What is the difference between a moderator and an administrator?

Question

What is officially the difference between a moderator and an administrator? Is every administrator automatically moderator, and would dilaton when he steps down as a moderator automatically stop to be administrator?

On first sight, there seems no direct connection between the two offices since according to the moderation manual the elections are at very different times. But clarification (and a pointer to where this was discussed) would be appreciated. 

Comments

Hi Arnold - "community moderation" is for official threads that are only accessible to 500+ rep users. This belongs in the "Support" category.

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@dimension10: OK. Maybe one could add to the menu where one marks the category short explanations that help one choose, or a help item where slightly longer explanations are given?

Answer 1

Administrators have more powers than moderators, and have more access to administrative stuff (moderators also have access to some admin tools, like import of posts etc.).

Dilaton will gain access to an "admin.retired" account, which will have no moderation powers at all, and only administrative powers, as described here.

Comments

This doesn't clarify all my questions; in fact it creates new ones. 

If moderation and administration are distinct offices then how can it be that if someone who has both offices and steps down from moderation is automatically retired from the other office? 

But from your description of powers It looks like adminstrators are automatically moderators, though apparently with not all moderator rights?

In the interest of transparency, the offices should be clearly separated from each other and the access rules adapted so that someone can be only administrator or only moderator, or both. Otherwise it makes no sense to have different elections for the two.

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@ArnoldNeumaier as administrators in the future will belong exclusively to the technical team of PO, elections for them make no sense indeed. It is not the community who decides who is allowed to enter the technical team, but the head of the technical team (at present Polarkernel) has to decide whom he trusts enough to grant him deep insights into the system.

I personally see administrators in a similar role as system developpers on SE. They technically do have moderator (and probably additional rights) on all sites, in order to be able to test things etc, put in practice SE developpers never interfer with any moderational issues on an SE site.

If needed, what you request could be implemented, as the three types of accounts needed to discern between pure administrators (the XXX.retired accounts), pure moderators (original Q2A moderator accounts), and accounts who can fullfill both tasks and roles (original Q2A admin accounts) are available.

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@ArnoldNeumaier Administrators do have all moderator rights, but the "retired admin" account type is a different thing - see the linked thread.

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OK, confusion resolved. Thanks both of you.

Answer 2

The confusion between the roles of administrators and moderators is an initial anomaly that could not be avoided (and many other newly started online communities probably face it too).

As PO went public, the initial role of Dimension10 and me was to help with (user and other) administrative tasks, such as help new members to log in etc (Dimension10 does many more involved technical things for PO too). We only had to help with moderation too, because there have not been enough people available willing to help with moderation.

In the long run, the roles and tasks of moderators and administrators will be clearly separated, meaning that

• Administrators are part of the technical team of PO, headed by Polarkernel (or another future main system developper of PO). Their role and tasks are purely technical in nature and have no side political implications
• Moderators do moderation ;-), to defend the purpose and needs of the community.

Comments

I changed ''no site political'' to ''no side political'', as it seems to me to make more sense . If this is against your intentions, please undo my edit.