Out with the OLD and in with the NEW

It is time for this amazing forum to have a new Administrator!

I have been the admin, albeit a non existent one for the last few months, since November of last year. Behind the scenes I always had Boffer holding my hand and helping me. Without his help I would have crashed and burned a month in. I keep saying when life calms down I will get back here and get my duties taken care of, but time keeps slipping by and life isn't calming down.

I have loved the opportunity to work with the foundation and boffer and lead the forum. But it is time for someone with new renewed energy to come in and take over and breathe life and excitement into our community here.

I love this forum and have been so blessed to have SFG and the people here in my life. As many of you know I truly owe my life in part to my SFG and I would have never experienced the successes with it as I have without the forum and all the wonderful people here.

I am not running out the door with my hair on fire. If you are interested in being the admin of the forum please PM with information as to why you would like to be admin. I will be talking with the people interested via PM and in a couple weeks we will announce the new Admin. I will be around and to help the new admin as much as I can, and I hope I can rely on Boffer to help with the things I never really was able to pick up.

You don't have to have any web master experience. What you need is the time to pop in and out a few times a day and the willingness to spend some time in the administration panel poking around and learning new things. If you can post a photo in a thread you will be able to pick up the skills you need to to handle the technical side of the forum. The holidays are coming and there are fun things you can do to liven it up around here!

Please PM me with your interest! I am excited to see who will be the new excited admin of the forum and all the great things that will come with it.

Warmly,
Jennie-Middlemamma

Bumping

I just want to take a quick moment to thank you dearly for all the time and effort you have put in to the forum. Without your efforts, and from those others such as you, the forum could easily have degraded faster than you could say "row garden!".

Thanks again for your selfless service and I wish you and yours all the very best.

Don't be a stranger

Oh, my, who will we ever find who can keep us under control with as much finesse as middlemamma could? Selfishly, I hate to see you go, but with all my heart I wish you the best. I do hope you'll come check in with us occasionally - you have so much to offer the forum even if you just take on the role as a regular member.

Don't be a stranger!

Thanks guys.

Well if no one expresses any interest soon you will be stuck with me! I can't just abandon the forum. But I honestly don't feel the amount of time I can give right now is fair to everyone...

Jen

Jen

Would it work to have a "Support Group" for you? I know many of us probably don't feel capable/ready/available to be THE/AN admin, but maybe we could volunteer our willingness to help do a task or project for you??? Just an idea....

I guess most forum members have been in the military where you learn real fast not to volunteer for anything-especially if you don't know what you're volunteering for!

Admins on different forums have different responsibilities. Maybe it would be helpful if folks had an idea what the SFG admin job is about.

There's a technical side and a people side to the job. The admin has to see that the technical side is dealt with, but that task, or parts if it, can be delegated. I would enjoy helping the next admin with the tech side of things if they wanted me to. If not, that's fine too. Be advised: I do come to the job full of opinions!

The most important part of the admin job, just like any leadership position, is being able to get along and work with all people. Jen has done a great job this past year dealing with all the different people in many different situations on the forum. Hopefully, she will have the time to describe those 'people responsibilities' so that everyone has a little better understanding about what the admin does behind the scenes. Pretty please, Jen?!

This is a perfectly good example showing how I couldn't have done this without boffer.

The people side of it entails organizing the RH's and keeping them energized and motivated. Something I wanted to do but never got to doing was a daily or weekly inspirational message to the RH's.

When things come up on the forum like inappropriate posting or a disagreement over something it is the admins job to referee. Basically we don't have too much of that here, but it happens occasionally and it must be dealt with. Every once in a while we will get a member that decided THEY wrote the All New Square Foot Gardening book instead of Mel and they get a little snarky, it is the admin's job to make sure this person is dealt with and if needed, banned.

Whenever a person struggles with their registration or logging in the admin trouble shoots that and gets them up and running. Usually they just need to be manually activated because that activation email gets lost in cyber space.

Boffer is an admin Emeritus and if the new admin wanted to keep that going I would become one too. This would allow boffer and I to help with duties. There is a "hidden" forum one would be able to see once they became the admin called The Lounge, boffer and I as well as the new admin could cohort in that forum and help each other out.

The people part of it was enjoyable to me but harder than I had thought since I have never been a "boss" before. So wielding that and learning how to do so without being a control freak was hard. I had never done anything like it before. I either stepped on the gas too hard or let off to much, finding a happy medium was a new thing for me.

Hope that helps...
Jen

Sorry Boffer...Soon you won't be bailing me out anymore.

I'm a Forum leader (just google my user name) on a couponing website (yeah, I'm one of those ladies) and agree that dealing with snarky people is about the hardest part of the job aka misuse of a coupon in my life. LOL

I'm considering applying for the job but like you Jen, 3 kids, holidays approaching, life can get real hectic.

Let me ponder this some more and I get back with ya. I LOVE this forum and have learned so much and would like to help out.

I know it changed awhile back, but it seems an Admin's job is also delegation. When things get too difficult, learning to let go and trust some other "key players" really helps.

Regional Hosts seem to be perfect for this, provided the new Admin trusts, or learns to trust, them. Most forums I've seen are broken into subcategories, and each has it's own "moderator." That has to take a lot of heat off the admins. However, selection of these people can be critical....and is likely why things here changed.

But, taking on ALL the responsibilities by oneself will lead to burnout very quickly. IMO, a balance needs to be struck going forward.

bumping again....