The staff of Posetteforever is organized by several positions the top position is Webmaster followed by Administrators, Moderators, and Online Support.
Who has which position can be seen in this link: Forum Staff that is accessible in the Board Navigation box on the left side of the screen.

As a moderator you may have forums assigned to you.  You have moderators access for those forums.  You are a member of the Moderators group, through your membership in that group, you have moderator's access for each forum that has the Moderators group assigned as its moderator.  You also have moderator access in the album.

For day to day functions you can do do things such as to make topics sticky, or give them the status of news items so that they will also appear on the portal page; or revoke those status, within the forums where you have moderator's access.
In forums where you don't have moderator's access, nothing has changed.

Here is a link to the moderatorys sections of the phpBB manual. http://www.phpbb.com/support/guide/#section5  It is for a plain phpBB site, while Posetteforever is a heavily enhanced (modded) phpBB site using phpBB with IntrgraMOD and
phpBB Security.  So there are differences from the manual, but still the manual will give you a solid foundation of the moderators's tools.

As a staff member you have access to some staff onlt areas of Posetteforever.  One of these is the "Staff members forum", You are accessing it now as you are reading this.  This forum is where we coordinate our efforts and discuss other issues about running this site.

The other area is in the album.  Within the Miscellaneous  gallery there is a "testing gallery".  When everything is normal it is empty except for one image that is in there to serve as the gallery thumbnail.

The purpose of the testing gallery is to hold problem images while staff can determine how they should be handled.  It is also used to hold suspended images such as when someone uploads too many images in a day.

There is a side effect for people who don't have access to the testing gallery.  They don't have access to any personal album of someone who has any of their pictures in the testing gallery.

The existance of this the Staff members forum and the purpose for the testing gallery are not to be discussed with non-staff members.  That is not because we are doing anything wrong with this forum and gallery, but because touble makers can use them to try to make the staff look like bad people for having these resources available.  That has happened before and it is best to avoid giving trouble makers information that they will use to try to hurt us and Posetteforever.

Along with being a member of the staff comes responsibility, to each other, to Posetteforever, to the general membership ( including lurkers), and to the guests.  As always we try to always treat everyone with respect, be nice and understanding and hopfully others will be nice and understanding in return.    

Try to be helpful but always be careful!  Always be on the look out for trouble.  As a moderator, you have pleanty of power to help when there is a problem, but you also have just as much power to create problems.  So, exercise use your  powers as a moderator as carefully and as rarely as possible without letting minor problems grow and without letting trouble makers have a freehand to keep disrupting.

Always remember, as a moderator at Posetteforever, you are not alone, when in doubt, or when you need advice, or you have a problem that you don't feel you can handle, ask for help.  Even in the forums where you are listed at the sole moderator, you have help available.  Our webmaster and administrators, can perform moderator tasks in all forums and galleries.

Most of the time all is peaceful and quiet around here.  As a rule the regular members are a nice.  As for newer members and even long time lurkers who have just begun to become active members, most are nice; however, when trouble happens they some of them are usualy involved.

When you suspect something is not right, you have to responsibility to report it.  Not to create a witch hunt, but so that staff can be aware of a potiential problem developing.  When a someone crossed the line, it amy be an accident, adise them of it, and help to make things right again.  If it was not an error, then it may be time to take more severe actions.  Once again, don't be afrraid to ask for help.

Situation:
Someone has posted something in the wrong forum.
Solution:
If you can, move it to the correct forum.  If you can not do it, ask for help.  Don't leave a shadow topic behind.

Situation:
Someone has posted in the forum a link or inline image that is inviolation of the rules.
Solution:
If the situation is border line ask for advice.  If the situation is a clear violation, edit the the message remove the link and add a note to the message stating what you did and why.  We have had a few of these cases.

Situation:
Someone reposts a link that was removed even after it was removed and he was notified that it was unacceptable.

Solution:
Remove it again.  Make certian that he did have a chance to see the warning, if he did, issue a yellow ticket.  This happened last year when someone had an image removed from the album for unacceptable content.  He uploaded the picture again as a message attachment in the forums,  I was deleted from the message, he did it again and an inline image, the link was diabled.  He stopped posting but stll lurkes from time to time.

Situation:
Someone is insulting another member.
Solution:
It depends on the severity of the siutaiton.  In any case leave the message alone, contact the offender, by PM or in the forums as appropriate and ask the person to stop and ask for an appology to be offered to the offended party in the same topic where the insult was made.  If the offender refuses he has earned a yellow ticket, issue it to him.  If your request is ignored and the attack continues, issue a yellow ticket.

If this was not the first incident and he has been warned before, time for a yellow ticket.  We have had a few of these cases.  In one case I was informed by an offender that I was insane for asking that an apology to be offered.  he continued his attacks, he got multiple yellow tickets in a very short time.  As I recall, Both Tormie and myself issued yellow tickets to that offender.

If the attack is extreme enoungh or persistant enough, issue a red ticket.  We had one case of this last year.

Situation:
Some one has uploaded an unacceptable picture to the album.  
Solutions:
Move it to the testing gallery.  Post a message about the situation here in the staff members forum. In that message create a poll with the options asking to either delete the picture or to reinstate the picutre. Set the poll to run for seven days.  The staff will view it, possibly reply to your message and each will vote.  Once the result of the vote is determined, the picture will be dealt with by an administrator, most likely Tormie or myself.


The dreaded buttons and tickets:

As a regular member you may have seen a little blue at the top of each message posted in the forums, as a moderator you will now see some additional buttons.  Near the top of each forum message, starting from the right, there is a Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, IP, and X button.  Just which of those buttons you will see will depend on your permission settings for that forum, the site policy, and your relative rank compared to the member who posted the message.  When you view a message posted by an administrator or above, the only color button you will see is the blue one.

The blue button will report the message to the forum moderator or moderators.

The green button will unban a the person who posted the message.

The yellow button will issue a yellow ticket to the memeber who posted the message, each yellow ticket is a warning to that person that he has crossed the line, an email is sent by the software to that member delivering the warning and a yellow square is added to the members's data in the forums, one square for each ticket. Once one person has recieved enough yellow tickets, they become a red ticket meaning that he is banned.  The number of yellow tickets to create a red ticket is a based on site policy, here at Posetteforever, current policy has the number set at five.

The red button will ban the member who posted the message.

When you click on a colored button you will see a diaglog box telling you abotu that action you are about to take and asking for confirmation of your action.  That is a relief, the site's prior software had no such dialog box and the report button was too close to the quote button, so there were many false reports filed.

The IP button is used to inspect which IP addresses were used by a posting member and who else has used the same address.  If you want to see a real mess use the IP button on any of my forum postings.  That is the result of my using a dialup account with dynamic IP address assignment.  If you the check the IP addewsses of one of Centarian's messages, you will likely see that I also used the same address, that is normal, no problem there considering who she is.   You may see Posy and/or Angela using the same address and anyone else, that is normal for them, because of the way thier software works.

Now if you want to see an example of am IP address report that shows a clear case of trouble, and it would have been better had we thought of checking it before we did.  It could have saved up a lot of trouble.

Check the IP address of the first message of this topic http://posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?t=1631
You will see that Gojira, ButchNormand, Christopher Lee, Posy, sakuma, Anouk, Meiguinha, vonfranck, and Robert DeNiro all used the same addredd.  That is inspite of claiming that they were connecting to PF from across the USA, in Brazil, various parts of Europe and Japan.

In that topic topic you will see an example of someone who has been issued a yellow ticket, another who has two of them and another who has a red ticket, so is banned.

The X button is to delete a message an action of last resort and never to be done lightly.

[hr}

Thanks Pangor for this, I've never been a moderator so it will help me a lot, I will see others topic of this forum to see what is it all about.

   and see if you have been talking about me     

You are welcome.  I label it as a WIP because it will never be finished, as software, policy, or others things change it will have to be updated.

No, we havn't been talking about you, unless your artwork was mentioned while we were working on the new rules for picture.  At that time we considered many of the pictures that were already in the album to try to find a way to limit what people, like "vonfrank" could upload without hurting what we already have.

A very good tut Pangor!  

____________
Here we go!

Just kiding pangor   , I allways thought that you and Davide are people with a deep commun scence, and if sometime one of my post or works is removed for some reason that would be fine, it's hard but I'll do my best not to arrive to that point, remember my name is Ivan, Ivan the terrible    (just kiding again).
By the way about Gojira, ButchNormand etc, they apaired here, then I had some problem with my PC when I came back they didn't apair anymore, you say that we can see they used the same addredd, (sorry but I don't know what is and addredd    maybe adress (no way of beint sarcastic   ) remember I speak Castellano) are you mening they are the same parson, using the same IP? I can't check the IP in that forum.
 Sorry if I sound a little squared (squared is the way we call the brute slow or hard to learn people here in Argentina)

I knew you were kidding, but I wanted to reply anyway.

Yes, it is the same IP address that they all used.  There were other strange details about them or him, it has been discussed in this fourm.

  

____________

Very good information here! Much to read and learn.

____________
Too many projects, too little time.

pangor";p="28414 wrote: 

The staff of Posetteforever is organized by several positions the top position is Webmaster followed by Administrators, Moderators, and Online Support.
Who has which position can be seen in this link: Forum Staff that is accessible in the Board Navigation box on the left side of the screen.

As a moderator you may have forums assigned to you.  You have moderators access for those forums.  You are a member of the Moderators group, through your membership in that group, you have moderator's access for each forum that has the Moderators group assigned as its moderator.  You also have moderator access in the album.

For day to day functions you can do do things such as to make topics sticky, or give them the status of news items so that they will also appear on the portal page; or revoke those status, within the forums where you have moderator's access.
In forums where you don't have moderator's access, nothing has changed.

Here is a link to the moderatorys sections of the phpBB manual. http://www.phpbb.com/support/guide/#section5  It is for a plain phpBB site, while Posetteforever is a heavily enhanced (modded) phpBB site using phpBB with IntrgraMOD and
phpBB Security.  So there are differences from the manual, but still the manual will give you a solid foundation of the moderators's tools.

As a staff member you have access to some staff onlt areas of Posetteforever.  One of these is the "Staff members forum", You are accessing it now as you are reading this.  This forum is where we coordinate our efforts and discuss other issues about running this site.

The other area is in the album.  Within the Miscellaneous  gallery there is a "testing gallery".  When everything is normal it is empty except for one image that is in there to serve as the gallery thumbnail.

The purpose of the testing gallery is to hold problem images while staff can determine how they should be handled.  It is also used to hold suspended images such as when someone uploads too many images in a day.

There is a side effect for people who don't have access to the testing gallery.  They don't have access to any personal album of someone who has any of their pictures in the testing gallery.

The existance of this the Staff members forum and the purpose for the testing gallery are not to be discussed with non-staff members.  That is not because we are doing anything wrong with this forum and gallery, but because touble makers can use them to try to make the staff look like bad people for having these resources available.  That has happened before and it is best to avoid giving trouble makers information that they will use to try to hurt us and Posetteforever.

Along with being a member of the staff comes responsibility, to each other, to Posetteforever, to the general membership ( including lurkers), and to the guests.  As always we try to always treat everyone with respect, be nice and understanding and hopfully others will be nice and understanding in return.    

Try to be helpful but always be careful!  Always be on the look out for trouble.  As a moderator, you have pleanty of power to help when there is a problem, but you also have just as much power to create problems.  So, exercise use your  powers as a moderator as carefully and as rarely as possible without letting minor problems grow and without letting trouble makers have a freehand to keep disrupting.

Always remember, as a moderator at Posetteforever, you are not alone, when in doubt, or when you need advice, or you have a problem that you don't feel you can handle, ask for help.  Even in the forums where you are listed at the sole moderator, you have help available.  Our webmaster and administrators, can perform moderator tasks in all forums and galleries.

Most of the time all is peaceful and quiet around here.  As a rule the regular members are a nice.  As for newer members and even long time lurkers who have just begun to become active members, most are nice; however, when trouble happens they some of them are usualy involved.

When you suspect something is not right, you have to responsibility to report it.  Not to create a witch hunt, but so that staff can be aware of a potiential problem developing.  When a someone crossed the line, it amy be an accident, adise them of it, and help to make things right again.  If it was not an error, then it may be time to take more severe actions.  Once again, don't be afrraid to ask for help.

Situation:
Someone has posted something in the wrong forum.
Solution:
If you can, move it to the correct forum.  If you can not do it, ask for help.  Don't leave a shadow topic behind.

Situation:
Someone has posted in the forum a link or inline image that is inviolation of the rules.
Solution:
If the situation is border line ask for advice.  If the situation is a clear violation, edit the the message remove the link and add a note to the message stating what you did and why.  We have had a few of these cases.

Situation:
Someone reposts a link that was removed even after it was removed and he was notified that it was unacceptable.

Solution:
Remove it again.  Make certian that he did have a chance to see the warning, if he did, issue a yellow ticket.  This happened last year when someone had an image removed from the album for unacceptable content.  He uploaded the picture again as a message attachment in the forums,  I was deleted from the message, he did it again and an inline image, the link was diabled.  He stopped posting but stll lurkes from time to time.

Situation:
Someone is insulting another member.
Solution:
It depends on the severity of the siutaiton.  In any case leave the message alone, contact the offender, by PM or in the forums as appropriate and ask the person to stop and ask for an appology to be offered to the offended party in the same topic where the insult was made.  If the offender refuses he has earned a yellow ticket, issue it to him.  If your request is ignored and the attack continues, issue a yellow ticket.

If this was not the first incident and he has been warned before, time for a yellow ticket.  We have had a few of these cases.  In one case I was informed by an offender that I was insane for asking that an apology to be offered.  he continued his attacks, he got multiple yellow tickets in a very short time.  As I recall, Both Tormie and myself issued yellow tickets to that offender.

If the attack is extreme enoungh or persistant enough, issue a red ticket.  We had one case of this last year.

Situation:
Some one has uploaded an unacceptable picture to the album.  
Solutions:
Move it to the testing gallery.  Post a message about the situation here in the staff members forum. In that message create a poll with the options asking to either delete the picture or to reinstate the picutre. Set the poll to run for seven days.  The staff will view it, possibly reply to your message and each will vote.  Once the result of the vote is determined, the picture will be dealt with by an administrator, most likely Tormie or myself.


The dreaded buttons and tickets:

As a regular member you may have seen a little blue at the top of each message posted in the forums, as a moderator you will now see some additional buttons.  Near the top of each forum message, starting from the right, there is a Blue, Green, Yellow, Red, IP, and X button.  Just which of those buttons you will see will depend on your permission settings for that forum, the site policy, and your relative rank compared to the member who posted the message.  When you view a message posted by an administrator or above, the only color button you will see is the blue one.

The blue button will report the message to the forum moderator or moderators.

The green button will unban a the person who posted the message.

The yellow button will issue a yellow ticket to the memeber who posted the message, each yellow ticket is a warning to that person that he has crossed the line, an email is sent by the software to that member delivering the warning and a yellow square is added to the members's data in the forums, one square for each ticket. Once one person has recieved enough yellow tickets, they become a red ticket meaning that he is banned.  The number of yellow tickets to create a red ticket is a based on site policy, here at Posetteforever, current policy has the number set at five.

The red button will ban the member who posted the message.

When you click on a colored button you will see a diaglog box telling you abotu that action you are about to take and asking for confirmation of your action.  That is a relief, the site's prior software had no such dialog box and the report button was too close to the quote button, so there were many false reports filed.

The IP button is used to inspect which IP addresses were used by a posting member and who else has used the same address.  If you want to see a real mess use the IP button on any of my forum postings.  That is the result of my using a dialup account with dynamic IP address assignment.  If you the check the IP addewsses of one of Centarian's messages, you will likely see that I also used the same address, that is normal, no problem there considering who she is.   You may see Posy and/or Angela using the same address and anyone else, that is normal for them, because of the way thier software works.

Now if you want to see an example of am IP address report that shows a clear case of trouble, and it would have been better had we thought of checking it before we did.  It could have saved up a lot of trouble.

Check the IP address of the first message of this topic http://posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?t=1631
You will see that Gojira, ButchNormand, Christopher Lee, Posy, sakuma, Anouk, Meiguinha, vonfranck, and Robert DeNiro all used the same addredd.  That is inspite of claiming that they were connecting to PF from across the USA, in Brazil, various parts of Europe and Japan.

In that topic topic you will see an example of someone who has been issued a yellow ticket, another who has two of them and another who has a red ticket, so is banned.

The X button is to delete a message an action of last resort and never to be done lightly.

[hr}

Sign Here!

Strange thing happened.

After not seeing anything of the Gojia' gang/Borg collective, then I wrote of them in this tutorial and guess what?  While uploading a picture at Rendervisions, two of works by them/him appears in the random image box on the left of the page, their version of our pic of the click pictures. One was a fractal "Angels creating a planet", the other was "Getting Naked for the Lord" !

I wonder, why to be so fool? some of them/him works was really good (after reading this forum I wondered if he was able to do such a thing could be the posibility of the pictures to be borrowed) but if it was really his work why to waste the oportunity to share it and wish to be considered a fake, then I feel sorry for him/them/it  

I agree, I have wondered about the large number of pictures and their styles.  Out of curiosity, I have looked at other sites for the same pictures under different names.  Only ones that I hae found is one by Anouk still posted under that name at Renderosity.  And a number of those works still at Rendervisions, all from before the "Gojira gang" came here.  I have watched for those usernames at other sites, the only site were I have seen any of them since that time has been PoserPros, that was only Gojira.

I also feel sorry for them, him, or whatever.  But even more, I feel sorry for those people that would be hurt by those actions.  I have seen how much people like that can hurt a community, sometimes ruining a community and then when it is destroyed, those kinds of people will find another community and do it all again.

pangor";p="28465 wrote: 

I have seen how much people like that can hurt a community, sometimes ruining a community and then when it is destroyed, those kinds of people will find another community and do it all again.

Exanctly like Borgs!!!  

We've faced a very strange individual, if you go to Gojira's profile you can find the link to his yahoo group and you can see that he talked with his aliases about what happened here. The converstaion stops suddenly when we discovered the trick and posted it here. As I said in that period, he is almost surely a very ill person with some mental desease and for this he worths pity.

About the commands for the staff group I've only to say that not all the commands are available to moderators, the ban and warn buttons are visible to moderators only if they are enlisted directly as moderators of the specific forum, the gorup "moderators" give access to the moderators command at the bottom of the page ("moderate this forum") So because there are moderators who doesn't "own" a forum, they can't see those buttons. However we rarely had to use those commands. The main "work" of a moderator is to keep the forum ordered and the development of the forum topic

____________