A topic that has been touched upon lately is the fact that currently the Straight Dope Message Board appears to be unique in that it has zero administrative function. According to the moderators only one person has administrative access for the board and furthermore that person is not actively involved with the message board, he simply has access and the actual administration of the board is way down his list of priorities.
Furthermore, not only do the mods have zero admin ability, but by their own words they are also incredibly hesitant to even dare raise the mere possibility of asking the boards only administrator to do some administrating.
This raises some questions as far as I am concerned, two of which are:
Is the situation actually as stated or are the mods exaggerating? We are told only Jerry can make changes, why not Ed Zotti who we are told has been the editor of the Straight Dope for quite a while and has involved himself here from time to time?
And the big question, if Jerry really is the only person with admin access for the Straight Dope message board then what is the contingency should he not turn up for work tomorrow or ever again?
Haven’t we gone over this already? There is no Jerry. He’s a trademarked personality, and there have been a number of “Jerrys” over the years. The current Jerry is Boyo Jim.
We have administrators here other than Jerry. It’s true that they aren’t labeled as admins in the board software, but some folks make more out of that than they probably should. Since the admins don’t have as much access to the board as they used to, they do have to jump through a few extra hoops behind the scenes to get things done, but things still get done.
If you want to change your user name, for example, you still send a message to Tuba, and she’ll get it changed. If I need an IP ban, I notify the admins, and the IP gets banned. We don’t hesitate at all to request admin things like that.
What we are hesitant to do is ask for changes in the board software and settings. These modifications would have to be re-evaluated and re-applied during every upgrade, and the folks that own the SDMB don’t want that, partly for cost reasons and partly for security reasons.
As for Ed, I’m sure he has more important things to do with his time than play system admin here. If he wanted admin privileges on the board and wanted to do things like that, he could.
And as has already been posted, if something were to happen to Jerry, the rather obvious solution is just to hire someone else to replace him.
I have no contact at all with the folks who own and operate the SDMB, but I rather doubt that they get a lot of enjoyment out of people here telling them how to do their jobs and run their business.
This isn’t entirely accurate. Changes to the board’s settings would be retained during any upgrade. And additions to the board’s underlying code using vBulletin “hacks” or “mods” may or may not require re-installation after an upgrade.
But if there are admins other than Jerry, the question becomes, why do the mods feel the need to lie about this fact? Especially when a more reasonable lie (yes there are admins, no they can’t do anything without Ed’s permission) would be easier to swallow. And if you want to get nice and technical, “what Ed says goes” isn’t even a lie.
Maybe he doesn’t know and/or care about the nuts and bolts of vBulletin. He has people for that.
Why do you care about the particulars? If Jerry gets kidnapped by the Giraffe Boards I’m sure they have a way to get someone to step in. He may even get to go on vacation from time to time too.
Admin access to the board has been sequestered inside a reinforced metal briefcase, not unlike the presidential “nuclear football”.
There are only two unique keys that can open this “football”, which both must be inserted and turned simultaneously within a .00038 second margin of error to open the lid.
Jerry has one of these keys. The other key has been given to an undisclosed person somwhere on the South American continent, whose whereabouts are contained in a sealed envelope in a shoebox in the janitorial closet at Creative Loafing. This person was chosen entirely at random, and may not even speak English or understand what a key is.
If the time ever comes to make an administratorial change to the board, Ed Zotti is to open this envelope, rendezvous with this person along with Jerry and begin the Key Turning Ritual which involves the sacrifice of a virgin boy.
Then—y’know, even I’m getting tired of writing this out.
I haven’t told anybody how to do their jobs, I simply asked some questions in the correct forum about the running of the board. Your tone is unwarranted.
That’s not our own words. Our own words are that Jerry has very little time to handle things on this board because he has more pressing responsibilities.
The situation is as stated, although if you think we’re not telling you the truth I don’t know how I am supposed to convince you. Only Jerry has admin powers.
Jerry is employed as a tech guy and has pretty much always performed that function for the SDMB. Beyond that I don’t think anyone here can answer that question.
I’m not trying to say we aren’t being told the truth, just trying to fully understand the situation. Your post compared to the post from engineer_comp_geek does beg a question though?
I’m the boss at my office. We have a website. I couldn’t change a word on it if my life depended on it. We have a tech guy named Jerry who takes care of everything.