RFC: Find a new admin

I mean, I’d be happy to sign onto an indefinite term, but if the man himself wants regular votes, I’ll vote.

Can I get clear on something? It seems like we’re using this admin transition as an opportunity to create and ratify a process for admin transitions? As opposed to just voting up or down on me taking on the role, like we did for jmakin?

If that’s the case, I don’t have a problem with it. Just wanting to understand what we’re working on.

As far as 6-month vs. indefinite terms, and/or community votes, I can see pros and cons for all, so I won’t insist on 6 months with a community vote. Putting that out there in case it helps the process go more smoothly.

Well, we ratified an RFC process. My main goal is just to abide by it. There’s nothing to say that if, say, you step down in 6 months, that we do an RFC like this for the next admin who accepts a 9 month, 12 month, or indefinite appointment.

Admins are more important and fewer in number than mods, so I think we can be more flexible and approve them on their terms. Mods, I think given the disparate circumstances under which mods came to be mods, standardizing things for them helps establish legitimacy.

Yea I guess we are. However, if you don’t get through a community vote or we end up bickering about who and how someone should admin - I’m just saying right now I’m gonna get really fucking angry.

This shit is complicated in my opinion. Admin position comes with more responsibility than perhaps any other staff role. You control everything about this website and the server it sits on. Most websites don’t allow this kind of superduper user because it’s problematic.

If you guys want to come up with a process I’m all for it. Like I said there’s a decent chance in 6 months I’ll be up for it again, but other than that, I wanna stress that we really lack bodies for this position, and rotating admins is almost certainly not possible. There’s also an issue of trust. I’d want any admin to have full endorsement of the community behind them. Without that I just think bad situations happen. However, there could come a point where the community cannot agree on who to admin. That’s fucked too.

We gotta figure it out - I’m totally willing to do whatever I’m (on a technical level) capable of to make this a little easier to figure out. But the way this is set up currently - admin is the superuser. I don’t really know a way around that. We’re dealing with hard limitations here.

Probably someone paid something like $200-$500 a month that’s not a user of the site would be the absolute best thing. But then there’s still an issue of trust.

I hear what both of you are saying. And I particularly agree with your comments, jmakin, about the importance of the admin position. Unfortunately I’m supposed to be working on real life work projects so I don’t have time to help hash out a robust solution right now.

My perspective at this moment is that I’d like to help out by taking on the admin role for 6 months, and I’d like there to be some level of legitimacy for that. Whatever it takes for that to happen is fine with me.

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Yea it’s not on you to figure it out, I hope you didnt get that impression. This community has to figure it out, and soon, because this is definitely a potential existential threat.

Do we need to figure anything out? Slap up an inline poll and it’ll be like 30-0 and we’re golden.

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Poll is redundant and performative.

Watev but it’s unnecessary.

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I will admin for 6 months after SP if you want but I’m out after that for sure. And by admin I mean “hold onto the DO account password” as I can’t imagine anything needs to be done. I doubt you even need the $80/mo tier.

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Man we like to overcomplicate everything!

Put up a poll, “should sensible be admin?”

He will get 100% of the vote.

Done.

We don’t need to microscopically examine every possible outcome in all possible worlds.

Out of some miracle someone has stepped up for this job. Let’s make it as easy as humanly possible for them.

P.s. thanks for volunteering sensible!

Edit: or what cassette already said more succinctly .

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That’s exactly what it is, just holding the keys.

We don’t “need” it but overprovisioning is not bad. We definitely DO need it if there’s a large traffic spike, and I for one don’t want to find out what happens if the server goes OOM.

Do you support SensiblePerson as admin?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

The RFC system is clunky but it does actually work if you take it seriously and I see no value in burning it down and trying to set something new up from scratch.

It’s good to hold on to in case we need to again prevent somebody like keeed from becoming a mod.

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Honestly, I post here like 100 times a day and follow this stuff really closely and I couldn’t describe the RFC system.

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I don’t understand it either but even still I managed to use it to get Chads nominated so maybe it’s not that bad?

Yeah, I think all that really needs to be done is settle on what goes to the community for a vote and have jmakin start a poll in here for it.

Any objections to a final wording of, “Shall SensiblePerson serve a 6 month term of forum admin, after which he may be re-elected by forum vote if he wishes to continue?”

Let’s do it

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