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Administration and Privilege Design

The purpose of this section is to provide flexible management control over a conferencing system while allowing a lot of freedom to experiment and some capability for the users to exercise choice and control over actions which are offensive to the majority.

If it seems that this structure is similar to reality, well, that's just a coincidence. :-}

Admin Structure:

1. Owner 1 + alternate / system -- Has complete control
2. Sysmgr 1 per Area -- Has disk allocation & editor control
3. Editor max 8 per area -- Has moderator ctl, conference creation
4. Moderators N per area -- Create subjects, moderate, select best

Admin Rules:

1. Sysmgr has veto over Editor position.
2. Supermajority (SM) of editors has veto over moderator position, majority of Eds needed to create conference. Two minimum for both actions.
3. Majority of editors assign conferences to moderators.
4. Unanimous moderator veto of new moderator. May be ovridden by Editors SM.
5. Moderators of a given conf must agree on subjects.

Member Structure:

1. Bixen nominate/vote privs
2. Member full post privs
3. Newby restricted post privs
4. Visitor R/O limited subjects

Politics and Voting

1. Votes are secret, only totals are kept.
2. Pass/Fail numbers frozen at time of proposal to prevent stuffing box with new/temp members.
3. Voting is a privalege/responsibility at the Bixen membership level. Current and recent past Bixen are grandfathered in. Entry to this level is either by a term (TBD) of membership, or by being voted in by a majority of Bixen in that area. Once in, membership applies to all areas.
4. Visitors is a no-priv category for people who want to look around. They have R/O access to the Visitor subject in all public conferences. They become Newbys, with limited R/W, by paying the membership fee. They become Members (full R/W) by time (TBD) or being voted up.
5. Voting up is a single step only, and may not happen again for some time The purpose of these delays and impediments to Bixen level is primarily to teach responsibility, and secondarily to prevent hit and run spam attacks.
6. Voting on membership: Requires a simple majority (50% rounded up + 1 vote) of relevant voters. Failure to vote is an abstain, and counts in total, not for/against.

Voting on Administrative actions:

A FOR decision if it applies to:

• Lower level - 50%+1, or 2 minimum.
• Same level - (SM) 66.66% + 1, or 2 min.
• Higher level - Unanimous, minimum 3.

Against otherwise.

Member Actions:

• Nominate: Propose for new position
• Recall: Propose for removal

Admin Actions:

• Override: Cancel a passed action/promo
• Lockconf: Mods - set user R/O in conf.
• Kickout: Eds - Set R/O in area or evict
• Lockuser(NV): Mod em lock user off conf/subj
• Lockall(NV): Eds - emergency for conf/area Holds all writes in queue.

Note: All actions are logged to file avail to all admin people in area.

Private messages:

Admin staff have ability to send messages to user private message que, user can respond to private que. Admin access only, user cannot originate. May be two way at option of moderator.