The Sweeper posts:
Split Personalities
There are two administrator accounts here on the forum: Admin and The Sweeper.
Then there is also the owner's account Markus.
These three accounts are manned by the same real life person, but adopting different roles (think of me, Markus aka Sweeper aka Admin, as having a mild multiple personality disorder  ).
Admin is myself in the role of the tech guy. Admin is the guy with the clipboard and the hard-hat. Running backups, webmastering the site, dealing with technical issues like retrieving passwords etc. You won't see much of him because most of his work is done in the basement (or even down in the sewers), but feel free to page him on issues of technical nature.
The Sweeper is the only official moderator. I adopt this role very rarely because the core part the intent of the forum is to allow the discovery of self, which often requires things to get a little rough or sometimes even quite rough. The Sweeper, rather than watching the members, mostly just meditates the gravel or follows his job of sweeping the floor.
You can PM this account if you feel like something needs a moderator's attention. Be aware however that the forum is certainly not moderated in the same way most forums are, but it is also not not-moderated in absolute terms (there are always limits, some legal, some result from our hosting company's TOS and some may result from the forum intent).
However, thinking of the forum as non-moderated is probably as close as you can get to what it is because the leeway compared to most other forums is really huuuuge. Most of the time we even have an (in)official resident troll, because encountering a troll is a powerful tool to find out something about yourself. The forum does have the Elias material at the core, so noticing what you are doing, keeping attention to self and seeing your reflection in what annoys you, are the ingredients from which we boil our specific cocktail of self discovery.
However, the only thing which will tighten this leeway considerably is, if your intent is to rub yourself against authority, or to intentionally trigger people or to generally test limits. In other words, don't forget Rule One. Other than that, there are no hard rules of conduct, because the problem with drawing lines to not cross is, that there will be people who will walk exactly up to the line, then will piss over it, and then, with a smile, will announce "I did not cross it".
In a couple of years this has happened less than a handful of times, but when it happens, The Sweeper's reaction will be swift and no-nonsense.
Markus on the other hand is just the average guy, interacting in the forum like everybody else, trying to discover self. If you see him, simply try to forget that he's the same human as behind the other roles. Even if you get into a fight with me in this role, I promise to do my best, to keep the roles separated (if I fail, I am sure the forum at large will be able to even keep The Sweeper in check).
If you want to invest a bit of time to find out how the separation of roles actually plays out in practise, see this thread (page 1 and 5) and read back the posts in the Sweeper's and Admin's profiles (you'll find them all near the top of the memberlist).
In any case, the three of me are happy to have you here, and we hope have an insightful stay.
Markus
(aka Admin, aka Sweeper, aka Markus)
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