I woke up this morning with what I think is a cool idea. We could call the moderators something different other than moderators, something to do with the Discworld that sets them aside from the image of moderators on other boards, so the word moderator doesn’t appear anywhere but you can still see that someone is tending to problems. At first I thought of The Watch, which kind of fits but I thought it too similar to the police. Then I thought of Auditors, but Marcia says that she thinks they are evil- so perhaps that’s not a nice idea. Then I came up with the idea of calling them Sweepers, like Lu-Tse, chief janitor, and master of the Way of Mrs. Cosmopilite. I think it kind of fits with the role of sweeping away the stuff that messes up time, in our case the spam posts that mess up our time on the boards. I thought we could have a sort of moderator section called The Monestary that clearly defines the role of a sweeper, how members of the board can interact with them and have forums where members can request the help of a sweeper if some unnoticed spam appears on one of the foums. The same section can also be used to ask questions about the boards in general, problems with passwords, avatars that don't work, general help, members that have been trolling, trolls that have been attacking other members by pm and so on. Some of the ideas for this section come from one of Mynona’s posts. I think it’s a nice way of furthering the Discworlding of the boards and making the moderators' name a less imposing one; what do people think?
I think calling the moderators Sweeper is fine, but I don't think we should 'Boardaniafy' operations/positions. I'll refer to Piggly Moos, what newbie on earth will translate that as Private Message? Discifying would be better, maybe something like... Encoded Clacks
It probably would have taken me a while to get what piggly moos where but I had seen what was there before and I had read a post on the main Terry Pratchett message board that had referred to PM's as piggly moos. On the topic of moderators I think that we should Discworldify their status although I like City Watch better than Sweeper.
I agree with Tempus that Piggly Moos conveys nothing. Clacks is much better. Sweepers is a great name for the moderators
I agree, and you'll soon learn what a piggly moo is once you get one. I was thinking we could call that whole box with member info on Clacks. P.S. The Piggly Moos is just there because I thought it was very funny when Chris mentioned it in that thread, we could change it in future if no one likes it, it does make the site more unique though.
Yes, Piggy Moos is great. I do worry that we don't over disc everything. Just becuase it might make things confusing to people who aren't familar with message boards or just starting reading TP and don't know discworld that well.
I don't think there's much more Discworlding we can do; and new members can always ask what something means and how to do stuff. Clacks might be better than Piggly Moos, we could have a vote on it?
Definite yes to all those ideas, Mal. I found 'piggly moos' confusing, as I hadn't seen the post on the board. It didn't take me long to work it out though. I don't really mind either way with that. I do think it's nice to have Boardanian touches; after all, the whole point is for us to be able to move the community intact, complete with standing jokes and everything.
Er... Catriona, you do realise that this thread is over a year old and the decisons have been made? I'm actually starting to think it might be wise to lock these old threads where decisions have been made... anyone agree?
I agree, but I'm too tired to look through and compile a list of which ones need it. Could someone with more energy/time etc do it?
I knew that the decisions had been made, I was just excited by piggly moo. I didn't know the thread was THAT old, it was on the same page as all the others so I though it had to be pretty current. Sorry for pulling up old threads.
I think every thread in this forum (at the moment) has been decided, though I may have missed something - it has gone midnight now.