There are only two types of admins: the actual Administrators and the Wizops.
The Administrators take care of the actual "work"; they are Stardock employees or are programmers doing the actual coding on this site. The administrators are the only ones that are actually paid. They are: Brad, Karmagirl, T-Man and Alexandrie. Nobody can be promoted to administrator, unless you move to where Stardock's offices are and fill out a job application.
The Wizops take care of the moderation. They moderate all submitions, they make sure no discussion gets out of bound on the message board. They also promote or demote users. And occasionnally exile users. Wizops are not paid, it's volunteer work. The Wizops are BoXXi, DavidK, Jafo, MikeB, Koasati, Mormegil, Treetog and me.
Nobody gets "promoted" to Wizop either. A Wizop is not the next step after Master the way Journeyman is the next step after Apprentice. Noboby can apply to become a Wizop, nobody can nominate somebody else. Actually, asking to be a Wizop is pretty much the best to make sure you never become one. People who seek power and important titles are exactly the type of people we want to avoid as Wizops. So how does one become a Wizop? No complicated way, really. One day, when for some reason the work loads get very heavy, somebody may post on the admin message board (yes we do have our own little secret place):
- Hey guys. We are really swomped these days. How about we get a new Wizop in to help us out?
- Great idea, we could really use an extra hand. How about Koasati?
- Yes, Koasati is great. But I really think Mormegil would be a great asset as a Wizop.
- I agree. Lets get both.
- Great! I second that!
- Me too.
- Me too.
- Me too.
And that's how we got two new Wizops recently. See? Nothing fancy. Just two names stood out and everybody agreed.
Masters are not admins. Masters are users, not moderators.
But it's true, there has been talk recently about trying to give Masters something additional, since there is no difference between a Master and a Journeyman, other than the name. But no decision has been taken yet. Lets say it's on the back burner. We don't take those kinds of decisions lightly.
As it is now, and as I think it will stay for a little while more, there are only 2 kinds of admins, and there are in total presently 12 admins (4 + 8), as I've explained it above, and that's it. Don't expect any new Wizop nomination any time soon either. We just got two new ones, and we'll be fine for probably a good while.
Hope this makes it clear for everybody.
