A few weeks ago, I licensed my own version of vBulletin for a private online community that I tend to. Sure, this little community is about 1/5000th the size of the SDMB, but I dig it anyway.
I am the moderator for all forums. I get to approve all registrations. I get to see everyone’s passwords. I think I’m getting drunk with power.
If my own board gets its own version of Jack Dean Tyler or concrete, the responsibility for banning him falls to me (and me only). I can move and delete threads at will. I can even generate those announcements you see at the top of every forum. Best of all, every time I post, my “administrator” title appears next to my name, striking fear into the hearts of the “registered members” and “junior members” who post to my board. MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I can arbitrarily grant power to those I like on my board. Let’s say that there’s this cute girl I like - I can create a new title for her, say “Queen of All She Surveys” and give her permissions to do whatever I feel like letting her do - ban users, nuke threads, turn the smilies on and off - whatever.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I’m an admin on one of the UBB boards run by the magazine I work for, but the title itself is pretty much the biggest thrill. The board is only moderately trafficked and generally well-behaved. Which is lovely, but no fun at all from the Administrator/Hammer of the Gods standpoint.
Some of the titles are (in no real order)
**Fledgeling **
**Fancy Pants **
**Fancy Bloomers **
**Fanatic **
**überfanatic **
**Welcome Wagoneer **
**Moderator Extraordinaire **
And, best for last
**OpalCat
Godlike Administrator **
Haven’t been to Opal’s site - maybe when I can get a few spare moments, I’ll check it out. Great titles she thought up. That’s funny as hell.
BTW, vBulletin can assign different titles to people based on post count. The default is to have everyone starting out as a junior member. When you get to 30 posts, you become a member, and there are senior members too (I think at 100 posts). Talk about incentivizing someone to get their post count up… If the admin wants to, he can customize the titles and add new ones. Probably wouldn’t work on the SDMB, though. It would make everyone try to chase Handy, which would be a bad thing for the database.
IJGrieve - My boards are at http://www.oldtimerslist.com/mb, but it’s a closed board. The site is for people who have been in the Internet marketing and advertising industry for several years.
You should take a look at the Snopes message board. They give really amusing seasonal titles over there. Right now, they are new year’s resolutions. For newbies it’s “Resolve to read before I post”. It made me chuckle.
They also have a plethora of smilies for use, which I enjoy.
