A few changes
 

-- Threads in Home Base that are about the Cellar, or about forum usage in general, have been moved to Cellar Meta.

-- "Nothingland" - because threads about nothing or game threads are actually an important part of the place, and we just haven't acknowledged it, until now. I'm not married to this name for the section, so if someone has a better idea, claim it now.

-- "Photoshop Phrenzy" - a great idea by NBN, but nobody has done anything in it for about a year, except for the "bag on fellow Cellerites" thread. So it's archived. The "bag on" thread is moved to Cellar Meta.

-- I enjoyed my time off so much that I would like to have more of it. I would like us to choose moderators to handle spam management, thread movement, forum abuse, etc. Does anyone have suggestions on this matter?

-- Next week's IotD will, I think, be "best of IotD" while I figure out whether I want to do it any longer. I would like to do what I've always threatened to do, to create an autoposting feature and have a way for a board of users to edit and vote on possible IotDs. But all that's pretty difficult, and I'm not sure I can find the motivation.

Does it come with a license to kill?;)

Ok, seriously, I am happy to volunteer to wipe out the obvious spammers. I also would be willing to move threads. As for forum abuse, my threshold might be a little too high when it comes to bringing the hammer down on abuse. I figure that we're all adults here.

Of course one way would be to allow nominations, set up a poll, and let users vote for multiple candidates, depending on how many you want.

I would run under the Solipsist Party of America (SPA).

Good idea. I endorse all changes... I hate to see the photoshop area go but then again I hardly ever posted anything there myself.

I would normally not volunteer as a moderator, as it would violate some of my principles (don't volunteer for anything, don't call unnecessary attention to yourself, among others).

But we have to wipe these damned solipsists off the map.

committee?

democratic election?

triumvirate?

panel of 13 jurors?

magic 8 ball?

wow. the birth of a new era.

I like "nothingland"

oh, ...seriously, it's brave of you to open this up to public opinion. you really ought to either make the descision yourself or list those that you would be ok with and go by the poll results.

could you assign each forum an individual moderator? thus limiiting the scope of power they have to make major changes or cause systemic havoc?

UT, since you whacked my PP (whick I don't mind), I'll volunteer to mod Quality Images. Not too many duties there, except maybe moving certain pix from the WTF to the WTF NSFW thread.

Change can be good.

Changes look good - brave and sensible move to go for delegation and empowerment (sometimes it can be hard to let go even a little bit, but it usually pays off in more ways than one).

Would offer to help, but think you need people from your own time zone for something that is so predominantly US driven.

Whatever you want to do is cool, UT. :thumbsup:

with the IotD thread, if you are looking for mod'ers then why not just give them a specific day each to post their IotD. then you dont have to do anything and the tradition will be kept alive.

"nothingland" is as good as any other name.

i love my powertrips and standing out in the crowd and having everyone sucking up to me. but i dont think i would be a good moderator. id either slack off and not do anything or grant everyones wishes and end up deleting whole forums or some shit.

I's like to see people like Bruce and Wolf as moderators... people who have been here a long time, consistantly, and don't appear to be going anywhere.

mmmmm..... saw this on another board....perhaps there may some applicability here....

(applicability... jeez, now you got me doing those damm-awfull Americanisms too...)

"Threads can not be created in the cesspool. This is not a general discussion forum - it is the dumping grounds for threads deemed worthless by the moderators that would have otherwise been deleted from the site. If your only aspiration is to create threads in the Cesspool, then perhaps sciforums is not the place for you."

I don't know that I've been around here long enough to merit any kind of power/ status, but I am happy to volunteer my services!

If we're voting, Bruce and Wolf also get my mod votes. NBN is also well-qualified to determine an orderly and decorous arrangement of things in the Quality Photos thread (I have especially noted a tendency for WTF to increasingly contain WTFNSFW material, and I would welcome someone dealing with that). Rich is also a level-headed and long term guy who would do a fine job as another mod.

I very much like the rearrangement of things, and I especially like "Nothingland" as a section. Judicious and creative as always, UT.

Regarding moderators, I essentially concur with lumberjim. I hope that you select people who share your demeanor and perspectives. This reduces the chances of appeals and reversals which can confuse users and divide the forum administration. Additionally, those aforementioned who also have institutional knowledge of the Cellar are less likely to be challenged by other users with seniority. In an election, a prescreened candidate list is preferred. Stratification by forum (depending on candidate numbers) would be icing on the cake.

Variety is the spice of life and that makes diversity an attractive proposition; however, those with views different from yours may be best appreciated outside of the forum administration. Thank you for asking for suggestions on this matter. Good luck with your Mod Squad. :rainfro:------> :noevil:

vBulletin offers admins and moderators two options when deleting a message. One can either delete it entirely, removing all evidence that it was ever there; or delete it "virtually", keeping the message and the information about it and just removing it from the forum list of messages.

I have been deleting spam entirely, but from now on will delete it virtually, leaving the evidence that it was there and that somebody removed it.

Readers are encouraged to visit Home Base now to see how this works. The deleted messages are there, just "stumps" or "placemarkers" for the deleted items.

Notice that, out of the last 40 threads, 7 were spam. It wasn't always like this. It used to be worse. As Mags considered elsewhere, the addition of a "captcha" on the register page - first in vBulletin 3.5 - cut down the amount of automated spamming. Each of these spammers has registered by hand, with a legal and operating email address. (Removing mail.ru from the list of permitted email addresses was once the fix to prevent as much as half of incoming spam. Most spammers are coming from old Europe and India.)