Welcome to the Cumulus Support forum.

Latest Cumulus MX V3 release 3.28.6 (build 3283) - 21 March 2024

Cumulus MX V4 beta test release 4.0.0 (build 4017) - 17 March 2024

Legacy Cumulus 1 release v1.9.4 (build 1099) - 28 November 2014 (a patch is available for 1.9.4 build 1099 that extends the date range of drop-down menus to 2030)

Download the Software (Cumulus MX / Cumulus 1 and other related items) from the Wiki

Volunteer wanted

General news concerning announcements of new releases, forum outages etc.
Post Reply
User avatar
steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26702
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Volunteer wanted

Post by steve »

The person who acts as forum administrator would like to stop doing it, so I am looking for a volunteer to take over. The role has two aspects to it:

Firstly, acting on emails sent from the forum contact form. There are around 5 to 10 of these per week, and they fall into the following categories:

1. People who have signed up for the forum but didn't receive the confirmation email. Find their account, manually activate it, and reply telling them you have done.
2. People who can't remember their password (sometimes they can't remember their user name either). Search for their account, using the user name or email address, reset their password to something of your choosing, and reply telling them their user name and password.
3. People who have registered but can't work out how to start a new thread, or have similar problems with getting started on the forum. Reply to them with the help they need.
4. People asking for help with Cumulus. Either ignore or reply asking them to use the forum.
5. And of course, a fair bit of spam.

There is no physical mailbox, so you will need to supply an email address that I can redirect the emails to.

Secondly, dealing with first posts from new users. When someone registers, their first post has to be approved before everyone can see it. There are around 10 to 15 of these a week on average. Some of them are from spammers, and a certain amount of skill is sometimes needed in detecting these. Sometimes they are obviously adverts (in the post, or in their signature), but sometimes they are slightly more 'clever'. They post to old threads, just saying things like 'great post', or sometimes they find an old post and repost it, making it look genuine. I help to do this part of the admin job myself when I am on the forum, and I think I have developed quite a good instinct for what is and isn't a potential spammer.

The Stop Forum Spam site is quite useful in checking for well-known user names and email addresses used by spammers.

I delete spammer accounts (and their posts at the same time) rather than just 'disapproving' their posts.

The admin activities don't need to be done every day, but it would be good if they weren't left for more than two or three days.

If you would like to volunteer, please send me a private message. I'll announce the lucky winner in a few days, or sooner, depending on how many offers I get.
Steve
User avatar
steve
Cumulus Author
Posts: 26702
Joined: Mon 02 Jun 2008 6:49 pm
Weather Station: None
Operating System: None
Location: Vienne, France
Contact:

Re: Volunteer wanted

Post by steve »

Many thanks to all those who volunteered. I am pleased to announce that David - "water01" - is now forum administrator.

I'll take this opportunity to let you all know that we going over to Ireland for three weeks from tomorrow. I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have while we're there.
Steve
Post Reply