I see that some are listed as members while other are listed as charter members
What’s the difference ?
…and what’s the difference between Administrators and moderators?
I can answer the first question.
The Board went pay a few years ago, and there was an introductory offer (at a lower rate) to join for a year. After that, the price to join went up.
Charter members are those who joined during the introduction, and continue to re-up before the expiration. A charter member can become a member by neglecting to re-up before their subscription expires. After that, they have to re-up at the full rate, and they are no longer a charter member.
Charter members joined when the board first went to pay, and have maintained membership continuously since then. Members joined after, or let their memberships lapse and then rejoined.
Moderators, IIRC, aren’t supposed to ban anyone except returning socks, obvious trolls and spam accounts without discussing it with an administrator. When a member in (otherwise) good standing earns a banning, it is my understanding that an administrator usually pulls the trigger.
Currently, two moderating staff members have to agree to ban someone, and at least one of those staff members must be an admin. We generally have quite a discussion before we ban someone who’s a paying member.
Administrators also have more system tools than moderators do, though generally if a moderator asks for an admin to do an admin task, we’ll do it.