Second Admin

[Miss Wiggle]

OK - I know this has been discussed recently, but just to consolidate and make our feelings clear on the matter to William, if you feel the site needs another administrator then please vote in the poll, perhaps a sway of members voting will lead William to reconsider his previous decision.

I appreciate there were problems with a second admin in the past and I also fully appreciate all the hard work that William has done to keep the forum running, however it now looks from a users perspective that there is more work than William can currently handle for whatever reason and the forum is suffering as a consequence of it, some examples of this are the search facility, aquarium calculator and the persistent problems with chat that have all been going on for ages now and not been resolved.

For the avoidance of doubt, we are not talking about moderating staff here, just admin staff who can fix/maintain the forum and have access to some additional features like being able to block spam posters and such like.

Please don't lets start a popularity contest of who should do it, remember this is really based on someone with the technical know-how to do it not their contributions to the forum or fishkeeping knowledge, lets just make this a straight forward yes we need it or no we don't.

 

[aaronnorth]

I voted yes - I think we do, a forum that has thousands of members that are regular posters cannot be maintained efficiently with just 1 admin.

 

[smegforbrains]

IMHO, yes we do.


There is so much work to be done with a forum of this size and popularity. One man cannot do it all.

 

[jimmyringo]

I'm missing the search facility immensely.I'm asking questions when the answers are probably already here,but i just can't find them !!

 

[Sarette]

I voted yes also.

 

[Truck]

i voted yes we need one, all the broken links baaa!

 

[rdd1952]

This is currently being discussed in the Mods forum. The main reason tat William is/has been reluctant to gie admin authority to a second person is because of a previous incident. It was before my time but apparently the other admiin at that time went off the deep end and basically just strted deleting everything. The forum all but disapeared. Some of the mods at that time were online, communicatng with IM and just watching the forum disappear bit by bit.

There are options that may work to add a second admin and I think we all agree it would be a good idea just as long as the right, trustworthy person can be found that also wants the responsibility.

 

[BigC]

A word to the wise and a few things to clear up here:
There were certain annomalies that have gone on in the past history of TFF. whereby the forum was brought to its knees by having 2 Admin staff. One became a rogue and without going into too much detail certain members/mods had to stay up night upon night to get the board up and running again. Some will be aware of this and some wont. Therefore there is some hesidency with this topic and William would not want the same thing happening twice.
I have raised this very topic upstairs long before this post was written and the matter is beng delt with, admittidly slower than I would like but you can appreciate that we are dealing with mods on different continents and they all need to have their say. Yes there are still some areas of the site that need attention and the Mod team is aware of them also.
We are discussing various options including outside independant professional help being one of the options but this would have to passed by William and be funded and that too is under discussion. So instead of going off on rants please take time out to consider all the facts that need to be encompassed in such events. William may have other ideas up his sleeve and might want to take the board in a direction which is ameanable to him, we will just have to wait and see.
I am writing this piece just to put you all in the picture of what is currently happening.
Please be patient as we as Mods are not unapproachable and are trying to do our best for the good of the forum in general.
I to wish to see everything working and the forum zinging along with a vibrant and robust membership. I'm confidant that it wont be long before a decision is made so please bare with us for the moment.
Regards
BigC

 

[Truck]

i can see how much work is put in by william.

 

[susankat]

I'm voting no on this because its not a need for a second administrator but what is needed is a site tech. That can help work out all the problems. I've seen boards bigger than this one with only one admin. but they do have a couple of site techs to help keep things running.

 

[Truck]

thats basicly what admin does^^^

 

[Nick16]

yes from me.

 

[kribensis12]

Yes, i think so.To avoid the possiblity of having a Rouge Admin,he should pic someone like Tolak or another Fantastic Mod who would do anything to keep this forum going. And havent shown any mis-behaving online.

 

[rabbut]

Voted yes, as though the board runs, there are usualy a few features playing up. When the board breaks, it can take a few days to fix, presumably due to William being otherwise engaged with more important things (can't think of anything more important off-hand now like )

Would setting up drive mirroring not reduce the possibility of rogue Admins? Basically, when a file on the master drive get's updated, the old copy is written to a second drive. When a file on the origional gets deleted, a copy stays on the second drive. Keep the second drive's access password protected, such that William only knows the key, and you always have a reasonably up-to-date back-up. Worst case scenario with a rogue admin would be the last post to each thread going walkies after a few hours of the board being down... Updates may also be reversed, but it's far better than re-building veirtually from scratch, and less time-consuming I imagine?

Of caurse, additional storage costs are incurred (second drive needed on the server) and the server would likely need to be Williams own to be implimented. Also, mirroring software is relatively speciallised, so if getting it legally it could also be expencive. Long-term though, it would likely be cheaper than professional services being contracted in. Just an idea for the Mods if it isn't being thrown arround already

All the best
Rabbut

 

[helterskelter]

I dont think it need a 2nd admin but more mods.

But i've voted yes it more are needed