQL" button in the admin control panel but I've never felt the need to click on it

@Yop

With regards of Lex for admin. Full disclosure, in many ways he's become an administrator (e.g. given those rights) through the back door, underhanded like. I can imagine this would cause a huge backlash, and I should've stepped in and done something about / with it a long time ago.

I get how you've explained this here but the way you've described it sounds super sinister so I just wanted to clear it up a bit for everyone lol. I needed the technical functions to do certain things, but in terms of the forum hierarchy I was never an admin. I've legitimately only ever used "admin powers" (because btw the backend looks the same to both mods and admin, the only thing with admin is you have a few more menus) to deal with usergroups afaik.

Also I've always been public about having these powers so I don't think "underhanded" is the right term to use. Not having a go but there are a few turns of phrases you've used in recent posts that are a little too cynical and not representative of stuff that's actually happened, but I'll get to responding to those when I have time (in a chill way, I'm not pissed or anything)

While I do feel he's got the support and trust of most people (including myself), I think we need to go through an official process to formalize it.

Over the past ten years, I don't remember we've ever had a process of appointing a new administrator, so this is kinda new. What I'm suggesting is a simple poll, a "yea / nay" one, however it can't be a simple democracy - first off, it needs to be a majority vote, so more like at least 2/3rds of votes instead of 51%. Second, there has to be a means of expressing serious issues in a trusted fashion, which each have to be scrutinized and if there's a big enough issue, the whole thing will have to be called off.

TL;DR we can't just admin people through the back door or by a handful of people in a thread verbally going "lex for admin". I'd like some feedback from you guys about the process.

I agree there should be some sort of formal process, but you're forgetting that Tres was voted in as admin so we did have a process for that. I can't actually remember how we did that though, and sorry if someone's already brought this up (I've only skim-read the posts prior). I did also mention this to you when we were talking about this situation last week, so maybe we could look at how Tres was voted in and do something similar/ an updated version of that.

@Lex, what's that about "legacy donator"? Is that with regards to newer donation platforms?

No, I'm talking about having a specific icon on the new board for people who have "donator" titles here, because we're flattening them all. There could be a new/ separate one for any future donation services.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Ironically, I was voted to become admin at the same time -- and by the same process -- you became a mod, Lex:

https://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14682



But yeah, it's time this admin thing with you became official. A simple poll should suffice.

 

[CrashOuch]

I'm ready to vote Lex in as soon as there's a poll, whether that's before or after we move to Xf or whatever.

 

[lithiumkatana17]

Lex for admin--my full support. I've never had a reason to not trust Lex in his abilities to manage TLS on any front.

As far as a not public subsection for creative content to be discussed without fear of it being stolen--wholeheartedly in support of this.

 

[Strangelove]

Full disclosure, in many ways he's become an administrator (e.g. given those rights) through the back door, underhanded like.

i, for one, welcome our new dark emperor

 

[Cthulhu]

Yeah well I don't remember how everything happened and shit anymore either, .

er, I can open up a poll thing any time, just say fhtagn.

 

[Lestat]

Fhtnahgn
Foruoken
Hadouken?
Frobaken!

 

[Cthulhu]

Fhtnahgn
Foruoken
Hadouken?
Frobaken!

USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST

 

[Lestat]

Fhtnahgn
Foruoken
Hadouken?
Frobaken!

USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

 

[Lex]

Yeah well I don't remember how everything happened and shit anymore either, .

er, I can open up a poll thing any time, just say fhtagn.

I say go for it, no time like the present . Should also point out people are free to PM other staff with votes or whatever incase people want to keep stuff private? idk

I'm working on responding to some stuff that's been put in here re: permissions and stuff, that'll come soon. I've had a messy weekend, sorry for the delay everybody

 

[Lex]

OK please try to bear with me while I type this up because there are a bunch of long posts so I'm going to try to catch as much of it as possible in this response.

Especially cos if there's gonna be more people contributing to content on the front page (?) all that stuff is gonna be more spread out over more people anyway so having a thousand titles would be nonsense then anyway, innit? Also, like, it's important to clearly state who has some form of mod permissions, right, so if someone tells you off, you know how seriously to take it? And stuff like that? I feel like any change that makes it more clear who's in charge is a good idea cos honestly I'm still figuring it out haha, so I assume (hope ) there's at least one other idiot out there who'd take a while to figure it out too.

My idea for XF is for people to literally just have their username, avatar, AKA (under their username like a title) and icons to represent their roles. We could do a cookie monster icon for Great Old One, or something similar for other user ladders. We're gonna need a lot of icons and then we're gonna have to write custom CSS to implement it, but it shouldn't be too difficult to achieve.

If we think forum staff visibility is super important for contacting purposes, or that the icons don't represent people as "people you can PM problems with the board to", XF has another feature which lists someone as a staff member:

But I think if we make the icons stand out for each individual role we won't have to enable this "staff member" tickbox and then we're closer to achieving what we've always wanted to be, blurred lines between members and staff rather than there being features that could lead to feeling more divided. I know we all make a big effort to avoid this though.

this really long post

Re: content creator section - I still advocate for a hybrid section. I think we should go into detailed discussions about what should and shouldn't be public, so as other people have mentioned suggestions/ discussion threads should be public, and sensitive content will be kept private. Content creators will have an icon for that role with permissions that give access to the "sensitive" threads, and given the discussion in here we could also have a "contributor" badge that gives trusted members access aswell if they contribute content or one of their ideas is used to make a project?

Obviously it's incredibly important - I can't stress this enough - that we don't fall into the trap of having a "closed club" where cliques can form, which is why I'm fairly strict about keeping discussions office-like or professional in these kinds of private channels. As long as everyone adheres to that I don't see an issue, it's how we operate at the moment.

The fact is we have legitimate reasons to keep certain content creation stuff private, but I do think as much of it as possible should be public. The pods and stuff are a good example, there's no real reason to keep the planning of those private.

For the record when I say "public" I mean "viewable by general members of the board". I'd still want the public stuff to be hidden to the general public that aren't logged in.

The socialblade stuff is awesome <3

2. Icons/badges to replace some user titles sound great, though from an aesthetic perspective I personally think it wouldn't be messy to display major staff titles (eg. Community Manager/the other ones in cyan, etc) under their usernames, just so they can be immediately recognisable as trusted members without hovering over badges.

3. I might be in the minority here, but I'd like to have the AKA field impermanent and customisable like the existing one, just with a character limit. Playing around a bit with the AKA field is part of the fun for me

2. We can take a look at that post-move, I recognise that titles such as community manager are important but I feel like as long as we have something recognisable the actual title shouldn't be that important.

3. So I'm against this idea purely because the idea behind the new AKA field is for everyone to have one name they go by. I'll use Carlie as an example because she's been a serial name changer since the dawn of time but idk if her forum name has ever been "Carlie" (it might have been actually, I'm not sure). So rather than an "AKA field" it'll be a subtitle centered right underneath the username. Users will be able to change it if they really really want to, but the idea is to have one name everyone goes by. It's been a complaint since the beginning of time here that people changing their names makes it hard for others to recognise them, and even with the AKA field that can be difficult. The new idea should solve that issue. I don't really see a reason for folks to list every single username they've ever had if they pick and stick with a solid AKA, since that's something we've historically had problems with (you know who you are ). For example B if this was 5-6 years ago a staff member would probably have given you shit for having stuff in your AKA field that isn't relevant, but I'm glad that kind of arbitrary thing isn't a concern anymore (i.e. you're not doing any damage so nobody cares).

I don't like the idea or even the suggestion that people need to have a certain role / title to be able to contribute though; we've probably been over this, but even the slightest suggestion that you can't help out if you're not in the "in group" needs to be nipped in the bud. I know Lex is doing a much better job at that than I have, and he's doing a great job along with the contributors though.

Anyway er, on that note, it's a complicated one. I'd like to give contributors appreciation for their work, whether they publish ten posts a week or have done something only once. The badge idea might work there. Anyway you have contributors on the one hand, and permissions and people with publish rights on the other. On the forums, I'd keep it down to having idk, administrators and editors? On the front page there's a user group called "Authors", which IIRC are people that can create and publish posts, but not administer the site. I think we can have people that have the Author role on the front page but not a formal role with extra permissions on the forums.

I think my responses above address all of this, but just to explain again people who contribute content (i.e. if they're authors or editors or whatever on the front page) would have the Content Creator icon, and the associated permissions would let them see the relevant threads in the subsections that contain sensitive shit like links to the site graphics and vids being worked on etc. Another icon can be made for "Content Contributor" giving people access to these sections if they're trusted and have contributed substantially in some way i.e. an idea they've had has been used for a project.

I think we need a simple set of usergroups and a pinned post or page somewhere that lists who does what, and maybe indicate whether they've got admin or moderator rights.

I agree but for now before the move I literally just want us to have Admin - Mod - Member, then we can set up usergroups post move. What do you think? As far as I know the only other thing that'll be essential to recreate that we currently have is probably Community Manager, the rest of the titles are arbitrary.

@Lex, what's that about "legacy donator"? Is that with regards to newer donation platforms?

As I said 2 (I think) posts ago, this would be a special icon for all the people who have Donator status now, because we're changing the way people can donate so there could be a separate "Patron" icon or something. We probably also need to discuss what's to become of the donator section in terms of permissions.

Spoiler: post

This might be a controversial suggestion, and I am a n00b so please feel free to reject out of hand. Also this is not about any individual people because I don't actually know any of you that well, and so far you all seem like ~super nice!~ people. And did not experience any of this drama you speak of.

But imo, I think the clique danger is not so much about (or not *just* about) needing a really robust initial voting-in process, but about having a balance of power. Rather than having power concentrated in a limited number of hands (especially if those limited number are all close friends).

It's the 'who polices the police' question; who do you go to if you have an issue with an admin, that has power to sort it out?

My general view is that power/responsibility is better when it's diffuse rather than concentrated (and you also reduce risk, e.g. if you have one person who knows how to do something and then they disappear, what happens?)

I like the idea of 'shadow admins', whose job it is to ensure the actual admins do their job well and who are open to listening to concerns/complaints about that admin & that person can also act as a back-up?

I also think you should make Lex a honorary temporary admin to facilitate the move to the new forums asap, and then vote on whether to make it permanent ON the new forums. Because, you know, this stuff takes time to do properly, and at some point the current forum will just get hacked.


I will not be offended if you tell me all my ideas are shit.

I don't think there's anything controversial about this suggestion, what I do think is a good idea is to set in stone some kind of periodic staff review (like once every 6 months or something) where all the members can give feedback and we can remove titles etc. for people who aren't active. This is something I've actually brought up a few times in the staff section but it hasn't really moved anywhere because I don't want to be a sole person going around destaffing people.

But I also think the way people are voted in as forum staff addresses the issue of a potential clique on staff, because people tend to vote for those who are more balanced and can mediate and/ or the people who are part of their own friend groups (so if there were two separate cliques each clique would have a member that was on staff, thereby addressing that issue). This is aided by the fact that we usually don't just open up one post at a time, but two. From that angle I don't really support the shadow admin idea because how do you know the shadow admin doesn't have some bias themselves? Etc. It's better for us all to operate openly.

Everything seems fine and logical but with regard to the content creation section, why don't we utilise the 121 feedback section for that? I know permissions and sorting them are a pain but all the content staff could have access and that way it gives everyone a direct private portal to the team without compromising privacy. That way people get to pitch in still, the only catch is with it being a private audience is that ideas can't be snowballed around the member base.

Site staff actually don't have access to the private feedback forum - they did originally, but it was removed because it's supposed to be more of a mod thing since it's for people to air concerns about the board or members to forum staff.

I actually like the idea of it though - we could make the new suggestion threads that way, where the member + content contributors can see it but the rest of the members can't. Definitely something to think about.

Another aspect is that the Private Feedback Forum broke in the transfer, I had to delete it to stop people testing the new board from being able to see the private threads. It essentially ended up giving inverse permissions, so X for example couldn't see any threads but a regular member could see them all. That's the most major thing that needs to be fixed after the transfer but before the forum goes live for general use.

iirc the whole donator colour thing happened when people were still into the whole group thing, and (light spirited) wanted to be part of certain teams. My main reason for being team blue was that I wanted a more neutral colour for my username in Thanks. Xf doesn't have thanks, but Likes, right? Which makes it even less of a deal for me. I'd say we skip the whole Donator colour thing entirely

I'm down for this aswell, just a donator icon or legacy donator icon for all rather than the colours. We can allow people to change their username colour since we'll be moving away from titles and staff's usernames appearing differently aswell, but we can gauge how people feel about this before moving ahead with it.

JUST PUTTING IN A QUOTE BOX TO SEPARATE OUT THE REST OF MY POAST LOL

The biggest concern we actually have is the user ladder (number of posts giving permissions). I'll need to see if there's a plugin Yop can use to import our user ladder - that would solve our permissions problem. It's also possible it just broke and didn't import correctly.

But the vast majority of our issues are things we're going to have to fix and improve over time following the move, so now that we're getting deep into the discussion of flattening the roles (which is what this thread was made for) does anyone have concerns/ suggestions re: that? As it stands and as Yop has said, we want to flatten them all to make them as simple as possible, which will make the move far easier. So by the time we're done prior to the move it'll be Admin - Mod - Member (and banned users obvs), then immediately after the move we can implement the new ones as required (like Content Creator, Community Manager).

If we're going with my icon idea we'll need people to create said icons. Anybody up for that? I can attempt to draw a mockup when we've got a couple of icons going for how it'll look, then we can get to work on the CSS aswell. I'll also need to look at the CSS for the AKA subtitle.

Objections? Questions? Suggestions?