Legion World Forums LEGION WORLD Science Police Headquarters Moderators

You mean as opposed to the usual questionable activities?

Just curious -- how would anyone notice that? Is there a list or something?

At the top of each forum it says "Moderated by:" and the name of the moderator. Take a look in the General Comic Books forum, upper left hand corner.

Scott and I haven't had to moderate much of anything around here. You guys can think of this as a useless title and don't worry too much about it.

I'm just trying to make up for the 30% post count loss you'll all be experiencing soon.

Gee, thanks so much! Now I know what Tenzil felt like. Well. all I can say is I hope I don't have to do a thing. Here's hoping!

I'm sorry, but I find this development both disorienting and confusing.

The thread thus far had suggested strongly that you were going to have moderator elections. And now, you've decided to appoint them instead, but you'll still have elections?

I don't see much point in trying to do both. The entirely reasonable assumption in any election, now, is that you the founders are asking that the mods you've already chosen be elected. Or that you're saying, at least, that the two of you prefer these people to serve. Many voters will defer to your apparent wishes, simply out of the esteem we have for you. This, ironically, in turn makes an election rather pointless.

If you're choosing mods on talent, or friendship, or evident personality, or any other reason, that's always been your prerogative, and ought to be. And it's probably more useful, from what I've seen, in running a forum of this size.

If appointing moderators is how you want to do it, though, I would urge that you stick with it -- now that you've started to do so -- and not hold out the possibility of elections. That mixes up too many considerations, on the part of the founders (or on what's presumed of your motives) and on the part of the potential voters.

Okay, since you want me to elaborate a bit, here goes. This is in no way scientific. It basically comes down to a feeling I was having today. Like something bad was going to happen and neither Scott nor I would be here to help deal with it.

Sure enough, my computer crashed just as I was trying to discuss the moderator topic with Scott today. I was offline for several hours trying to get my computer to boot up for more than 5 seconds.

I'm an atheist, so I normally don't believe in omens. But, this one got me thinking and the result is a few posters were made advisors. The list of candidates is about as large as the number of posters here. Why some people weren't chosen and others were is about as scientific as the reason for the change in policy.

I still like the idea of some sort of election for the empty slots, but maybe we will or maybe we won't, I guess we'll find out together.

I don't think there is anything wrong with appointing moderators, if only for the time being. As you said, your computer problems this weekend simply reinforced the need to have backups in place in case you were unable to be here. However, that doesn't mean that the people who are now moderators can't be replaced when or if you decide to have elections. They are simply there to fill the need until something different can be done.

Besides which, I really don't think there will be much that the moderators will have to do. We have a fairly responsible group of posters here, and I think that they will more or less moderate themselves. The most I see us doing is, as you say, deleting duplicate posts if someone asks or something along those lines.

Well I suppose we could have dressed up the appointments in the veil of an election. Worked for the US' first election.

I'd vote for

Princess Crujectra, Kid Prime
Arachne, Eryk Davis Ester
He Who Wanders
Omni Craig
Outdoor Miner, Varalent
Mystery Lad
SteveLightle
no one
DrakeB3003

Works for me, so long as I get to hang out with Kid Prime. He has the most interesting toys

You didn't crash, you've got a worm. We've been taking calls on this crap hot 'n heavy since about 3pm.

You too? I posted this on another thread, but I had that "RPC service terminated unexpectedly" thing then my computer has to reboot itself. The tech guy I called had me d/l something and so far, so good. He also told me he'd been flooded with calls today, but this has actually happened twice before the past couple days. Then today it was constant.

I'm sure you're busy explaining this all day PB, but when you have time can you let us know what this worm is and what happened? (assuming you or anyone even has a clue)

I was getting it too when I got home tonight. I was getting the RPC error, and I managed to stay on the computer long enough to look it up in the help topics. I said it had something to do with a problem connecting with the host to check for new emails. So, I called my provider's support team, and got a recording that this was a Windows problem, and they gave me the link on my ISP's site to tell me how to fix the problem. I think it has something to do with firewalls.

Basically, I had to go into Control Panel and select Network and Internet Connection Wizard. Then I had to click the link to Setup or Change my connection. Then I just had to set it up that my computer connected directly to the internet, and select which setup included my modem. Now, don't quote me on this, cuz I THINK that's all I had to do, but I'm not for sure. My advice if you're having this problem is to call your internet service provider and ask for direction.

Knock wood, it seems to be working so far, but I'll tell ya it made me nervous because I know NOTHING about computers, and I'm always scared to death that I'm going to do something wrong and mess up the computer more.

I hope this fixed it...

Princess, there's a patch available for download that will prevent your system from being corrupted. If you haven't gotten it yet, please do. The URL is over on Sanity's thread about this topic.

Oh, and you can play with my toys anytime. Just take good care of them.

Before I left work my explaining was mostly of the variety of "it is a known issue effecting your Windows operating syste, and our technitions are working on a resolution."

Which, of course, was tech support code for "Dude, it's not a problem with our service so quite yelling at me and oh, by the way, if you freaks would stop calling I could get back to me websurfing and Legion World posting."

Info Here

.... and here

And here is the Dept. of Homeland Security Warning from July 30th that none of us knew about.... D'OH!

While I'm happy my OS (Windows Me) apparently is unaffected by this, I haveta ask-- does anybody know why?

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why NT, 2000 and XP, but not Me-- which I thought was derived from Win2000?

ME's basically 98 with direct access to DOS ripped out (its still at the OS core). NT, which 2000 and XP are based on (2000's NT5, XP's NT5.1) isn't DOS-based at all.

Cool, thanks. G'night, SoM !

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-026.asp
Above is the windows patch that fixes the flaw which allows the Blaster worm.

http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.removal.tool.html
Above is the URL to a removal tool once you have been infected.

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?date=2003-08-11
Above is a sans summary of the Worm...

Somehow I've now become an advisor on Mission Monitor Board as well.

And this time I didn't even have to give up any salacious secrets in exchange!