Ask the Staff v7

[Hes]

lanifiel has explained the various tasks like this:

Originally Posted by lanifiel

Let me break it down:

ADMINS: Have the ability to do anything and everything with the forum. Including turning off the forum, Deleting members, they can see every area of the forum and all posts, including deleted posts. Our role is overseer. We watch the entire forum and make the larger issue decisions. We also have the final say in disputes. Each Admin has a different area they are in charge of, but the powers remain the same.

UNSPEAKABLES: These are the forum moderators. They are the ones who actively interact with the members, most often in disciplinary matters. They have the ability to delete posts. Most unspeakables have specific areas they are assigned to, but are not limited to these areas.

AURORS: These are the ones who patrol the forums. They dont have the ability to moderate the forum, except in certain areas. This is the first level of being staff.

All levels of staff have the ability to warn members.

[alwaysme]

Aurors and Auror Mods are the lowest form of staff. Unspeakables are the next level with Administrators being at the very top.

[mactheknife]

Thanx Hes and alwaysme! You have both been very helpful .

[LoonyForMoony]

Why aren't there character analysis threads for the ghosts? I'd say that Myrtle and Nick deserve their own discussions, as well as the Gray Lady and the Bloody Baron. (I notice Peeves has one!) Is there a reason there are no such threads?

[SusanBones]

There is a thread in the Cloak for the ghosts:

The Hogwarts Ghosts - who were they and why do they haunt Hogwarts?

The character analysis threads are reserved for characters with a lot of discussion value. The information that we have about the ghosts is very limited.

[LoonyForMoony]

Okay, thanks. I have another question; what does the small text mean beneath some user names specifying "second year", "fourth year", etc? Does it have to do with the person's join date, or how often they post, or what? Thanks!

[FleurduJardin]

Originally Posted by LoonyForMoony

Okay, thanks. I have another question; what does the small text mean beneath some user names specifying "second year", "fourth year", etc? Does it have to do with the person's join date, or how often they post, or what? Thanks!

I'm not staff but I can answer this. You're First Year until you've got 100 posts, at which point you're Second Year. Then it takes you 200 more (300 in all) to get to Third Year (and, like in the book, qualify for Hogsmeade). The number of required posts keeps mounting. You don't get to be a Hogwarts Graduate until you have over 2,000 posts.

It's a slippery slope, though, because you can lose some posts when the threads are being pruned.

Which brings me to my own question: Has there been an early "spring cleaning" and pruning these past weeks? Every time I've come in lately, I've had a lower number of posts. Up to now, I'd lose up to 5 posts at the most at one time, but today, I'm down over 50 posts. I'm sure I had 1,602 last time I was in, today I'm down to 1,551.

How often does that kind of pruning occur anyway, and how are the zapped threads chosen? I also noticed that two or three of the threads I had started have disappeared. They were fairly successful threads too.

[gertiekeddle]

I did a pruning just recently, but this have been only a few quite old threads (without posts since 2007) which actually shouldn't have affected any member to an instant as huge as loosing so many posts since they contained less than 20 posts each. I also moved quite some threads (as old as the deleted ones) to the archives, is it possible your threads are among them? I delete / move by a very easy guide: threads which are inactive for at least an half year, but actually mostly 1-2 years, are in danger, if another thread took over their original topic. Everything else stays. In fact mostly those threads stay, too, because we expect them to become active again one day.

It's entirely possible that sometimes prunings are rather huge (I lost a few hundred posts often enough in the past), but this didn't happen lately as far as I know. Then we keep having bugs, so mistakes are never impossible, but in the meantime staff knows most technical traps and tries to avoid them.

We don't delete or move running threads, though, so either there was a problem with it (but then you had noticed the note by staff I assume) or it was merged maybe (could happen to rather new threads)? Do you recall the title of said threads?

[FleurduJardin]

Thanks for your response, Gertie - but no, none of my threads were "problem" threads (though some were controversial, but everything stayed well controlled) - I never got any warning about any of them, except once in the first "Never-Ending Party" thread, but actually it was only closed for 24 hours because of "rowdy behaviour", and Hes, who closed it, told me that it wasn't my fault, the "partying" just got out of hand. She re-opened it after everyone had cooled down, a day later. But now it's been deleted for good.

The other one of my threads which disappeared is the "Unity - A Hogwarts Common Room?" thread, which got a lot of debate, but never over the top. When it disappeared, I just assumed the staff deemed it irrelevant after you guys did open a "real" Hogwarts Common Room in The Quibbler. And yes, that thread was old.

But it doesn't matter. I was just wondering how, in the 2 days I'd been away, I lost over 50 threads, that's all. No big deal. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

[gertiekeddle]

I see - I thought we were talking about recently deleted threads, mea culpa.

I suggest checking on the answers staff provided from page 30 on of this thread when you asked for those two threads in October. I'm not sure if I find all owl conservations with staff about them still, but those answers should be sufficient. As explained back then (also in Vs. 2 I think), it was never intended to delete any of those threads.

Actually I recall we had quite a few threads about a Hogwarts common room idea over the years this forum exists since it's just such an obvious idea, but all of them got lost at some point (like many others). So it really wasn't your thread only.
The Quibbler thread is a different issue since this isn't a discussion area, but for fun purpose only. The thread there was installed for chatting within the 'Common Room', but not as a debate thread over such an idea in Potterverse.

[FleurduJardin]

Originally Posted by gertiekeddle

I see - I thought we were talking about recently deleted threads, mea culpa.

I was talking about recently deleted threads, since 50 of my posts disappeared in the last two days. Nothing to do with the threads we were discussing back in October. I just kind of branched out on the others but they wouldn't have been in this last lot, it's just that one thing led to the other. Mea culpa myself.

And no, I don't remember now which threads those 50 posts could have been on that got deleted recently.

But as I said, no big deal. Let's consider the case closed, it was just a random question because I was so surprised.

[Morghen]

When you view a thread that you started does that count as a thread view?

[gertiekeddle]

I think it does with every return, but I admit I never fully saw through this feature. It's more based on observation over the years than on any valid knowledge.

[Fury]

Regarding the new additions to Post Count, I have a question. Is Post count on in the Library part of Flourish and Blott's? Cause alot of our posts in that part are there for the Library's stories.

[gertiekeddle]

We forgot to technically add it, but it is now. Thanks, Fury!

[ginger1]

A very small question. Why do some names appear on the "today's birthdays" list and not others?

[mexicant]

There are two reasons why a name might not be on the list; the first reason is that it only shows active members' birthdays, and the second is that some do not wish to have their birthdays known and have set them to private.

[ginger1]

Well my age is always on display, and I'm fairly active ...

[mexicant]

Age, yes, as is mine. However, my birth date is set to private. If you would like to check or change your birth date settings, go here and under the second section, labeled "Optional Information - All information will be viewable by other forum members", you will find a drop-down box where you can set your level of privacy.

[ginger1]

Thankyou