Hey, I'm not sure if this is considered a taboo subject or not, but (please no names!) I'm curious as to how administration is handled on lernu - there are no indicators beneath the user name like on other popular forums, so it is a bit confusing IMHO. I guess though that is to protect people from abuse, but nonetheless I still find it confusing.
And are admins always fluent users of esperanto, or is that not necessarily true.

Sorry if I have encroached on forbidden ground, it's just that the admin/mod system here is foreign to me.

Sorry for this question
Chrisso.

No taboos with this.

The forums here are mostly self-policing, although anyone with administrative privileges on the site (the core lernu team and perhaps a couple of others) is able to edit the posts of other lernu users. As far as I know, I am the only person with administrative privileges who reads the English forum regularly. We mostly rely on our users to let other users know of the core forum (and site rules) - no profanities, be nice and respectful of others, use the right language in the right forum, etc. You can see for yourself that this usually works. It used to be me sending a short message to people who wrote in the wrong language in the English forum; now, regular forum readers usually beat me to the punch on that.

I don't think there's any particular reason why we don't give the "administrator" status of a user under their username. I don't remember that ever coming up when we were creating the forums. This is our own software here, we don't use commercial forum software or anything. However, we have so few administrators that you can essentially assume that anyone who posts to the forum is a plain old user.

You'll find the core team (with site administrative privileges) here: http://en.lernu.net/pri_lernu/homoj_organizoj/team...

Our core team is all fluent in Esperanto, and Esperanto is the only language used conducting lernu business. Theoretically we are open to receiving programming help from non-speakers, but I believe we have never received any takers on that. The volunteers who translate our site are not necessarily fluent in Esperanto; our translation system is set up so that you can use existing translations other than the Esperanto one, to assist you in your translation. But those volunteers don't have administrative privileges.

Jevgenij is the lernu team member who reads the Esperanto forums and occasionally deletes something or makes a moderator's comment on someone's post. That is seldom necessary here in the English forum.

Ok thanks for that Erinja, I thought that Lernu having their own software would have been a very probable conclusion. The biggest difference between the lernu forums and other forums I found was though that there didn't seem to be an overwhelming presence of moderators or a 'heirachy' system where a user 'works' up the ranks, and I guess that is quite refreshing.

Anyway thanks for clearing that up for me!

erinja:As far as I know, I am the only person with administrative privileges who reads the English forum regularly.

I am able to edit all posts within the forums. However, that is just a side-effect of my ability to edit the vortaro - I don't consider myself an administrator of the forums, and so have never edited anyone's posts except my own. But, I do have (at least some) administrative rights.

RiotNrrd:
However, that is just a side-effect of my ability to edit the vortaro

Does this mean that the vortaro is an active project like a wiki (except for of course without quite as much openness) rather than a fixed source (like a preexisting commercial dictionary)?

R2D2!:

ceigered:Does this mean that the vortaro is an active project like a wiki (except for of course without quite as much openness) rather than a fixed source (like a preexisting commercial dictionary)?

It'd be nıce ıf the vortaro was an actual wıkı, although that would need more admınıstratıon to prevent vandalısm.

—Ilhuıtemoc δ

Maybe an 'Urban Dictionary' but for esperanto?

ceigered:Does this mean that the vortaro is an active project like a wiki (except for of course without quite as much openness) rather than a fixed source (like a preexisting commercial dictionary)?

The vortaro is a database whose entries are corrected and updated all the time. It is a work in progress.

RiotNrrd:

ceigered:Does this mean that the vortaro is an active project like a wiki (except for of course without quite as much openness) rather than a fixed source (like a preexisting commercial dictionary)?

The vortaro is a database whose entries are corrected and updated all the time. It is a work in progress.

Ah thats good to know! Cheers RiotNrrd