I am making a good case for myself here… good job with the coding.
Mighty_Girl, that was very clever & I enjoyed reading it. However, I have also got some email from some of the mods that, if posted on the board as a message, would get the person a ban might quickly. I don’t understand why they have to write email like that?
Anyway, I can’t find the mod button the forum I mod, so I haven’t figured out how to suspend people yet 
Ah but dan, my good man, why wouldn’t everything you say apply to an Admin as well? It’s dependent on the person, I feel, rather than the title.
Here’s how I divide up Admins versus Mods in my guidelines:
Admins: Responsible for technical management of the Board, and setting of Board guidelines. Also can enforce Board guidelines. Are the “point of final appeal” for a complaint over a Moderator action.
Moderators: Responsible for enforcement of Board guidelines and some technical management.
I also think allowing the Mods to BAN on the SDMB would really speed up removal of the assgoblins and assclowns. I do not know the “behind the scenes” of the SDMB, but I would imagine that any Moderator that said to an Admin in reference to a Member “Let’s grease this ratfuck SOB” would have the Admin agree with them, and BAN them anyways. I mean, the Mods here are all highly intelligent and responsible people, and they really do show a tremendous amount of restraint. I think that all of them should be allowed to BAN, and they should use it without fear.
But that’s just IMO.
Because the administrators have a higher responsibility. The way it’s set up here is that everyone is responsible for a particular forum, including moderators. But the admins are also responsible for the entire well-being of the board, including the nuts and bolts.
I agree it’s dependent on the person, but the skills of that person determines whether they are an admin or a mod. There are also different levels of administrator, although it’s not explicitly delineated as such. Tuba and Lynn are admins, but they certainly have to outrank Arnold and Gaudere. My guess is that Arnold and Gaudere report to Tuba and Lynn, who report to the Reader. Because the responsibility ultimately rests - as far as I know - with Tuba and Lynn, they do have the ability to ban on the spot, although I doubt they’d use the power haphazardly.
If they used it without fear, a lot of us would be gone. Banning is a very serious action to take, and to give one person that power is usually counterproductive - unless that person is responsible for the entire board anyway. I bet that if Lynn or Tuba comes across a jerk whom they want to ban, they do poll the moderators to see if they’ve had any problems or complaints about the person. More input never hurts. I also bet that if a moderator wanted to ban a person outright, an admin wouldn’t just agree out of hand - he or she would ask the other mods what they thought. People have different perspectives, that’s all. You run a large board, so you have one perspective. I run a small one, so I have another. I’m just not comfortable with a lot of people having a lot of power.
I agree with dantheman, banning is a serious thing. I can not technically ban someone in my board, that can only be done by the admin., but he’s repeated time and time again that if I ever ask him to boot someone he’ll do it. Partly, I believe, because I have shown great restraint when responding to certain, sometimes subtle attacks from a few posters.
We know what goes on in the background in our board, and even when we close/delete/edit threads/posts there are people who complain, even when some of the posters do not know what it is all about. We get the ocassional “first ammendment” crap (hello, this is not America); the rare, but not unknown, lawsuit threat; and the one-time whacko who threatened physical harm on the admin. Only in the last case I was all for using the Big Boot.
I posted that form I copied in the OP after I replied to someone’s post saying that he had “no idea what he was talking about”, and lo and behold, I am being accused of “attacking a poster”, “violating the rules” that I am “supposed to uphold” and whatnot. The funny thing is that it happened in a forum that I don’t moderate and that is similart to SDMB’s Pit. Needless to say my knee-jerk reaction was to tell him to go &#$&# himself… but I breathed hard and posted what you see above.
Sorry, I think I am just venting here… but the dopers seem so mild compared with some of the idiots I’ve dealt with. Or maybe the mods hera are doing a great job and they clean the mess and then neuralize us… so we never know.
Nothing like having a personal editor who will work for free. 