Administrators · Legacy archive
Circles
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Circles
#1I have finally enough of those stats. They do not show any REALLY important information about our users, in vain keep trying to prefer users that really count, but in the end become the sole purpose of annoying activities of users we loathe.
Let's have something different! I try to create a hierarchy to refer to; making clearly where is the responsibility, and where what rights belong. Thus, let's have circles (or squares or whatever...).
The middle of all circles - Strolen
...quite simply, he is the owner and founder of this site. Any truly critical "life or death" ;) decisions are within his power. Though I do not doubt he would discuss them with us, his is the final decision.
The First Circle - Administrators
...here is the bulk of all important decision-making. We make the rules, we delete posts beyond repair, and discuss those that seem to deserve it, too. We warn peace-disturbing users, and banish them if all fails. We also try to make the Citadel as good as it can be.
The Second Circle - Moderators
...users with a long and fruitful presence in the Idea Guild, that we know and trust. Currently only Captain Penguin (of course Ria too, but she is an Admin), but we may choose to moderate more sectors later. Obviously, moderator powers and responsibilty in a given sector, plus the respect goes here.
The Third Circle - Worthy Members
...people we listen more to. Those that add to the Citadel, in the positive way, behave nice to others (though creative arguments are great too...), and generally we can trust to come up with an interesting topic or a point of view. Were it not for them, the Citadel would never be where is it now. Here will we recruit Moderators if we need them.
Naturally, it may be a matter of opinion who belongs here, and who not, and it may change over time. Take Iain, for example. The man has some meagre 7 posts, but every one of them is a hit. In time, if he keeps posting interesting ideas, and we get to know him better, he will belong here.
In any way, we grow mainly with THESE people. We should ask them most questions we cannot find a clear answer to.
Erebus. Kassil. Siren. Ylorea. Strom. CirrusWind. etc...
The Fourth Circle - Members
...anyone that posts sometimes, or registers but never says a word, up to the people that pump my blood pressure high every time they squeak. Can be split into more groups later, but who cares now.
Outside of the Circle - Anyone else
...very rarely, I get the desire to close the Citadel and let only for those that "deserve" have access to it. Black moods left aside, we try here to give ideas to everyone that surfs to us, whether by chance or purpose, and allow them to express their opinion, hopefully improving those ideas in the process. While we concentrate more on those above, we should never forget these.
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Now, I am NOT telling to simply split users into these groups, give them respective titles and adjust their stats to reflect their status.
This could be a hierarchy we can think in. Taken the Votes question as example, we don't want this right to belong to everyone, so it goes to Members. If at some point we want even more strict quality control, it could go to Worthy Members (or only Moderators and above, but that may be too heavy a burden).
Stats? Only Members can care at all. It seems some of them like it, some abuse and some ignore. You know I would like to see stats gone, but I would like to see the opinions of Worthy Members first. We better ask them. -
Circles
#2I agree with Manfred (as you well know!) I don't like stats! There's already a hierarchy in the page stats section of the main site (top five NPCs, plots and items posters), so why do we need it in the forums?
However, I disagree that we need to discuss it with the worthy members. That may sound undemocratic, but there is a reason. After the departure of Dimensification there was a lull in the number of people who seemed to be bothered about stats, which was good. But now that there are so many new posts flying around, people are starting to give them more importance than they deserve. I think the more threads about stats we have the more problems we're going to get with e.g. kalabar posting chunks of plagiarised material to increase his quality rating. You have to ask yourself: if someone's so bothered about the stats that it's the only reason they come here, are they the sort of person likely to come up with the calibre of ideas we're looking for?
So I think we should decide amongst the admins whether we keep stats or not, and then implement the decision decisively one way or the other.*
ephe!
* Having reread all that, I realise there's a slight contradiction: I don't think stats are important enough to get that worried about, which is why I'm getting worried! Argh! -
Circles
#3I don't think that even kalabar comes just for the stats. I like them because at a glance, without having to memorize people's names and where I have seen them post before, I have a pretty good idea of what they have done on the site. Just info purposes and sometimes I like to know what people are up to.
The post count doesn't tell a lot of things. Sniperspy had like 2000+ and with the new post count he is down to like 150. So the post count can misrepresent.
So comes the quality. Even though what kalabar posted was plagiarized, if he had given credit to the source correctly it wouldn't have been bad. They were good tips.
The quality was made to try and show people that we want informative posts and maybe a low quality rating will give some incentive to submit some good things for a change. It pushed kalabar to do the aforementioned post but he has posted another to flesh it out....finally.
With this site we also have the unique ability to incorporate important sections of the main site as well. I like the Plot etc stats because I can see, with the post count, who is contributing directly to the Citadel and the quality of their submissions. And I can now, after reading a post, get curious about a person and view their posts immediately. Are these stats a bad thing? I like them. They directly reflect their contributions. Nothing arbitrary about them anymore, they mean something, and that was the point of the newest change. Did I succeed? Up to you to decide.
Jumping off that horse onto the Circles.
Even though we would ask opinions of the Worth Members, it would still be our job to make any final decisions. I always prefer to have as many opinions as possible about some things. These stats being one of them. I can pretty much divide the wants vs the unwants amongst the admins and I don't think much is going to change that. I have, so far, been pretty much leaning on my "middle of all circles" and implementing them because I find personal satisfaction/use out of having them regardless of the troubles they cause.
If we were to use the circle ideas there would be a problem on how to acknowledge the "Worthy Members." The only visible option would be to directly assign the new "rank" and that would replace the progressive flames as representations. Otherwise a group could be created.
But what they would do with it is a question I have. The extra we need from them would be their opinions on certain things that arise. These stats being one of them. While we will make the final decision, I think we are in agreement to disagree about whether we should have them or not and a few other opinions might be handy at this point.
Right now the Suggestion threads are sort of ignored when I ask for input, which I somewhat expect, not many people *really* care about the stuff but I feel better for asking. But would this extra title give them incentive to post their opinions? My worry on this would be we go through the trouble of setting a group up, open another forum that only Worthy, Mods, and Admins have access to where we can discuss some more general citadel business (we would still have to keep our admin forum for other things). Then the only thing that happens is we have some of our discussions where more people can read them and they don't contribute to them.
The only difference in the circle is the addition of a Worth Member section. But what to do with it once we have it I think is my main question.