On behalf of the Administration Team and pursuant to Charter XII.2 I hereby submit to the Assembly the appointment of @Pronoun as Administrator.
Pronoun has frequently worked with the team and has distinguished themselves for their technical expertise and overall reliability, and we have no doubt that they will be a clear asset to both the team and the region.
It is our sincere hope that the Assembly will confirm their selection so that Pronoun may be granted administrative access and continue to assist the region from this new role.
While I already fully supported this appointment, I also think confirmation votes should involve at least a little more than collectively nodding our heads in solemn synchronization for three days before what I hope is a unanimous vote…
Since this role sits at an interesting intersection of technical administration, moderation, institutional trust, and IC/OOC separation, I did want to ask a few questions for the public record:
You already serve in roles that involve access to sensitive OOC information and moderation responsibilities. How would you approach the increased discretion and institutional trust that comes with a full Administrator position, particularly given the reduced oversight mechanisms attached to it?
As both a Citizenship Committee member and a senior moderator, you’ve already operated near the IC/OOC boundary. What principles do you use to determine when OOC information or authority should remain completely isolated from IC considerations?
Administrators are not only moderators, but also effectively custodians of the region’s technical infrastructure and forum continuity. What areas of forum maintenance, modernization, or backend administration are you most interested in improving or contributing to if confirmed?
Do you believe there are circumstances where an Administrator should voluntarily recuse themselves from an issue due to IC involvement, political participation, or personal relationships, even if no formal rule requires it?
Given your relatively recent promotion from Junior Moderator to Senior Moderator, what aspects of the role do you feel you’ve had the most time to develop experience in, and where do you think the steepest learning curve would still be as it relates to the upcoming promotion to Administrator?
I generally agree with asking questions in confirmations—I am voicing that I didn’t do so in this case because I do not think that is the purpose of the Charter-mandated confirmation of Administrators (which are an OOC role). The question is purely “is there an trust issue with the proposed candidate that I have severe concerns about”, not “are they the best candidate for a job / do they match my political agenda / etc.”
It would be my preference to remove this provision from the Charter altogether, but since we’re here I will vote yes.
I’ll do the best I can in line with the needs and wishes of the community, and am happy to hear feedback from the community about how I can do better, as I have tried to in my other OOC roles. That said, I hope I’ve earned the trust of the community through my time in the region because realistically I think the level of community trust in an administrator is earned over time and not just starting when their name is put forward publicly.
I’m not sure I understand the question correctly — I always try to maintain a separation of OOC and IC concerns. In general I believe that OOC decisions shouldn’t be made for IC reasons as a general principle, and that isolating OOC decisions from IC concerns isn’t really something which is only true sometimes and not true sometimes.
I will briefly note here that administrators don’t have to be moderators.
I’m happy to help out with anything we currently maintain for the community. I don’t have a specific agenda of how I want to change our platforms as I think that would depend on organic community input or on what technical issues we run into.
I’d recuse myself if I could not offer fair judgment as an administrator.
The differences between Junior and Senior Moderators are in our Community Guidelines, but both roles are responsible for moderation. I imagine that the role of Administrator is different in that it’s responsible for, well, administration, so I imagine that the steepest learning curve will be learning about how our platforms are currently run (especially the self-hosted ones).
My friends, given that sufficient time has passed, and to not further delay an already agreed upon appointment, I feel it is apposite to move that the Assembly now put the question to the floor.
