The admin team has decided to experiment with a new idea: clerk accounts.
The clerk accounts are provided to allow for collaborative maintainance of various organized records, as well as to help make those more organized.
Take the Law Index for example. Right now, to be able to (properly) make changes there, a member needs to be added as a moderator. Even though the person appointed as Senate Clerk will usually be a moderator, it is not very practical to have every member wishing to contribute as a moderator. This becomes even more impractical if said member only wishes to pitch in and make an occassional update, rather than work on the Law Index long term.
Under the new system, a Senate Clerk account (not to be confused with the Senate Clerk job) is created, that is given moderator rights over the Law Index. Then, members wanting to make changes to the Law Index can log into this account and make the changes from there. At the same time, as everything is done using the Senate Clerk account, the Law Index looks more tidy and organized.
The Senate Clerk is one example of the new clerk accounts, which have been given their own usergroup, unimaginatively named "Clerks". The other such account is the Court Clerk (again not to be confused with the members that are Court Clerks, i.e. in the JTC), which is similarly responsible for the Court Archives.
The passwords to the clerk accounts are intended to be known to more than one forum members. People who have the password should feel free to give it to members interested to contribute and that are entrusted not to misbehave. At the same time, it is not intended to be known to everyone. For an obvious example, the password should not be given to members that have been in the region for a single day. You should use your own judgment in making the call between the two. As a starter, the passwords have been sent to certain members that are likely to be interested in working in the two forum areas we have clerk accounts for.
Understandably, some security issues are created by having shared accounts. For this reason, some measures have been taken. Each clerk account can only pin/unpin, open/close, move, and split threads in the areas where it has moderation powers. Moderation powers are granted to each clerk account separately, and not to the entire usergroup, so that each clerk account only has them over the forums related to its use. Furthermore, each clerk account can only edit posts made by itself, and not those made by other accounts, including clerk ones.
A thread will be created shortly, where we will try to maintain a list of all the people who have access to the various clerk accounts. This means that, if you give the password for some clerk account to someone, you should remember to say so in that thread. You can post there if you want access to either account, or just ask someone who already has access. The passwords will be changed periodically by the admins, so the lists will also be used to pm those supposed to have access with the updated passwords.
As mentioned above, for the time being there are only two clerk accounts. We intend to experiment with these and see how successful the whole concept will be. In the future, and if we receive positive feedback, more clerk accounts may be created for other areas of the forum.
So, try them out, and please let us know what you think. If you have any ideas, comments, or suggestions, even if you don't have access to any of the clerk accounts, please post them here.
The clerk accounts are provided to allow for collaborative maintainance of various organized records, as well as to help make those more organized.
Take the Law Index for example. Right now, to be able to (properly) make changes there, a member needs to be added as a moderator. Even though the person appointed as Senate Clerk will usually be a moderator, it is not very practical to have every member wishing to contribute as a moderator. This becomes even more impractical if said member only wishes to pitch in and make an occassional update, rather than work on the Law Index long term.
Under the new system, a Senate Clerk account (not to be confused with the Senate Clerk job) is created, that is given moderator rights over the Law Index. Then, members wanting to make changes to the Law Index can log into this account and make the changes from there. At the same time, as everything is done using the Senate Clerk account, the Law Index looks more tidy and organized.
The Senate Clerk is one example of the new clerk accounts, which have been given their own usergroup, unimaginatively named "Clerks". The other such account is the Court Clerk (again not to be confused with the members that are Court Clerks, i.e. in the JTC), which is similarly responsible for the Court Archives.
The passwords to the clerk accounts are intended to be known to more than one forum members. People who have the password should feel free to give it to members interested to contribute and that are entrusted not to misbehave. At the same time, it is not intended to be known to everyone. For an obvious example, the password should not be given to members that have been in the region for a single day. You should use your own judgment in making the call between the two. As a starter, the passwords have been sent to certain members that are likely to be interested in working in the two forum areas we have clerk accounts for.
Understandably, some security issues are created by having shared accounts. For this reason, some measures have been taken. Each clerk account can only pin/unpin, open/close, move, and split threads in the areas where it has moderation powers. Moderation powers are granted to each clerk account separately, and not to the entire usergroup, so that each clerk account only has them over the forums related to its use. Furthermore, each clerk account can only edit posts made by itself, and not those made by other accounts, including clerk ones.
A thread will be created shortly, where we will try to maintain a list of all the people who have access to the various clerk accounts. This means that, if you give the password for some clerk account to someone, you should remember to say so in that thread. You can post there if you want access to either account, or just ask someone who already has access. The passwords will be changed periodically by the admins, so the lists will also be used to pm those supposed to have access with the updated passwords.
As mentioned above, for the time being there are only two clerk accounts. We intend to experiment with these and see how successful the whole concept will be. In the future, and if we receive positive feedback, more clerk accounts may be created for other areas of the forum.
So, try them out, and please let us know what you think. If you have any ideas, comments, or suggestions, even if you don't have access to any of the clerk accounts, please post them here.
