hey folks. if you've been around here a while, you might have noticed that there are some members with a different title under their username this week. previously, we only had one real distinction: the general population of very excellent permies.com members who need no title, and a few folks with "steward" under their name. stewards kept busy doing various behind-the-scenes tasks and a few more visible things to help the site keep humming along smoothly.
the first change we made was to divide up the stewards into volunteers
and stewards. the most obvious difference between those two groups is that stewards have access to a few more administration functions, like banning spammers. volunteers do the majority of the important work of fighting spam, moderating individual forums, making sure threads end up in the right place, and watching out for the rare member who doesn't adhere to our one solid rule:
be nice.
in the near-ish future, we're going to add a third title to the mix: pollinators. pollinators will be able to grant apples to other users for really good posts. they'll be chosen by stewards and volunteers on the basis of, well... there might not be any objective criteria. at this point, let's say that pollinators will be chosen according to caprice.
the short version:
volunteers: helpful folks. do a lot of work that most folks don't see, which is sort of the idea. some volunteers moderate individual forums here and
should be your first contact for questions about those forums. volunteers also give out apples for especially good posts.
stewards: roughly the same as volunteers, but with some additional responsibilities.
pollinators: picked by staff (volunteers and stewards) to give out apples. the pollinator title hasn't been rolled out yet, but it's in the works.
you might also notice a handful of members with a title like "author" or "instructor." those are generally folks who we lured to the site for one of the book or event promotions.
others might have more to add.
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