Moderators and Administrators

[Jitendra Hydonus]

Hello this is Steve here. Lately i have wondered about the functions of the members of this forum. i wondered who wanted to have abilities to help us and what level they are helping us and would like to help the forum. In the process i decided to see just what the definition of Administrator and (Global) Moderator is. After reading and reflecting a bit i thought that i would set up the forum in such a way that would help us all. i hope it is satisfactory to all of you.  If not please contact me and i will try to accommodate your needs, aspirations and desire to serve here at Spiritual Portal.

Yoshi has helped us take away scam members and delete inappropriate posts (including my own!!!) and Dan (Elfun) has been helpful to this forum from the beginning when he helped start it. Both of them have participated and served immensely. Into Blue (Nite Wish) and i had the original idea to put this forum together and with the help of Dan we created it several years ago. Nomaste has helped financing and with technical aspects of the forum. He also has been very involved in posting. We are fortunate to have all of you who are members at Spiritual Portal and hope you are happy with the way it is run.

Steve Hydonus

Moderators

The moderators (short singular form: "mod") are users (or employees) of the forum who are granted access to the posts and threads of all members for the purpose of moderating discussion (similar to arbitration) and also keeping the forum clean (neutralizing spam and spambots etc.).[12] Because they have access to all posts and threads in their area of responsibility, it is common for a friend of the site owner to be promoted to moderator for such a task. Moderators also answer users' concerns about the forum, general questions, as well as respond to specific complaints. They also can do anything to lend a helping hand to a user in need.[13] Moderators themselves may have ranks: some may be given mod privileges over only a particular topic or section (called "local"), while others (called "global" or "super") may be allowed access anywhere. Common privileges of moderators include: deleting, merging, moving, and splitting of posts and threads, locking, renaming, stickying of threads, banning, suspending, unsuspending, unbanning, warning the members, or adding, editing, removing the polls of threads.[14] "Junior Modding", "Backseat Modding", or "Forum copping" can refer negatively to the behavior of ordinary users who take a moderator-like tone in criticizing other members.

Essentially, it is the duty of the moderator to manage the day-to-day affairs of a forum or board as it applies to the stream of user contributions and interactions. The relative effectiveness of this user management directly impacts the quality of a forum in general, its appeal, and its usefulness as a community of interrelated users.

Moderators also have categories e.g. "Global Moderators" and just "Moderators". Global moderators have the rights to moderate the complete forum while moderators can be assigned only to the sub-forum.[15]

Administrator

The administrators (short form: "admin") manage the technical details required for running the site. As such, they may promote (and demote) members to moderators, manage the rules, create sections and sub-sections, as well as perform any database operations (database backup etc.). Administrators often also act as moderators. Administrators may also make forum-wide announcements, or change the appearance (known as the skin) of a forum. There are also many forums where administrators share their knowledge like AdminForum