Heard this before: observers.....then advisers....then next thing you know, we're waist deep in the Big Muddy fighting the gooks' battles for them!
I just checked and the last PM I received from another staff member was back in January. Pretty much, there are a handful of threads that are permament and not released. A thread to do with email account information of staff members, a vacation thread letting other staff members know when we are going to be absent, and the dual thread. I don't think anyone would see a problem with the first two being kept private, and the board rules already state that we keep track of duals. Beyond that the tags only get used if it is something that relates to a members personal information and would still be revealing even if an edited version is released. I can't even remember the last time the DNR tag was used though since that type of situation is very rare.
This is the thing. We literally couldn't be more transparent. If a couple observers will help reassure those who seem to believe we are hiding something regardless, well, why not have them? Plus, it's a good way to get some people more involved...new ideas, new viewpoints. If it's pointless or doesn't work...no harm, no foul...we try something else.
The Shelter is painfully boring. The "Observers" will waste precious seconds checking it that they'll never get back. Your loss.
I have a suggestion: Instead of calling them "observers" we could call them "Czars." It's the American way!
^ Well, maybe we can let you be a Czar anyway, as long as you promise to cheat on your taxes if you ever do make enough for it to be worthwhile. Although that does raise an interesting epistemological problem about the validity of a "promise" to cheat. Is such a person trustworthy? Does that even mean anything?
Jesus fucking Christ people! Get. A. Life. It's an obscure forum with about 30 active members. Go accomplish something in the real world instead.
There is no need for observers on Wordforge because the Shelter is already public viewing (with a brief time delay). If you wonder why there is so little content in the Shelter, it is because there are very few moderator actions that really need discussion these days. It mostly seems to be moving threads, closing duplicate threads, killing spambots. When our board was much bigger, years ago, then there was more need for moderators but so many people have left over the years, there are very few of us left to moderate. No one here is gonna do anything surprising. We're familiar with all the trolls and we are no longer shocked at their attempts to troll. We already know where everyone stands on all the major issues, who dislikes whom, and who likes to stir the pot. If Lanzman wants to change up the mods, that is up to him. But I haven't seen any gross violations from the moderators in a very long time. I'm not even sure who all the current moderators are. Lanzman, Tamar, Paladin, Clyde, O2C.... is that it? I thought Kyle was part of the staff but I haven't seen a post from him in forever.
Of course, some people will never be satisfied because they adore their paranoid fantasies of what they think we are doing as opposed to what actually goes on.
Tamar, we all know about the Satanic rituals that go on in the Shelter. There's no use trying to hide it.
