Admin Only Icons and VIP Colors

A singularly good idea! How do you do it? Seriously, this is where I stand. I'd just like us to be the same on the color policy, one way or the other. I will say administratively, the red is a lot less hassle.


What sort of administrative hassles come up or could come up?

If there aren't any on the FF side, i doubt there would be on the JC side.

 

Oh, be nice and give Everton a nice new blue kit.

 

A board generated color is easier to reset, it happens automatically when you change a user from regular to VIP with one click. I imagine there are some hassles on the Fan Force side, they just don't have as many ex-RSAs still around, maybe.

And I guess a good question from me would be why NOT be consistent? There's nothing lost in doing so. VIP's are still different colors from regular users when red, they still have OPP15, and still are allowed titles (and in fact must have them if they are red). Mods don't get to go without a background, it's one of the things we have to do to stay in order. It's a system that has worked in the past four years and helped solve a lot of confusion and inconsistency at the time. I know not changing the policy isn't going to affect world events and we might seem to be a bit unyeilding, but I think changing it may not be worth it, either. Especially when it seems to work right now.

 

How is it more of a hassle to allow ex-mods something thats not red?

If they take say purple with a navy background then you can reset them to red. Either way no matter what you do you end up back at red default.

 

A board generated color is easier to reset, it happens automatically when you change a user from regular to VIP with one click

how often does that really happen?

there can and probably would be former moderators who chose red, and that'd be fine too. this seems more like standardization for standardization's sake.

 

Or maybe change for change's sake?

 

Or maybe change for change's sake?


maybe. just that the reasons against it don't seem to amount to much. it seems based more on an uncommon and weak link ("less hassle") and "standardization", a lack of which hasn't harmed FF at all. just because the two entities are separate doesn't mean you can't consider the merits of each. FF doesn't exist in a vacuum, and the lack of any real problems with various former RSA colors speaks positively about it.

 

I've decided it's time for a change.

My colors and title are fully within the current rules for administration.

I doubt there will be any confusion. After all, no one would mistake me for a Chapter Rep.

 

I doubt there will be any confusion. After all, no one would mistake me for a Chapter Rep.


i can't quite see anyone mistaking you for a chapter rep, david .

just to underline what i said earlier, this is far from a big deal, and it's telling that this is the sort of thing we "argue" about now. comparitively speaking, it's nothing. for my part, i'm fine with red, and haven't paid much mind to it over the months. it's just the principles that i think are worth speaking up for.

 

Actually we get questions as to why ex-RSA's aren't red. We direct them to the GSA's and they answer them as they know their reasons why they keep their policy. Just because we haven't changed doesn't mean we haven't considered doing so, we've been in talks with the FF folks plenty. We at the JC have just decided to stick to red at this time.

 

I can't remember the last time someone asked me to close a thread or look into a problem for atleast a year since I stepped down as a GSA. I think people see the title plus not showing up on the mods list and figure it out for themselves that I'm not the right guy to talk to.

 

I admit, I miss the point of this...why are we resetting people's accounts, and why are we changing them once they're reset if they're capable of doing it themselves (presumably if they weren't, they wouldn't have colours)?

 

Well I'll buy that current mods having different colour schemes is good for immediate identification... even though it does require a little familiarity, and not everyone has that. Therefore I can also accept that that familiarity has to extend to identification of City Reps. For my part I would only be interested in dark blue, and I imagine that's probably going to be considered too close to regular blue.

I won't buy the administrative fuss thing as logging in to change a colour back to red would be, at the most, an uncommon issue. Nothing to hold against the idea IMO.

It's gone from being a complete fudge of a reason to a sort of half-fudge.

I'm not gonna pretend I brought this up for any more pressing reason than I can't have a red username.

Ah well, one day, when the world has seen sense, and everyone is an Everton fan, there will be no other option than to make dark blue the standardised colour for ex-mods.

 

Actually dp, you aren't. Current mods are required to have a background color of sorts.

This is just one area where JC and FF policies differ. Yes, I would really like to see us find some middle ground on the issue and have the same policy, because we do share the boards and a user base. IMO we are just two halves to the same organization. Changing our policy to match the JC's was brought up in the OFH, and we are discussing it now. But honestly, I don't think much is going to change. The JC is not going to change their policy, and I highly doubt ours will get changed either.

 

"I've decided it's time for a change.
My colors and title are fully within the current rules for administration.
I doubt there will be any confusion. After all, no one would mistake me for a Chapter Rep."

Both disappointing and childish, I'm afraid.


"The JC is not going to change their policy, and I highly doubt ours will get changed either."

"Then someone should make them agree."

 

Can we not have ex-mods (OR VIPs in general) in Red? It actually is more of a strain on my eyes.

Personally I think ex-mods should have a non-red/blue/green colour for thier colours. That way they are distinguished against the true VIPs (Authors, famous people, game/contest winners), CRs, & Inactive Mods.

Everytime I see a game winner, and think "Hey I don't remember this dude/dudette as a mod, why are they a VIP? Then I look and see "Winner of xyz game" etc.)

I however, don't confuse between ex-RSAs and current Admin/Mod staff, since thier colours are obviosuly different.

 

Don't get me wrong, this isn't the whole reason for ex-mods, ex-staff or VIP's being red, but it was one of the main for Vertical and the current MS at the time to hammer out a more consistent policy regarding the whole thing, from what I read. I'm not sure the board set up was a little different back then, but regardless, rather than changing ex-mods who were green at the time and didn't log on anymore (much smaller board then, too), they just reset and agreed to stick with red (as one example).

My main point in this is there is no need for the change, right now. It's a policy that works and has for years, and on the JC side, we plan on sticking to it. We'd love to get it more consistent with FF, but aren't going to hold the fact that they don't change as a factor in our situation. Yes, we share the same boards, but we're not exactly the same and that's fine. Our "user bases" differ slightly, esp in how we well we know each other and the ease of which we can tell our VIP's apart. We rarely see each other face to face.

We can definitely appreciate the reasons and we can see both sides of the situation, Everton, but ex-mods will be staying red.

 

I'm not sure the board set up was a little different back then,

I think Dingo established that it was.

 

Right, that should be "I'm sure the board set up was different back then". I changed the sentence and accidentally left the "not" in there. Thanks, though.

 

and

From the first section that I've isolated each sentance: false; partially true; true; true; false based on context.


Here's the history.

Back in the JC past, anyone who had VIP status or higher was allowed to use whatever colour scheme that they so wished. At this time there were no icons, no titles, no forum headers, no separate section of the online user section for mods, no nothing to differentiate who was a mod from who was a VIP other than the bio pages. In mid-2001 (around June/July from memory) there was a thread started by a FF CR complaining about getting PMs asking him to lock threads on various forums. Because he was a decently visible poster in the JCC he was going to get them more often than most others, even though everyone else just forwarded them on to a mod that they could see online. Regardless of personal views on this, the decision made at the time was that FF CRs would have a dedicated colour scheme to separate them out. Nothing else was said at the time since all TFN Staff at that time who visited the boards were also moderators, former TFN staffers who had VIP status (all 2 of them) never came to TFN anymore and had the default colours, all the "SW VIPs" never altered their colours anyway, and the only other people that had VIP status were game winners who had the right to change their colours any time they wanted while they had VIP status.

There was no VIP status for former moderators at this point in time. Either you had moderator status, or you didn't.

In the first part of 2002 due to various circumstances the decision was given to provide recognition to those that had previously been a member of staff for the JC with VIP status. This was retroactively applied to everyone that had served as a member of the JC staff. When a few of those former moderators started resurfacing in the lead-up to AotC some used the VIP access to the admin menu to change their colours. When some people saw this, they complained in Comms as to why this was allowed since it would "provide confusion to those people trying to find moderators". At this point in time admin icons had come and gone and titles were in use for anyone that had been given colours as a former moderator, but the argument was that it would be too confusing on the "Users Online" page for people when these former moderators infrequently logged in to the JC. The short-term

 

At least I'm consistent on it.

I argued for the MSUs as well and, in this particular case, I fought the law and the law won. Hard.

 

You obviously don't browse the Games Forums a lot, eh?

 

Moderator titles are not free range. They are supposed to state their forum and their title, if we have some where this isn't the case, feel free to pm an admin and point them out to us. We can change that.

On the subject of MSU's, we can discuss them. David, I think the reason you lost "hard" was more about the way we were discussing it than the argument itself. Any subject, if brought up right, can be discussed and come to some sort of conclusion, even if it's not what everyone wants. I don't have a problem listening to any comments on the MSU. If people think the system can be improved, I'm all for it.

 

Moderator titles are not free range. They are supposed to state their forum and their title, if we have some where this isn't the case, feel free to pm an admin and point them out to us. We can change that.

Errant_Venture
Title: Games Peacekeeper
Cmndr. Apollo
Registered: Feb '02

I didn't know "Peacekeaper" or "Commander" was a title of Moderator now. And I'm using EV as an example because not only is his title lacking "Manager," but it also has extra stuff. Oh, and his MS update was absolutely ridiculous. Professionalism is thrown out the window when there's 1337 all over the place in the update. Letting format mods choose their single color user name is a lot more professional than an altered title or an update like that.

 

Havn't read this thread.

But as for my title Ousley:

1. Admin put in Cmdr Apollo
2. Its long been ruled that "Peacekeeper", "Sheriff", "Guardian", "etc." were okay as replacements for "Manager" or "Moderator".
3. As for my recent MSU, I do not see the big deal. I mean seriously I can't do a damn update without people bitching. I do midi files, I remove it (wasn't asked to. Admins said it was fine). I do a lot of HTML I remove it (which others mods do as well). I do one that is perfectly readable but has some net jargon in it and I still can't win and the bit that is hard to read there is a link to a translator. What the hell do you people want?
4. And I agree that letting former mods pick a block color is the way it should be.