I along with a couple moderators have seen Christopher logged into OD, so it is strange he's not replying.

Joe on the other hand seems to be way below the radar.

I think elections are in order as well. It was something we all discussed a while ago but with many things, it's sort of fallen to the way side.

So far the past week or so it seems like I'm the only admin present around the site. If I'm wrong, the other two admins need to chime in.

Not sure how we'd hold elections at this point... should I just step in as main admin and get the ball rolling on this? Should I wait a little longer for a reply from my fellow two admins?

I'm open to suggestions but please try not to attack anyone at this point. There could be very good reason for the silence from Joe and Christopher.

Here is what I ask... the other moderators, who are active on the site and reading this... try to contact both Joe and Christopher directly via their websites and/ or email addresses if you have them. Let me know what took place if anything.

Standing by to hopefully get us all some answers.

we could do something like this?

** admin sean edit to remove unofficial OD poll **

@SeanPollock: Yes, a lot on my plate but right now I'm the only openly active admin, so I'm stepping up when it's really needed. Go me

I also think that moderators and future admins need to be at least 18 years old for legal reasons and to also have some sort of background and previous experience in moderating other forums and sites.

It would also be good to have some history with the Open Design community... say more then just a couple months... maybe a minimum of 6 months?

Just a couple ideas... not set in stone at this point but good ideas I think.

Thoughts?

@gnome: we could make exceptions and allow a couple under 18 but we do need a majority of older, more seasoned people in place.

I strongly believe previous experience in moderating forums and a background and/ or history with OD and/ or sites like OD would help.

As we've all seen, especially me with OSWD, OWD and now OD... it's not for the faint at heart or someone without experience... not saying I've done a perfect job but I know that I've done more then my fair share about the open source community with keeping things going and moving forward.

Anyway... lets see what happens... I'm tired... it's been a long day. I need some rest. Be back later...

How about nominating temp admins to help out with small tasks like design approval? I have always thought tasks like that should stick with an admin. Mods moderate the forum, and that's it.

That's of course you don't mind my opinion.

The design approval was just an example. The point of that was to allow you to handle the major issues of this site: contest, duplicate members, etc.

Issues with the admins running site aside I think elections would be good for no other reason than it gives a chance for the community to have a voice and some control on how they want things to run here... I think it's called democracy?

I'd like to see elections purely for this reason and that it in no way means or suggests that it is being done due to what the current admins are or aren't doing.

If we ONLY hold elections when there's an uprising of discontent then the elections will always be left with a sour taste and people will vote with their hearts and not their minds.

Elections should be held at the same time each x years no matter how the admins are performing.

Pete

I know I'm not as active as some of the people here, but I do read about 75-80% of the posts, I just don't always get involved. I've been working on reorganizing my business to allow more time to give back to the community. While this isn't exactly what I had in mind (was thinking things like training Non-Profit staffs, speaking at local schools, etc), it would be something that fits the bill. I would bring to the table pretty thorough PHP knowledge with accompanying experience, as well as pretty intimate WordPress knowledge (I do everything from plugins to themes to core patches).

I know this site is highly customized, but it's lack of updates since [a rather old version of WordPress] makes me worry that there are so many core modifications that the site can no longer benefit from the WordPress community. @sean are you guys manually patching the security vulnerabilities that have been found and fixed since the version you are running? I know that lots of testing is needed for updates, but that's another thing I could bring to the table. I could easily add a domain to my server (quality, stable, well-maintained Rackspace box) that is just for admins and mods to test new updates before they go live. Admins could be given FTP and SSH to the account.

@aaroncampbell: I mentioned before in another thread (not sure where it is at the moment) that the part of OD running WordPress is running the most stable and secure version in it's version class which at the time of this comment is 2.0.11.

Take a look here. As mentioned by WordPress staff:

"In keeping with the stable/testing release philosophy of Debian we have committed to maintaining our 2.0 branch with security and critical fixes until 2010. (Yes that’s 5 years after it was originally released in 2005.)

The latest version of the 2.0 branch is 2.0.11"

So were are good and if it ever came up, we could manually do security fixes.

The big issue is with Vanilla. But we are discussing moving to a new forum backend, so we shall see.

Sorry!

I haven't been around much either as I have been busy with my studies. They are really important so I'm afraid OD come second

I'm happy to continue as a mod if the community wants me but I have a couple of months before I do my final exam.

I will and try and get in here a bit more often though.

I think the traditional forum layout (such as phpBB on the free side or IPB on the expensive) is a bit over cluttered and complicated. I really like BBPress, it's good even for very active forums (we're on the verge of outgrowing vanilla) but it's simple.

From what I know. BBPress would be a great choice. Whether or not these mods are posting now i think maybe we could rotate mods in and out frequently

Hey you. Linguistic Expression. Thats what I say.

maybe some functionality with private messgaging too?

ooh it would be great to see some positive changes in here...yeah, I think we outgrew Vanilla..it really is limited.

having signatures is not a big deal..admin can set it so that only one link is allowed in a sig...no images..it's easy to program stuff like that...
I don't have a problem with members doing some self-promotion...am I the only one with that kind of open mind?

@NickyD: Of course we would do what we can do merge and/ or import all the current forum posts, comments, etc.

I wonder if we shouldn't try to move this discussion to another thread, and try to pull this thread back on topic. Unfortunately, looking back, I think it was one of my posts that took us off topic in the first place, so I'll make the effort to bring us back around.

If you haven't read and/or don't remember the beginning of this thread, please take the time to go back and read it. . . . . You did go back and read it didn't you?

We should be discussing the idea of holding an election for mods and/or admins. Some aren't up for the task right now (schedules, other commitments, and life in general change, so this is not to reflect poorly on people that have dedicated themselves to helping and can't anymore), and some want to pass the torch.

I think we need to figure out what the community thinks of elections as far as:

1. Who should be elected (mods, admins, both?)
2. What should the requirements be for each position we want to elect to
3. How should the process work
4. How should be allowed to vote
5. How often should it occur (yearly, bi-yearly, only when needed?)
6. Since nomination will also be a part of this process, I don't know if we should entertain them here or not, but it's something to think about.

I'll go ahead and weigh in as well.

1. I think this is a decent idea, but it will still need some clarification. First, can an admin be re-elected? I think that as long as the admin wants to take on another term, he should be allowed (assuming he gets a majority vote, no free rides). Also, if we replace Sean, who is up for election next year and who has two years ahead of them?


2. In addition to what Gnome said, an admin should have experience administrating sites (decent understanding of servers, all the protocols that will be used, and the struggles that a popular site feels). I also think admins should have to be 18, although moderators probably just need to be "mature" enough to handle it well.


3. I think a blind vote is a good idea, and I agree that you shouldn't be able to nominate yourself.


4. We might have to think about this a little more. It doesn't take much to sign up for this site. I mean, I could sign up with an E-Mail from each of my domains, a few gmail accounts, etc, and really sway the vote. I could even have people that never come to this site sign up and vote for me (my wife, son, friends/relatives, anyone really). I'm thinking that there should be some minimum presence required to be allowed to vote. Something like aminimum number of posts OR a submitted design OR specifically OK'd by an existing admin.


5. I think a yearly term, with admins serving three years is fine, but I especially like the idea of staggering the admin and mod votes. Opening the site to a complete upset, ending up with only a couple people that have any idea how the site backend is run, would be bad.

i like the staggering idea

There are already 3 admins and 10 mods. I dont think we need more mods.

Staggering admin terms is a great idea

Oh I see...that sounds good