[it's been months since i wanted to rewrite the lyrics to that iron maiden song. but this is not the topic of this thread. move along. nothing to see here]
ultimatemetal has changed owner, and i feel that there is a request moderators from some board might want to make to the new boss.
up until this very day, forum mods cannot ban users from the board they're administering. this has/had to pass through the rather tedious process of "writing a pm to mark and hope he would get online soon". this situation has made more than a moderator uncomfortable, because what do you do exactly when trolls from the nether world are spamming left and right all nite, you have three exams to take, or fifty pages of paperwork to write (or a date. but let's keep this in the realm of reality for a while), and mark is sunbathing half a world away?
as some of you might remember, yours truly only asked for the banning of two users (at the same time). mark replied and acted according to my request in a matter of hours, so i never got to feel the unnerving sensation of not being the master at my own place.
still, i know of others who have been left waiting, who are still waiting in some cases. so what i mean to do is ask the new owner of the site and the forums to grant single-board moderators the powers to ban users from the forum they administrate.
it seems to me to be a rather fair request: in the case of band boards, for instance, the mods are obviously trusted by the band, and if they're half insane and go on a banning-spree because it's their bad day, well, it's the band's problem. not to mention that you all know what i do on my bad days: i run crying to busy friends.
it seems extremely unlikely as of now to ever find myself in a situation where i have to ban someone. this community is so protective of its own members and integrity, that it's far more likely i'd have to save the occasional troll from public lynching, should any come here. plus i'm online quite often, and deleting posts is usually a sufficient deterrent for anybody with a life. yet this issue seems - if not important - at least appropriate to take into consideration at this very moment of transition between the old and the new.
i'd like to hear the opinion of other mods (lina and magsec mainly, and also xenophobe if he ever happens to drop by) and that of the users as well: do you trust this forum's administrators and those of other bands you visit often not to ban you for stupid shit? please bear in mind that the asking/receiving process so far has been more or less automatic unless the moderator asking was clearly on a crusade or had suddenly become a basketcase, so it's highly likely that nothing much will change even if such "powers" are finally bestowed upon the likes of me and the rest.
@ those lines )
