stockton - It’s OK to call TubaDiva a mod, since that’s one of her official titles.
(Just as it’s all right to call Dick Cheney “Vice-President”, despite his being “President of the Senate” - two different jobs, two titles)
Some admins are mods and some mods are admins but not all admins are mods.
The distinction: some admins do their job in the back room at the Reader, and just post for fun or announcements, but not to moderate disputes between posters.
Other admins, like TubaDiva, are listed on the main menu, and the top page of each forum, as Moderator. It means they are regularly watching the action and available when things slip out of the bounds of moderation into immoderation.
What makes her an admin as well as a mod is the ability to do functions mods can’t, like fix daily problems with accounts and passwords, and rare things like rewording forum descriptions.
Bah. The great and all-powerful Diva of Tuba must be addressed in all her fearsome righteous glory! Verily, moderators are merely the stinking toejam of an Administrator! Wouldst thou call a nuclear bomb a firecracker? Wouldst thou call a hurricane a drizzle? Wouldst thou dare to refer to Underpants simply as underwear?!?
I think NOT, mortal!
Suffer the wrath of the scourned Administrator! Woe be unto thee who dares to raise her ire! Tremble in fear of her omnipotent Tubaness! Woe, I say unto thee, WOE!!!
(Okay, so maybe she doesn’t give a damn… but, really, I just want attention.)
But what if they just look like mods-- you know, wear those skinny ties and high-water pants-- but are actually rockers? Can you imagine the rumbles that would break out spontaneously in random threads?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------ALL SDMB users---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------SDMB mods----------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------SDMB admins-------------------------------------------------
Perfect Master
(de trop, SPOOFE, many others (manhattan, bibliophage, DrMatrix, and others (TubaDiva, C K Dexter Haven, Noodles, Gaudere, Lynn Bodoni) Ed Zotti, jdavis, (Cecil Adams)))
We can clearly see, then, that de trop is an SDMB user, but not a mod, admin, or Perfect Master. bibliophage is a mod, but not an admin, jdavis and Cecil Adams are admins, but not mods, and TubaDiva is both a mod and an admin. All admins are SDMB members, and all mods are SDMB members. All Perfect Masters are admins, and no Perfect Master is a mod.
(Yes, I know this will wrap, but I couldn’t see any better way to do it.)
Well done, Chronos, but I think you should note that “mods” in your diagram refers to “those that act to moderate” and not “those capable of moderator actions”.
If we want to get more detailed, we can split “SDMB users” into “SDMB members” and “lurkers”, although the latter category would have no known elements.
Whoops, I meant “stretch the window”, which, unless you’re running at about 1800x1350, it does. Is there a nice, single-word term for that?
And by “mod” I meant “A person who is assigned to moderate a forum”. Hence, the bootilicious Ms. Diva qualifies, by virtue of moderating “About this Message Board”, for instance, and Gaudere is a moderator of “Great Debates”. By contrast, there is no forum “Moderated by Ed Zotti”.
You do make a good point about users vs. members, but the one is not a subset of the other. There likely exists a significant population of members who are not users. Of course, I could have also added a category for “all people”, including those with no connection to the Straight Dop[sub]®[/sub]e, or a category for “all living things”, or… but enough is enough.
And Ed does moderate, just not in one forum. jdavis as hamster wrangler moderates in a way. Cecil is what makes de trop’s OP correct. Does he cool people down? Does he move threads? Does he ban miscreants? Does he set out board policies or practices? No. He just stirs up trouble.
