Forum administrator(s)

Hakuch,
kocio,
iandees
became forum administrators!

As I already said before, I would apply for that job and propose a working group of two or three persons. I already connected Daniel Koc (kocio), who also applied regarding that.

Still, as far as I know there is no real plans about what an admin (or an admin working group) would have to do. Taking care of the software would be most important job of course, but how far should they take part in disputes? I think where there are moderators, they can take care of the most situations as they already do, because they know the “local” situations. A working group of administrators should make their work transparent and documented, so they can be watched by the community.

The other import task is to handle handover of moderator rights as it’s the case in the Russian forum right now.

I agree that admins must not handle disputes in sub-forums. It’s the task for moderators.

Regarding the handover of moderator rights, I see at least 3 cases:

  1. A moderator agrees to hand over the moderator rights

  2. A moderator disappeared and doesn’t answer any message

  3. Forum community wants to change a moderator due to some serious reasons, but the moderator rejects the demand.

I don’t feel like we need to have detailed administrator rules, the general split between admin/moderator is clear and useful for me - although one person can share both roles in general, unless the conflict of interests occurs (being moderator for Polish forum doesn’t take me too much time and there are no other people there interested in active monitoring). The current informal system seems to be effective so far and I like it.

What is more important to me - as an active forum user and community member - is to have 2-3 pretty responsive persons, with transparent decision making and sane reaction time for requests and software problems. As there are currently only two of us (Hakuch and me), who is willing to take over, it’s rather a question if we are trusted by community to start working in this role - and how long does it take to decide it? It’s good that the forum is basically safe now, but simple requests like creating Albanian users subforum should not wait and we’re still waiting for current admins response for our offer.

I think some rules for handover of moderator rights are needed.

  • How moderators are appointed for the first time?
  • How moderators are changed in those 3 cases I described above?

The tasks awaiting actions from the forum administrators:

  1. Handover of moderator rights in the Russian forum. The new moderators have been chosen by 71 forum participants in the elections. (Thread, protocol) Finally the moderators have been changed

  2. The request to create Albanian forum. Created.

  3. The request to create Columbian forum. Created.

While forum admin is mostly a technical job, he/they will also need to back up the moderators from time to time.

From my experience, every time there is a serious problem and continued misbehavior leads to a temporary ban, the next things that always happen are

  • the moderated person attacks the moderator personally and complains to the forum admin, asking to overrule the moderation
  • some people complain that the moderator acted too fast and/or too harshly
  • some people complain that the moderator acted too slowly and/or too softly

bye, Nop

Still I don’t like creating rules if there are no big problems without them. As I said, lack of response and slow reaction is currently the most serious problem we’re facing, I have not heard of problems with current loose model of deciding.

If somebody is willing to take the role AND local community is not against it, just do it. It should just take some time (like a week) to let everybody know there’s such proposition.

  1. A moderator agrees to hand over the moderator rights

Basically the same as removing somebody from the role (rather hard to oppose it =} ) and assigning a new moderator. If local community has nothing against new one, the same as above - just give them a few days to react.

  1. A moderator disappeared and doesn’t answer any message

Ask the local community how they feel about it.

How do you know if somebody “disappears”? Probably if she doesn’t react for too long. The only problem I see as a moderator are mainly some German and Russian forum issues waiting for moderator reaction, which are dragging my attention (linked message on the main site), otherwise it’s just local feeling how long they should wait.

  1. Forum community wants to change a moderator due to some serious reasons, but the moderator rejects the demand.

Try to moderate between them. If that fails, you’re always left with your personal responsibility what could work the best.

Of course we can coin some rules if there are some evidence once they are needed. Big and active communities (like yours) can work as a testing field for creating rules, but they are special and smaller communities still may not need them.

Another admin task waiting for action - spam to delete and user to block:

https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=616747#p616747

strange, posts of new users need to be approved by admin or moderator, how this post has passed the check?!

Hello
I want you to ask about the request to create Albanian forum? Can you give me any details?
Thank you

I sent a message to the Operations Working Group asking for some reaction.

Albanian and Columbian sub-forums have been created. Thanks TomH!

Hakuch,
kocio,
iandees
became forum administrators!

Congratulations and good luck!

Whom/where should I ask to create a group for Lithuania?
“users: Lithuania”

I have strange technical problem, so I guess I’ll post it here for a start. I’m not able to change subject of this thread:

https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=14985

because when editing first message I have no subject field to edit:

https://forum.openstreetmap.org/edit.php?id=112560

Do you see the same? Is it possible to fix it?