We made some changes to the Forum Hosting system today

[EarlG]

This discussion thread was locked by Skinner (a host of the Announcements group).

The previous system had a number of problems which basically boiled down to too many people trying to do the job, not enough turnover, and too much ambiguity in what should and should not be locked (particularly in the General Discussion forum). Put it all together and we had a recipe for counter-productive infighting which caused way too many unnecessary problems (particularly for a job which should merely be the mundane task of occasionally locking off-topic threads).

Here are the changes we have made:

• The access-restricted Hosts Forum is now for Forum Hosts only. (Group Hosts can discuss group-related issues via DU Mail or other means.)


• The number of Forum Host slots has been reduced from 140 to 30. The 30 Forum Hosts are no longer responsible for individual forums, they are responsible for all main forums which require hosting (Welcome & Help, Latest Breaking News, Good Reads, Video & Multimedia, Politics 2014, General Discussion, and The DU Lounge).


• Since Forum Hosts are now responsible for all forums, there are no longer individual Wait Lists for each forum. There is now a single Wait List. Once Hosts have served their 90-day term, they must sign up again and join the bottom of the Wait List if they want to serve again.


• Members must now maintain a 100% chance of serving on a jury if they want to serve as a Forum Host.


• Due to the large amounts of confusion among members and Hosts alike over what kind of threads are permitted in the General Discussion forum, we have written an addendum to the General Discussion forum Statement Of Purpose which we hope makes things much clearer. You can view it here.

Thanks for your patience while we continue to work to improve DU. We expect there may be some bugs while we work on these changes -- if you encounter any weirdness, feel free to report it in this thread.

The DU Administrators