Moderator changes

[smilodon]

I'm planning on reorganising the moderators on the message board. We're fortunate that we have almost no flame posts and remain free from spammers etc. So the moderation work required is minimal and I think it's worth an update.

At the moment we have a little over one hundred live forums on the message board and a little over forty different user groups to manage who can access which forums. So that's four thousand six hundred odd sets of permissions that need to be managed. There are some funky tools in the admin section that make that a much simpler process than it could be but it's still a bit of a problem looking after everything and as we add new games, new Game Leaders an Game Admins so things get more complex. Therefore I'm trying to streamline the Moderation process which sits along side the user groups and sometimes seems to conflict with it in how access to forums and features are given out.

So as we seem not to need much active moderation of the forums but need to streamline things I'm planning on removing the moderator process and those of you who currently have moderator status and the Green Forum Badge will soon find them gone. However I do want to thank you for volunteering in the first place and looking after things over the last year or so. The previous version of the message board was far less secure from spammers than this and we really felt we needed members to help look after the forums. So thank you again.

The new process will work on the basis that Forum Admins (me, Benny, Gandalf, Penfold, Tealeaf and Whitey) already have the ability to moderate all the forums and so we'll look after the Bricks 'n' Mortar and 'Community Centre' sections. The Game Leaders can already moderate their own sections of the forum (to sticky posts, merge posts, lock them etc.) and will continue to do so. There is a report feature that allows us to report any post we think might be of concern by clicking on the 'Report this post' button. Anyone can use this feature so we can all contribute to keeping the message board free from rubbish.

I'll be rolling this change out over the next few days. Again thanks to all the moderators who offered to help, it is appreciated.