DX
Admin - Sergeant Major
Specialist
Posts: 20
Wicked
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« on: July 29, 2007, 07:11:36 pm » |
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Evidently, permissions are not set so that a moderator can post in the Announcements section...
Warning: book-style post - I write posts of this length on a regular basis though, just a disclaimer if you've never seen me before.
I left for my trip thinking that something might happen. It is rather easy to tell whether a staff has the potential for instability. You are both lucky and unlucky that there is no "founder" or "root admin" category here. Most other forums have a special category for the first member, that they cannot be edited by other non-root admins. It appears that any admin can edit another admin, which is obviously very dangerous.
Stability is easy to recover. For starters, power must be used in ways it was not when this site was opened. I have seen many forums die [RWW, CFM, Waterbridge, CAM, H2O, WGN, WWN, Soak-This, AW, WWR, you get the picture] and the most prevalent factors are inactivity and misuse of power. "Misuse" of power includes editing one's own post count to some artificially high number. You could argue that such a thing is just for fun, no harm done. Editing your own post count does have other effects that you may not be able to detect. You have not seen all the terrible things I've seen or read all the terrible things I've read. One must never play with power, or openly seek power, or even find joy in using it. Power is something to fear and respect. It wants to corrupt and take control of its former master. Fear of power leads to respect, respect allows you to wield power, an unyielding combination of both makes one immune to its effects...as long as they retain both. It is possible to be incorruptible, a very rare, but entirely possible trait. Anyone can learn to acquire it, but sadly, you may only see a handful of such people in your lifetime. Incorruptibility goes against human nature. I know that very few people are able to stand up to human nature. Most people simply don't realize that you can indeed reject human nature. Once you know how things like power work, you can simply decide not to play by the rules. You can decide not to be consumed by power via fear and respect of what it is capable of doing to you.
Now here, at this forum, the staff need to adopt such an attitude if future problems are to be prevented. Personal post counts should always reflect real posts, other members must never be edited except by their own will or in a dire emergency, prospective staff must be of the character required to resist power's power, and most importantly, the staff need to follow the concept of member equality. An admin is no "better" or "more special" than a regular member. A staff member need not be addressed in any special way or in any special manner. A staff member is bound by the laws of a normal member and may be argued with, even challenged. There is still a line in the sand, of course, but it is a fair line that no one need enforce because no one with common sense would cross it. The best example I can think of is the forum of WWC [waterwarfare.com]. WWc moderates itself, quite literally. Members and staff see each other eye-to-eye and frankly, power is hardly necessary. Some admins are needed to maintain it, but the moderator positions are just to keep people involved. Everyone knows what is expected of them and they do it without needing formal rules.
Now there is another way, the exact opposite, which is to rule by iron fist, with such force that intelligent members know what is expected of them and they do it. I speak of NerfHaven. Personally, I wouldn't use that style, but it works for NH, being a rather large place and naturally difficult to control.
Here is a small forum, though, and the dynamics are different. My ideas have worked in the past and stood the test of time, both online and in world history. They have been ignored with terrible consequences and "I-told-you-so' disasters.
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