We have repurposed the old "Assistant Ministers" usergroup into a new "Deputy Ministers" one.
Assistant Ministers used to be everyone who joined a ministry through the CSO. The usergroup did not grant any additional access or mod powers compare to the "Citizens" usergroup, and was purely decorative.
During the past couple of years, we have gradually shifted management of ministerial staff to joinable groups, which are managed by the Ministers themselves and which give AM's access to the various hidden ministerial forums. Due to this transition, the AM usergroup had fallen into near complete disuse (there was only one person masked as such before I changed the group).
Given this, we have now renamed the group into "Deputy Ministers". As you can tell by the name, the usergroup is now intended only for ministerial deputies, as opposed to all CSO members. The usergroup still does not give any additional access, but it does confer considerable moderator powers. We did this to avoid having to manually grant individual members who become deputies moderator powers over the various ministerial subforums, e.g., as happened recently with Starstream.
The new usergroup has mod powers over the same areas as Ministers, with the exception of the various cultural forums in Red Light District. Additionally, compared to Ministers, Deputy Ministers do not have the power to edit other people's posts. This is still a very broad set of mod powers, so make sure to use it responsibly.
Please post below if you have any comments regarding the mod powers Deputy Ministers should have, or any comments about this change in general. If there are people who need to be masked into the new usergroup, then you should make a masking request in the general admin thread.
Assistant Ministers used to be everyone who joined a ministry through the CSO. The usergroup did not grant any additional access or mod powers compare to the "Citizens" usergroup, and was purely decorative.
During the past couple of years, we have gradually shifted management of ministerial staff to joinable groups, which are managed by the Ministers themselves and which give AM's access to the various hidden ministerial forums. Due to this transition, the AM usergroup had fallen into near complete disuse (there was only one person masked as such before I changed the group).
Given this, we have now renamed the group into "Deputy Ministers". As you can tell by the name, the usergroup is now intended only for ministerial deputies, as opposed to all CSO members. The usergroup still does not give any additional access, but it does confer considerable moderator powers. We did this to avoid having to manually grant individual members who become deputies moderator powers over the various ministerial subforums, e.g., as happened recently with Starstream.
The new usergroup has mod powers over the same areas as Ministers, with the exception of the various cultural forums in Red Light District. Additionally, compared to Ministers, Deputy Ministers do not have the power to edit other people's posts. This is still a very broad set of mod powers, so make sure to use it responsibly.
Please post below if you have any comments regarding the mod powers Deputy Ministers should have, or any comments about this change in general. If there are people who need to be masked into the new usergroup, then you should make a masking request in the general admin thread.