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Being an Admin...Follow

#1 Oct 24 2012 at 8:43 PM Rating: Good
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--is hard. Its also kind of fun sometimes. I get to deal with drama like this every day.

I suppose the most rewarding aspect of admin-ship is having the power to help people in need, and having people actually appreciate it. As things grow and we take on more players, the hardest part is finding reliable help. Our biggest problem right now is all that goes on during the hours my wife and I aren't online to referee. While there is no shortage of people willing to become moderators/admins on our server, 100% of them would surely abuse that power, as many have. Everyone we've ever promoted to moderator status or higher has either gone rogue or stepped down from their position.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here in the ZAM community of mature and competent adults would be interested in giving the whole MC server/forum admin thing a try. We're not asking much. It'd just be nice to have the extra peace of mind knowing there are other people checking in on things once in a while. What say you?

Edited, Oct 25th 2012 2:53am by Kuwoobie

Edited, Oct 25th 2012 2:59am by Kuwoobie
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#2 Oct 24 2012 at 8:44 PM Rating: Good
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I'm too lazy to sign up for an account, what does it say?
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#3 Oct 24 2012 at 8:48 PM Rating: Good
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Shaowstrike the Shady wrote:
I'm too lazy to sign up for an account, what does it say?


Sorry, I forgot it was set up that way. I'm changing it now so that anyone can read whether they're logged in or not.
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#4 Oct 24 2012 at 9:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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It takes a very specific type of individual to be a good forum admin. Most cultures call those individuals "crazy people". It IS hard. harder than most people realize to go from a contributor in a forum where you go to relax, to blow off steam, to troll people whatever, to being in the position of having to please everyone all the time, watch what you say and do, while at the same time occasionally subjected to the very worst visual offenses the internet can dream up. But, you get to ban people and thwart evildooers, so it balances somewhat.

I'd offer to help out but I'd go power mad and ban everyone for not appeasing me with wombat pictures.
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#5 Oct 24 2012 at 9:07 PM Rating: Good
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About a month ago, some guy really flipped a lid and made up an account that looked like mine. He then proceeded to email every member of the forum (157 registered users) telling them that the server was being permanently shut down. This caused a massive amount of confusion and I ended up having to explain to dozens of people individually that the email they received was NOT from me. Smiley: bah
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#6 Oct 24 2012 at 9:11 PM Rating: Excellent
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Nice! We had someone here that was pretending to be an Admin along those lines once. I think they spoofed illia's account If I remember right, and were PMing people telling them they were going to be banned for some reason or another if they didn't rate up posts in a certian thread. Needless to say they don't post here anymore.

We finally had to put in a PM system limiter function to deal with PM ad spammers though, that got really really bad for a while.
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#7 Oct 25 2012 at 6:40 AM Rating: Excellent
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Quote:
It takes a very specific type of individual to be a good forum admin.


On the other hand, my admin duties basically go "Oh look, someone reported something... yep, fake passport spam. BAN!"

Also, sometimes running IP address checks to see if some trollish posters are socks Smiley: grin
#8 Oct 25 2012 at 6:48 AM Rating: Good
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Being an admin is like being a being something in between a cop and a CSR, right?
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#9 Oct 25 2012 at 7:37 AM Rating: Good
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Or a homeland security agent at the airport.
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#10 Oct 25 2012 at 8:13 AM Rating: Good
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Or a mall cop.
#11 Oct 25 2012 at 8:40 AM Rating: Excellent
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Mall cop without the Segway scooter no less.
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#12 Oct 25 2012 at 9:24 AM Rating: Excellent
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I wonder if Admins are required to take a banhammer to the face so they know how it feels before they use it on others.
#13 Oct 25 2012 at 9:33 AM Rating: Excellent
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Kao is Paul Blart, except less funny.

And less interesting.
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#14 Oct 25 2012 at 9:45 AM Rating: Decent
Being a Moderator or Administrator of any site is never ever a fun job. I've been both for many years and you sometimes even end up banning good friends because they decide to violate policies or spam the forums. You often become the focus for attacks on and off the forums by others that decide to hate you for doing your job. I've had my computer hacked and my life posted on the very forums I've moderated by people like that. One forum I never told them of my change. When this person hacked my comp he posted the details of my change. Their was a huge uproar about it. Thankfully the forum's owner backed me and to this day I'm still moderating the forum. I've also been an administrator and moderator on several TG forums over the years. MSN actually recruited me for one. I stayed there till they closed it down and moved me to the womans gay forums. After that I left. Most if not all of the forums you mod or work as an administrator as don't pay you anything except the satisfaction of helping others and keeping the spammers at bay.
#15 Oct 25 2012 at 3:52 PM Rating: Excellent
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Spoonless wrote:
I wonder if Admins are required to take a banhammer to the face so they know how it feels before they use it on others.

Well, if you request a password reset you're stripped of Admin privileges until one of the higher-higher-ups reinstates you.

I've had to beg my way back in twice Smiley: lol
#16 Oct 25 2012 at 6:13 PM Rating: Excellent
I did GM/admin type work back in a virtual world when I was only 19. Youngest one on staff. I was shocked as heck when I was asked. Oh, that was a more innocent time.

One skill I did pick up was listening to people. A lot of GM requests were not necessarily game related. The players just wanted someone to talk to, and since we were logging time for the company anyway, we obliged.

The worst was when someone used me as a suicide hotline. Smiley: frown
#17 Oct 25 2012 at 7:02 PM Rating: Excellent
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catwho wrote:

The worst was when someone used me as a suicide hotline. Smiley: frown


I can sympathize with that. It's happened here at least once that I know of. Which was really fairly traumatic.

That and dealing with deaths of people in the forum, or death threats or any of that.
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#18 Oct 25 2012 at 7:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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Iamadam wrote:
Kao is Paul Blart, except less funny.

And less interesting.


I had a sense of humor once but I had to ban it for spamming.
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#19 Oct 25 2012 at 7:38 PM Rating: Good
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Pumpkin Lörd Kaolian wrote:
Iamadam wrote:
Kao is Paul Blart, except less funny.

And less interesting.


I had a sense of humor once but I had to ban it for spamming.


And now we are left with the puns...
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#20 Oct 25 2012 at 8:17 PM Rating: Excellent
Pumpkin Lörd Kaolian wrote:
catwho wrote:

The worst was when someone used me as a suicide hotline. Smiley: frown


I can sympathize with that. It's happened here at least once that I know of. Which was really fairly traumatic.

That and dealing with deaths of people in the forum, or death threats or any of that.


One of our linkshell members died suddenly, back in 2007 or so. We left him on the FFDKP and put a small memorial on our website for a long time. I still have a pair of signed Blessed Trousers that he crafted for me. Smiley: cry
#21 Oct 26 2012 at 12:45 AM Rating: Good
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Pumpkin Lörd Kaolian wrote:
That and dealing with deaths of people in the forum
It's hard to believe it's been over three years. Every time I think about it, it feels like it was only just a couple months back.

#22 Oct 26 2012 at 1:23 AM Rating: Good
Someone died?
#23 Oct 26 2012 at 5:35 AM Rating: Good
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I'll be an admin for you. I will abuse the power but it's ok, because I'll abuse it on everyone, not just some people.
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#24 Oct 26 2012 at 5:54 AM Rating: Excellent
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I was an admin on the Macbeth Shoes message board a few years back for a while. The spam there was almost too much to keep up with, and after about a month, I was left as the only admin for the entire set of forums. That lasted a few months before the board basically died out and was nothing but spam, so they shut it down.

I was also, somehow, a sysop for Conservapedia in its early days, with the primary job of ending vandalism. It was wierd, because I had originally gone there to subtly troll them and remove the right-wing bias from the articles and make them non-biased. I guess Andy liked that because he offered me the job. It was fun, for a time, I had an ongoing battle against some guy from 4chan who liked to make all the articles say, "Jews did 9/11", and a lot of the people there were actually pretty cool(for hardline, super-right wing zealots, not one of them was like Varus, they were more like Gbaji, but more extreme), but I ended up leaving when they started to go even more towards the right and I couldn't justify doing it anymore. I still stop by from time to time to make sure they haven't bastardized my articles.

I'd offer to do the admin thing for your MC boards, but I don't do the Minecraft thing, and I'm kind of a "go places in passing" kind of guy with the internet.
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#25 Oct 26 2012 at 7:11 AM Rating: Excellent
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#26 Oct 26 2012 at 9:20 AM Rating: Good
I was a moderator and then admin of a zoo tycoon forum when I was about ten. I've modded a couple of sites and a few irc channels since.

Hopefully that tells you what I think re the difficulty of being a mod.
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