Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

I found nothing related to this while searching, but, correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, the forum has really been growing at a much more rapid pace than the past, and it will continue to do so for the future. We seem to have very few admins and mods if we're comparing to about around 3,000 users (about 500 of them still posting on some occasions). Since Seethroo left, we only have four admins to do what they do best, ban trolls.

But, I understand that the admins are adults and must do their primary jobs first before moving onto the forum. But, they just about all live in the same timezone making their phases in pretty much the same time here, sometimes being hours and hours later from a spam raid.

Now, the mods are mainly in different timezones and such making them able to respond to things in waves to limit down spam, but, they can only lock, possibly delete (I'm not sure), and merge taking or leaving one aspect out that I forgot. So, that means they can't ban, sometimes meaning that we might have to wait until admins are done with the priorities of real life before moving onto the Internet itself.

But, don't get me wrong for one second. I believe the admins do a darn good job at keeping this Forum as clean as possible, and I know they try as hard as they can to get here to do their iJobs.

Anyway, let's take Rocket Man and Biggie for a soft example of what I'm talking about. Don't take it full on since they were stopped pretty fast, though. They had posted in the wee morning hours for many people (including myself) making their attacks longer. So, when I woke up and checked the forum in the morning and saw what was going on, I PMed a bunch of the mods instantly. Porple PMed back saying that all he could do was lock the threads in his given sections.


So, we could honestly limit down on time for these attacks for the upcoming future when spam attacks will be more common (heck, we've had a bunch this week alone) by, if possible, appointing more admins and mods and by any means try to get the ability for mods to ban. I'm not sure if that's a certain possibility, but I'm hoping it is for the sake of the growing forum.

Remember, first impressions about a forum count a lot. So, the longer a spamfest, the more of a chance of another homestar fan turning down this forum(and possibly Wiki) because of the few trolls that hurt it for everybody.

Many people have agreed with me online about the above, but I still have one more question that I could obviously ask somewhere else, but wish to not because it relates to the above. What is the exact point of appointing mods to certain parts of the forum? Wouldn't it be more efficient to make a Mod Team like the admins for every section so spam can stop a little sooner?

Now, I'm not sure if the above will truely work to fully stop spam or even work at all, but I think that this would really help out in the long run for in another half-year when this forum has about 4,000 members.

Just an opinion of mine, so sorry if it's flawed and such.

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I would definitely agree with what you said. It may not be possible to give mods the ability to ban, because I doubt there's a phpBB mod for that, but if we need to we can always promote some mods to admins and elect new mods to fill their places (the current admins and mods, or just Joey himself may be able to find some candidates). I also like the idea of a Mod Team. There's really only one reason that you would only have certain mods moderate certain forums, and that's if you think they would be overwhelmed by the responsibility, but if they have the entire Mod Team to back them up, I don't think they'd have to worry. I definitely know some users myself who would make great new mods.

If you hate reading paragraphs...

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I aqgree, a new admin would be good. However, I can see from talking to Stu that mods and admins have very different jobs. Admins can't be biassed in any way, and as Stu said, "cant play favorites," which makes sense and would be hard for a lot of people. I'd give an example, but I might want to wait until later.

However, we do need an admin during the day, to experience first hand what the spammers, or so called spammers, are doing, and be able to ban them once they cross the line after however many warnings and/or suspensions they receive.

I think all the admins/mods live within the same 4 time zones, so that kinda stinks. But knowing the admins, we don't have to worry about anything, they'll handle it.

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Actually, I am rather certain that for the most part we live in different areas of the US. (With the exception of Joey and myself).

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Cough. Cough.

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Hmm...for some reason, I've always seen the admins sign on at about the same times each night. Oh well.

I guess it doesn't matter since porplemontage is up 24/7...

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Yeah... my hours are pretty funky. School and 3 part time jobs will do that to you... toss in a wife, and you got a royal flush

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Well, I'm pretty sure that IJ and See live in the Central Timezone. But See's never on anymore because of work. And I'm not sure where Tom lives. Porps and DG live in the eastern time zone, possibly MHG as well. And Lunar? Who knows about him.

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Well, Jesty lives in Rhode Island. So that means that all the mods but DG (who lives in Central, I believe) live in the Eastern time zone.

I agree with the idea of giving each mod power over all of the boards. I'm really not sure why they don't have that power to begin with.

Also, if Seethroo is really gone for good, shouldn't we promote one of the mods to admin officially? I think Joey should ask Seethroo if he honestly wants to give up his adminship, and then decide if we need a new admin from there.

Of course, this is entirely up to the admins, but if Seethroo really is gone, it leaves a void.

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beep beep I'm a Jeep

Before this goes on, I just wanted to clarify how we label Admins/Mods around here.

AgentSeethroo, InterruptorJones, JoeyDay, Stu, and myself are all the Administrators of http://www.hrwiki.org. This is across the board: Wiki, forum, everything. On the forum, we are the red Admins. On the Wiki, we are bureaucrat and developers. We all check the admin email and we all have access to everything.

Here on the forum we also have moderators. These are people chosen by the Administrators to help us moderate things. They appear in green at the bottom of the index.

On the Wiki we have sysops. They are also chosen by the Administrators to help administer things on the Wiki.

Right now, we are not looking to add anyone to any of these groups.

Thank you for your consideration and thoughts in this matter.

I have to say that the moderators and administrators have done their jobs more or less at certain times. But right now we have a severe void in leadership, the two most active "lockerators", sorry I wanted to think up a word to combine mods and admins, are gone for the most part.

I say that we get a few more administrators, not moderators, most of the times we need someone to be banned, there's no one for a day or two, swift and decisive rule-enforcement is probably the best possible thing for this forum, mostly because be are not as laid back as Homestarrules, so when a spammer comes he will have a more enjoyable time annoying us, with a laid back forum everyone will just go along with it and have a good time. So with swift punishment to such spammers they will be discouraged from their short stay.

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You know, I just now realized that we are getting more and more populous as the days go on. Seems like just a coule of weeks ago we got 2000 users. And since our population is growing uncontrollably, I also believe that there should be new mods and admins, especially with the constant absence of Seethroo. Without him, it seems like there is only IJ, Stu, and Tom to stop the spammers, since Joey is out frolicking with his wife.
And if you can't get a new admin (since getting a new one out of nowhere would prove hard) you could always just make the universal moderation team, like Disk suggested, and have them moderate all over.

But, this is just my opinion, of course.

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Heh. At first I read that as "IJ, Stu, and Tom as the top spammers."

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Yes, I agree to most everything on the thread. We do need more higher ups, there are times when it takes 5 hours for a mod or admin to get here, and when that happens, the post is usually out of their jurisdiction. We need somebody who is here A LOT. And somebody who has total jurisdiction over the board. It doesn't have to be an admin, just a universal moderator even.

Whatever, rule 1, my vote doesn't necessarily count

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I agree with Tom on this. Right we have enough mods and admins to run the place, but I also think that there will come a time when we need more.

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The purpose of a mod/admin isn't just that of babysitter. While the occasional spammity calamity or troll-a-thon IS annoying, we can deal with that without the mods. All you have to do is completely ignore ANY post that they make. Don't keep going "this is spam! You Spam, etc".. Reminding them of the rules once or twice is one thing, but once it's obvious that they have no intention of following them, just ignore them. If they post something spam in a "person above me" or "person below me" game, just act like their post isn't there and respond to the post before it. Most of the time, if EVERYONE will do this, the spammer/troll will usually lose interest, as they're usually only doing it for attention.

So, in my opinion, more mods needed = probably not right now. Our Admins seem to know what they're doing, so, when they say that things are under control, they probably are.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

I agree with you StrongRad, but unfortunately, there are always some people who will without a doubt feed the trolls. Its basically inevitable.

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Especially when troll-feeding posts are an easy opportunity for people who don't know any better to increase their post count, much like the introduction thread. It's unavoidable with some people, but some of you who have been here awhile should know better than to take part in giving spammers exactly what they want. I agree with StrongRad's point, mostly. For the most part, the mods and admins do an efficient enough job of taking care of threads gone wrong as it is - I personally don't remember any problem threads/posters lingering for THAT long.

I know several people probably bring this up because of Clan, but that's a different situation. He wasn't quite as blatant a troublemaker as Necromancer or whoever we've had in the past, and as far as I know, he never actually posted anything offensive that absolutely NEEDED to be taken care of right away. He just constantly disregarded the rules while pretending to act like he innocently fit into the community. If the mods thought he was that big a threat, he might have been banned a lot earlier. Come to think of it, has he actually been banned or not? I'm not sure.

I think he was only having a one day blast. A WHOLE day. Over 9 hours, If I can remember.

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Well we are getting better at not feeding the trolls. Incidents like Clan are annoying, but if we can bear with it for just a few hours it'll be okay. I think we're doing just fine for now.



No sir.

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Well then, where do you live? I seem to recall you saying something about Alberta once, but I may have been mistaken.

Besides, Alberta is Mountain Time anyway, so I guess I'll just shut up now.

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beep beep I'm a Jeep

Eh...I keep thinking that we have plenty as for right now. But, if the Forum keeps growing the way it is now, then yes, there should be more mods in the future.

As for the trolling problem (which may have led to this topic), all you have to do is ignore them and alert an admin. It'll take some time and patience, but that's the way it needs to be.

EDIT: DG made my point.


My two centavos.

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But clan isn't gone. And I must say, I completely disagree with stu when he says that clan shouldn't be banned, but I agree with his administarting style completely. But that's another story

A new admin would be good, but I guess we shoudl trust the admins when they say they have things under control, and they usually do,. I'ts just kinda annoying when no admins are on for about 30 hours and a spammer has come and spread dirt all over the place.

Yes, hasnt he doen enough to get banned?

• - Demanded to be a sysop.
• - Made several slight-vulgar comments in the thread A Day In The Life Of about, but not limited to, alchohol, strip clubs, and several other things.
• - He has made the record for the most double posts. EVER.
• - Often times the posts are nothing that contribute to the conversation, like "Me Too" or "You Are Right." without him noit even knowing what we are talking about.
• - He completely ignores his 100 PMs about him telling him to stop, and continues to make spam.
  
  Anything Else?
  
  Toastpaint.

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You seem to be forgeting the rules. Spam isn't just posts that you don't like. One could call every single post about clan, that isn't in a topic specifically about him, spam. That would include topics like this, all of the forum games where someone responded to his posts with replies like "this is spam", "stop spamming", "ignore him, he's just a troll", or any of the other posts made about him.

From Rule #3


And of course you seem to be forgeting Rule #1



(and... how many posts has clan made today?)

But to answer your accusations.


Since when has this been in the rules?? Ever??

For which he was warned, and the offending posts were removed.

And you have been counting since when?

Kinda like the post I am replying to?

Since when has the pm from a normal user had any weight around here. The only pms that he needs to worry about, are those from me, the other admins, or any of the moderators.

The next person to make a comment about clan (in a topic that is not specifically concerning him) is going to provoke my wrath. If you have a problem with him:
1) You can ask him (nicely, if you wish) to stop
2) Make a post about him (in the appropriate forum of course). And since we don't really have an appropriate forum for ripping into other users, the post concerning him better not be anything that breaks the rules (especially #1)
3) If that doesn't work, you can pm a mod/admin

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OR
4) Ignore him and pray he goes away.

Some of us did ignore him, but most didn't and those were the ones who were making things worse. How many times do we have to say it, don't feed the trolls, ignore them. It will make them mad as a hornet, but if it gets them to go away then so be it.

Now I don't know about any of you guys, but I think this thread has out lived it's usefulness.

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Okay, many people in this thread took it the wrong way. It isn't about Clan, it's about the future of the forum compared to the last week of several spam bits. What I was basically trying to say was that there have been many people just posting useless posts and other Off-Topic things in different threads that kindof made me mad. Now, sure, there wasn't a lot, but there have been many locked threads recently with a few people disregarding the rules.

My questions were basically if it was possible for a mod to have the ability to ban in the future, if there were going to be more mods as the forum has reached it's primary growth session and will probably grow even faster soon, and why we have moderators protecting only certain parts of the forum instead of a Mod Team.

I also was just talking about the average new Homestar fan browsing this Forum after seeing the link in the Wiki and noticing a ghost topic or topics that are still alive having a good amount of spam in them, or going into a thread and seeing a few bits of spam here-and-there on pages. This might make them (maybe about a 10-45% chance) that they would rethink about the place somewhat and possibly leave.

Now, I'm kind of writing abstractly, but you will probably understand what I mean. So, sorry about the people who took this thread the wrong way. Admins may lock now if they wish, mainly my questions have been answered about this.

Now, Im not Mr Lazy fingers. Nor am I active fingers. SO ima just say a few sentances.


I think I would make a GREAT mod. But you know, If an admin/Mod hates me and doesnt want me to be a mod, Thats cool. But, I am on 24/7 exept on school days and holidays. Literally. So, If i come across spam in those 24 hours I am on, I would lock it. But hey, I guess if I suck, I admins think I wouldn't make a good mod, Thats cool.

And Im not begging " PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CAn i be A MOD!?!?!?!?!? " like that. No. I am just saying why I would make a good mod. I don't care if I become one, because some people hate me, Yaknow. I actually would like to be a mod, Buts its cool if I don't become one. I understand why ( No I don't. ).

There is my post.

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