Administrators, Supermoderators And Moderators, Just who can I go to for help here? Options

[Jeremy]

In response to some of the issues we have had with spammers -- not automatic robotic programs trying to use the boards but actual, real people who have no life other than to create accounts on forums and send unsolicited commercial spam to forum members -- some changes are on the horizon. We previously had two groups -- adminsitrators and moderators. I'm now working on a new group that we'll call supermoderators.

Administrators have the power to do, well, anything that the forum system is capable of doing. Access to the administration control panel is a blessing and a curse as administrators who do something intentionally or accidentally can completely break the forum system, causing it to be down until I can rebuild the SQL database from an archive. As we don't really add, create and delete subforums all too often we limit the administrators to two people:

Daniel -- Daniel Watson, master smith and owner of Angel Sword Corp. (the cool guy who sponsors and pays for this place!) For most of you Daniel needs no introduction...however, you can always go to http://www.angelsword.com/smith.php to read more about him.

Jeremy -- Jeremy Liebbe, The Dark Lord of the Smith, a.k.a. me. I first worked for Daniel at the Scarborough Renaissance Festival in 2002 and have been involved with Angel Sword Corp. in one way or another ever since. While more infrequently seen at the renaissance festivals in the past couple of years, I have served as the sales manager for Angel Sword at both Scarbie and TRF for many seasons and have traveled with Daniel to custom blade shows to Las Vegas and Atlanta. I'm also the guy who owns the server, has access to the SQL databases directly and who Daniel asked to build these forums so many years ago. I'm responsible for the server, updates, major changes to the forums, etc.



Supermoderators are a new group that I created on February 5, 2009 (read major changes above). Supermoderators are moderators who have limited access to features inside the administration control panel. Supermoderators are kinda like head moderators as they can view all of the statistics, review the log files listing what other moderators have done with their moderator powers, manage the calendars, manage the filter / bad word lists and manage file attachments to posts. Supermoderators also have the ability to manage forum members with the ability to suspend accounts, permanently ban accounts, edit membership accounts and even delete accounts. All of the activities by the supermoderators are logged and those logs are reviewed by the administrators. While I'm experimenting with the abilities of the supermoderators we will only have one supermoderator:

Gandalf -- Don Yodis has been with the SwordArts forums for many years as both a member and a moderator. Like me, he has also worked for Angel Sword Corp. as a sales manager at the renaissance festivals supervising sales staff and managing the money. Gandalf is also an Honorary Dark Lord of the Smith. He could truly be a full Dark Lord of the Smith...but as there can be only two in existance he would have to kill Nightfall or myself to obtain the full title.



Moderators are those wonderful members who have taken up the mantle to help make the forums run smoothly and efficiently. Moderators are the ones you can always turn to for help with the forums and are here to help enforce our community rules and guidelines. Moderators can delete posts (flames, spam, etc.) that violate our community rules and guidelines, suspend members from being able to post for a period of time if they just can't play nice-nice with others, etc. Currently, our moderators are 2old2rock&roll, Bithabus and Nugget.

[Gandalf]

Since I really have no desire to take over the full administration, care and feeding of the forums I guess it is Nightfall that I'll have to take out....