This has been subject of a little confusion due to informality and lack of explanation, but the new staff ranks are as follows:
- Administrator
- Advisor
- Moderator
- Developer
As it is currently, the only one who is identified as an Administrator is myself (4Sword). Windy (who codes the site but didn't want to have his name listed as a full Administrator), Vash (who owns the server host at the moment), and metallica48423 (who owns the domain name and the server host in the possible future) are listed as Advisors but technically are or do more. The rest of the listed Advisors are CrystalAngel04, Infini, and Mamoruアニメ. The purpose of the Advisors is due in part to how the Administrator rank is currently just helmed by myself (4Sword); i.e., the administration's decisions are not made just on my own whims, those who are Advisors help out by formulating ideas and giving input.
Additionally, Advisors can tell users here to stop a certain behavior if they feel it is against the rules or in the general interest of the forum - and this will not be considered rent-a-modding (Advisors were at one point previously Moderators or Administrators). However, as the forum/site already has Moderators, Advisors should only be doing any moderation for things which require immediacy (spam-bots on the loose) or in conjunction with the Moderators. The idea is that there will not be two moderation factions that users should be having to deal with.
Furthermore, some users who have the Developer rank, namely Niek and Martijn dh, also have secondary moderator permissions. This is so they can better manage when things are posted to the Community Project board and dealing with the Project of the Month stuff respectively. The secondary permissions do not imply that both have the right to moderate user behavior or really to tell users to not be doing something, although coincidentally Niek and Martijn dh are both more than qualified to be Moderators. There is some other stuff coming out about that but I'll say more about that later.
Also there has been some discussion in the staff boards about the moderation policy of ZFGC. In the near future there may be polls posted (likely by an Advisor) in which we will have anonymous voting (the forum modification which allows the staff to see who voted will be turned off) to gauge opinions. We want to make sure that moderation on ZFGC is both fair and just. The full explanation as to what those polls are will be mentioned when one is posted. later.
Also if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask them here or to send a PM.