Hello everyone, Recently posted in Administrative News- (http://boards.rootsweb.com/adminnews/30/mb.ashx) We have received inquiries about optional duties for message board administrators. We would like to give out a reminder on these optional duties and inform administrators that optional duties are not required for anyone to be an administrator on a message board. Here is the list of optional duties: 1. Actively encourage use of the board by creating new on-topic posts or answering existing posts. 2. Assist and educate board members in more effective use of the boards. For example, you could send an e-mail to users notifying them when you move or delete their posts and letting them know why. 3. Edit the classification of each post if necessary. 4. Change surnames entered in the surname field to reflect only those surnames discussed in the post. 5. Review posts on the board for the time period prior to your adoption including: - Correcting classifications and surnames, and creating more descriptive subject lines. - Deleting Community Guidelines violations. - Moving incorrectly posted messages to the proper board. 6. Work with a Mailing List Administrator to gateway your board to a corresponding mailing list. 7. Customize your Board Information box with board-related links and information. 8. Adopt and review boards that do not have an administrator. The main point of controversy recently mentioned by administrators is in regard to #4. Many community members are attempting to help out board admins by submitting these fixes by using the Report Abuse feature. We appreciate the efforts of the community but want to make sure that fellow administrators are not subjecting other administrators to these lengthy lists of fixes. This is not a mandatory action - as such if you choose not to fulfill these requests we ask that you Reject the objections in your queue. Using the Report Abuse feature to report items that need to be "cleaned" up is not an appropriate use of the feature. This feature should be reserved for real reports of abuse. As staff when we receive hundreds of reports for surname fields that need to be fixed this makes it difficult to see actual reports of spam, commercial posts, etc that truly are instances of abuse on the boards. We give our thanks to all of you for giving so freely of your time. Those of you who have been able to fulfill not only the required duties but have gone on to fulfill the optional duties are truly going the second mile! We greatly appreciate the zeal and energy at which our current administrators are keeping the integrity of the community boards. To view required duties and additional information please visit the Message Board Administrator Information page at: http://boards.rootsweb.com/admin/admininfo.aspx Sincerely, RootsWeb Support Staff<http://www.ancestry.com/facts/staff-family-history.ashx>