Anonymity to ensure non-preferential treatment in voting

[butterflywhispers]

Hi everyone,

I am just starting out and would like your opinions on an idea I'm considering. In the interest of fairness, I do not want to be the "final" word on member actions (ie. invitations, suspensions, bans).

It's not my group. It's a group of people that have all been invited personally because I know them from other forums or personally and we all have the same vision and mission. All the current members serve or will serve some type of function within the forum and any of them can invite or nominate someone they believe will be a good addition. It's not about head count, but quality conversations that are positive, proactive and respectful. 

In the interest of fairness, there are some people that I simply won't engage with because of a life-threatening allergy to crazy and childish people. LOL But, I know that's not fair because of my biases so there are some people *I* wouldn't approve but would learn to tolerate if our core group outvoted me. I don't want preferential treatment just because I'm the Administrator and I will NOT use my administrator login for posting my personal comments to topics.

I set up a private moderators sub-forum for our core group.

How would you go about setting up a private sub-forum for our core members to submit ideas, nominate outsiders for membership and provide anonymous voting?

Should I just have everyone create a separate ID specifically for that sub-forum?

Or, maybe I could assign numbers or random names so others won't know but that's extra work.

I'd love to hear what experienced forum admins and mods are doing and what has been successful and not so successful!

Thanks in advance!
Butterfly Whispers

[Kitty Katt]

Aug 19, 2022 14:19:52 GMT -8 butterflywhispers said:

Hi everyone,

I am just starting out and would like your opinions on an idea I'm considering. In the interest of fairness, I do not want to be the "final" word on member actions (ie. invitations, suspensions, bans).

It's not my group. It's a group of people that have all been invited personally because I know them from other forums or personally and we all have the same vision and mission. All the current members serve or will serve some type of function within the forum and any of them can invite or nominate someone they believe will be a good addition. It's not about head count, but quality conversations that are positive, proactive and respectful. 

In the interest of fairness, there are some people that I simply won't engage with because of a life-threatening allergy to crazy and childish people. LOL But, I know that's not fair because of my biases so there are some people *I* wouldn't approve but would learn to tolerate if our core group outvoted me. I don't want preferential treatment just because I'm the Administrator and I will NOT use my administrator login for posting my personal comments to topics.

I set up a private moderators sub-forum for our core group.

How would you go about setting up a private sub-forum for our core members to submit ideas, nominate outsiders for membership and provide anonymous voting?

Should I just have everyone create a separate ID specifically for that sub-forum?

Or, maybe I could assign numbers or random names so others won't know but that's extra work.

I'd love to hear what experienced forum admins and mods are doing and what has been successful and not so successful!

Thanks in advance!
Butterfly Whispers

I suspect you mean "sub-board" rather than "sub-forum" (this term does not exist here on ProBoards):

- Forum (the whole thing)
--- Categories (contains Boards)
----- Boards (contains Threads/Posts and Sub-Boards)

On a forum that I belong to, the forum owner sets up a poll for decisions such as bans. He does not vote until about half of the members have voted. Majority vote wins, regardless of his, or anyone else's, personal preference. This has worked well so far, since it may be seen "who" voted, one does not see "what" each person voted.

He just has a sub-board set up for polls. While only logged-in members can vote, he does have the sub-board set up so only logged-in members can see it (guests do not even see the sub-board).

[butterflywhispers]

Aug 19, 2022 16:25:13 GMT -8 Kitty Katt said:

Aug 19, 2022 14:19:52 GMT -8 butterflywhispers said:

Hi everyone,

I am just starting out and would like your opinions on an idea I'm considering. In the interest of fairness, I do not want to be the "final" word on member actions (ie. invitations, suspensions, bans).

It's not my group. It's a group of people that have all been invited personally because I know them from other forums or personally and we all have the same vision and mission. All the current members serve or will serve some type of function within the forum and any of them can invite or nominate someone they believe will be a good addition. It's not about head count, but quality conversations that are positive, proactive and respectful. 

In the interest of fairness, there are some people that I simply won't engage with because of a life-threatening allergy to crazy and childish people. LOL But, I know that's not fair because of my biases so there are some people *I* wouldn't approve but would learn to tolerate if our core group outvoted me. I don't want preferential treatment just because I'm the Administrator and I will NOT use my administrator login for posting my personal comments to topics.

I set up a private moderators sub-forum for our core group.

How would you go about setting up a private sub-forum for our core members to submit ideas, nominate outsiders for membership and provide anonymous voting?

Should I just have everyone create a separate ID specifically for that sub-forum?

Or, maybe I could assign numbers or random names so others won't know but that's extra work.

I'd love to hear what experienced forum admins and mods are doing and what has been successful and not so successful!

Thanks in advance!
Butterfly Whispers

I suspect you mean "sub-board" rather than "sub-forum" (this term does not exist here on ProBoards):

- Forum (the whole thing)
--- Categories (contains Boards)
----- Boards (contains Threads/Posts and Sub-Boards)

On a forum that I belong to, the forum owner sets up a poll for decisions such as bans. He does not vote until about half of the members have voted. Majority vote wins, regardless of his, or anyone else's, personal preference. This has worked well so far, since it may be seen "who" voted, one does not see "what" each person voted.

He just has a sub-board set up for polls. While only logged-in members can vote, he does have the sub-board set up so only logged-in members can see it (guests do not even see the sub-board).

Hi there!

Thanks for correcting my terminology. I am an experienced owner/moderator but not familiar with this setup at all. I've been crash coursing the past few days! ;-)

That sounds like a fair way to handle things. There are just a handful of us now but I want to have things in place before we open to the world instead of trying to play catch-up later on.

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I appreciate it!

Butterfly Whispers