I know there’s some forums that only the mods have access to. What are they called, or is that a state secret?
They could tell you – but then they’d have to kill you.
Or make you feltch a goat.
Oh, sorry, I was in the “Incredible Secrets Only Mods Know” forum and didn’t see your question.
You’d be bored. It’s just winning lottery numbers and stock tips and how to get free cable, that’s all.
your humble TubaDiva
Winning lottery numbers? I wanna be a mod! Geez, if I had all that money I could quit my job and monitor the SDMB 24/7, and they wouldn’t even have to pay me. What’s that you say about payment? Whisper, whisper Oh, never mind.
[Fred Astaire] Heaven! I’m in heaven!
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak… [/Fred Astaire]
Berchtesgarten?
- ::: d & r ::: *
There’s the “Forum for Gossipping about Members we don’t like”, of course.
Rumors of a “Forum for Overturning the Political Order to Rule the World” have been greatly exaggerated.
And we will all deny that there is a secret “Star Trek” forum.
Okay. State secret. I get it. 
there are no secret forums
Truly, you’d be bored.
You can’t see the mod-only fnordums?
Evidently, they are called:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=8
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=9
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=10
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=11
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=14
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=15 (actually “works”)
and
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/forumdisplay.php?f=16
Assuming that those are all actually working forums, the Staff have almost as many additional playgrounds as the rest of us.
Some of those (such as “Main”) are probably categories, though.
You assume wrongly.
That could be true. Could be, too, that you don’t yet have permissions to view the Throw a Pie at Lynn’s Cyber-Effigy forum. I hear it’s all the rage.
On my old Star Trek board, I called the dubble seekrit Mod forum Section 31 for obvious reasons.
In it, we discussed ideas for running the board more smoothly, ideas for promoting it, what to do with problems that happened, what policy adjustments might be in order, if any mod/admin was going to be offline for extended periods, and reminders to watch certain problem members.
I would assume that a larger board like SDMB might have different forums for some of these concerns, whether combined or single purpose. It’s just so much easier to have a thread to look at and comment to than doing it all e-mail, although e-mail still is a major admin tool. (Speaking of Admin tools, how ya doin, Dex! 
- I keed…)
As to why anyone needs to know what goes on in Mod/Admin forums of any message board, if you’re not a trouble maker, it’s really not that interesting. And if you are, you might soon find yourself locked out from the regular forums, too. So yes, limited access forums exist on private boards like the SDMB. Some may be limited access for members only and not for guests. Others are there for the purpose of running the board and members don’t need to worry about what goes on there. As to what the SDMB has specifically, I don’t know, but it probably is pretty close to the general things I mentioned above.
Every board’s double-secret Staff forums are different. Imagine that only people from your Star Trek board posted in General Questions here- the flavor would change significantly. Same thing with Staff forums.
Most boards’ private areas are pretty much as you described- technical issues, vacation notices, point-of-order questions. But I have seen more than I care to of those areas becoming a “haven from the Membership”, where the Staff talk about stuff that should have been discussed on the general board or- in a few cases- where Staff gossips, whines, and gripes about the Members. Things can get cliquish really fast in those situations, and I have seen more than one perfectly good person unjustly demonized in the private forums to the point where almost everyone on staff had it in for them.
I’m not saying that anything like that is happening here, only that private forums have a great potential to cause problems, and they should be monitored and- yes- policed to prevent abuse.
And then there’s the Throne Room of Cecil, where the initiations take place. I hear all of this year’s subscription fees went into the redecoration fund when TPTB finally gave up and acknowledged that they weren’t going to get the bloodstains out of the carpet.
So, Big Brother, is there a bigger one watching you? Is there a smaller one I should be watching too?
Private means just that, PRIVATE. A privately run board doesn’t have to answer jack shit to others. While I don’t even like some of the Powers That Be on this board (open secret, check old Pit threads if you want), I acknowledge that it’s THEIR board. I may complain, raise a cunty fuss even, but when it all comes down to what happens, I have no real control over that. Hey, I read the rules, I signed up under these conditions. If it bothered me as much as it seems to bother some others, I wouldn’t even be here.