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For some reason this isn't showing up in my paper area without clicking the "read more" button.

Many of you may know that I'm one of the Admins on the eUSAForums at [url]http://eusforum/[/url]. I was also one of the Admins appointed by the former owner before Franco went down and took everyone with him. I first became an Admin by just happening to ask at the right time. Emerick had demoted Justin and then Emerick himself decided to leave for Japan and demoted himself so there was a need for another full time Admin and I became that guy. I've Admined other Boards before and I also Admin the USWP Forums at http://theuswp.com/.

The eUSA Forums presented a challenge because there was so much stuff there and so many different kinds of voices so I sat back and didn't really do a lot at first other than to watch, deal with obvious trolls, and try to develop some new Boards for Court and some other purposes. It was through the development of the Court Boards that I learned a few things that I've tried to apply to the new Forums. And for those who keep asking ... I do plan to bring the Courts back ... they were a lot of fun but we've just been reeling for a while since the shakeup. I'm almost ready to get them started again.

So when Franco pulled the old Boards down after emptying the eUSA coffers there was a vacuum as our primary way of communicating with each other was down. The eUSA Forums were many things but I viewed them as the seat of power for the eUSA government as that was where Congress went to discuss things such as new laws, news and events, military strategy, and other things. Without the Forums I felt lost and so did many others. Immediately a few of the Forum members jumped in and started working on replacement Forums. The Forum that ended up winning the popular approval as the "new" eUSA Forums ended up being one created by my Platoon Sergeant, Killing Time.

I had worked with Killing Time for a several months after selecting him as my second in command in my Platoon. We had formed a good working relationship and so it didn't surprise me when he asked me to help him with the new eUSA Forums. In fact, he decided to make PrincessMedyPi and me co-owners of the new eUSA Forums with him as the three of us have fairly balanced views and work well together in resolving things ... and there were many things to be resolved. The first was to restore order in the Forums. Many had come over to the new Forums with a wild, wild west sort of mentality that they were going to rebuild the Forums in their vision. Notably a certain Joeyhens1 just went nuts by posting as many times as he possibly could over a long, snow-bound weekend as he created threads that made little or no sense and he quickly racked up 300+ posts often being little more than LOL or some other 2 second comment.

Thus, the Admins had to put on some shit kicker boots. Actually, this fell to me as I have never really minded taking command of things. I was a lifeguard for 5 years, an Emergency Medical Technician for a while, and have now been a lawyer for 7+ years. Killing Time said he would rather be the behind the scenes guy and MedyPi is just too sweet to be mean most of the time ... so that role fell to me ... and so I waded in. To help with other aspects of management we also employed Publius and ProggyPop as Global Moderators and Publius as our Forum Librarian to help restore what we could from the old Forums. Even with them it was tough at first as everyone wanted to bitch about everything that wasn't exactly like the old Forums. However, the new management decided that we were going to do what we could to make the new Forums better by keeping chatter and spam contained and to make it a place for people to get various things out of the experience of the eUSA. People immediately complained about my decision to put a 30 second lag between posts but the result was an immediate drop in spamming and rapid-fire comments.

People also complained about aggressive treatment against spammers and as much as I had liked Joeyhens1 in the old Forums he now became my adversary in the new forums as he continued to push for things to be like they had been and to be the king of random posting. I made enemies along the way but there was a silent majority who consistently complained or commented via PM about wanting to cut down on trolling, spamming, and the like. To that end I've gone round and round with Emerick who seems unable to leave the eUSA alone despite leaving for Japan. His surliness is one of those things that we're trying to curtail in the new Forums as we have worked to keep it a friendly atmosphere where personal attacks are kept at a minimum or are left to the wasteland that is the XD Random Board where just about anything goes so long as it stays out of the governmental Boards and it doesn't violate the community standards of decency.

It was a struggle to assert control over our new Forums but eventually things started to come together and then I played my favorite trick ... what I call the Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain wrote about how Tom Sawyer was stuck having to whitewash his Aunt Polly's fence and managed to convince several neighborhood boys to not only help but to do the job for him while he watched. My version of Tom Sawyer came from noticing which members of the new Forums were most active and those were the ones who I made the first Moderators. From my prior experience in Admining and Moding I go with the idea that if you have some ownership in something you'll want to work at making it better and so I made sure to add people who both agreed and disagreed with me and I even created a special hidden Board for all of those Moderators to talk to each other and discuss what was happening in their respective Boards or what standards they wanted to enforce. Heck, I even made Emerick and Joeyhens1 moderators along with some other goofballs to mod the XD Random Board. And you know what? It worked! Those Moderators enjoyed having a say and they have worked very hard to, essentially, do my work for me! I was wearing myself out those first couple of weeks managing the Forums and this past weekend I left for a 3 day Scrabble Tournament and never had to worry about whether the Forums was going to go down in flames because I knew that I had a trusted team of about 25 General Moderators to keep watch over things.

Now 25 General Moderators may be too many, but some of those are Party Presidents who only manage their own party Boards ... still ... having those voices working together is a beautiful thing to behold! Having those guys working on the day to day administration of the various Boards has freed me up to do some other things. One of those things was to create some more structure and depth to the new eUSA Forums by re-organizing some things such as putting the political discussions and Congressional Boards all under a category called "The Capitol". Then I created a category called "The West Wing" for Executive Branch functions and even created, for the first time, an Oval Office Board where the President could issue his policies from and interact with the Congress without always having to go to their Boards. I also created some specialized boards viewable only to Congress, The President/VP, and select other ranking cabinet folks so that they can more effectively meet and make plans without foreign spies being part of the discussion. So far these new Boards seem to be working out very nicely and now the only thing I need to revive is the "eUSA Courts" category which I swear I'll work on this weekend.

Lastly, I suppose I should mention Adminism. Some of our very clever folks have talked about a religion of Adminism primarily referring to how the Admins of eRep giveth and taketh away with little reason or accountability. Some of the new Mods jokingly refer to themselves as now being part of that cult and I suppose that's true to a certain extent. See every one who comes barging into our Forums spouting off and being dickish seems surprised when one of the other Mods or I stop them in their tracks. Then the very next thing that they almost always say is that their Freedom of Speech is somehow being disturbed. And this is where someone usually steps in to explain that Freedom of Speech is a relative thing and that while people have the right to say what they want they don't have an absolute right to say it wherever they want. The Forums are an example of something that are privately owned but more important than that is the fact that the owners of the Forums are trying to keep the marketplace of ideas open so that everyone can have a chance to say something so long as they do it in the appropriate place.

Thus, the Admins and Mods will smite whoever comes into the Forums advertising their penis enhancement pills or trying to stir shit by attacking people for no good reason and in vicious ways. There is now a place for almost anything in the Forums and where there aren't places for what people want the Admins are general open to discussing new Boards that can be created for those purposes ... but we're not going to allow the Congressional threads to be hijacked for conversations about hot wimmins or kewl bands.

Generally, I think that the new Forums have gone through their growing pains and that everyone seems to be getting along reasonably well. Personally, there are parts of the Forum that I prefer to avoid and do so with the confidence that others are watching over them. I try to steer clear of the Party sections, various segments of the XD Random Boards, and I tend to shy away from heated discussions of tax policy in the Congress Boards - aaaaaaack! Oh, and if you were wondering ... I do have a sense of humor ... I was the one who named the Congressional Board The House of Representin'. 😉

So stop by the new eUSA Forums and take a look around. I think that it's a pretty nice place. You're free to disagree with me ... but if you start trolling then ... well ... I have this ban hammer that I haven't used for a while but am not afraid to dust off.