Member Groups
- Not to be confused with Member Ranks.
| Site Leaders Administrators | |
| Editorial Content Leader Chief Editor | |
| Co-Administrators Supervisors |
Editorial Content Managers Senior Editors |
| Moderating Staff Global Moderators |
Magazine Staff Reporters |
| Moderators | Contributors |
| Retired Staff Former Staff | |
| Registered Users Members · Newcomers | |
| Infractions Suspended · Banned! | |
These are the various groups you may find on the Forums. Some groups (Admins, Moderators and Magazine Staff) are "stacked" upon eachother, meaning that the higher group has all of the abilities the lower group has.
Site Leaders
Administrators
The Administrators are the owners of GBAtemp, its servers, and everything else related to it. They decide the general direction of the site, and as such, make the biggest decisions of all staff. However, most of these decisions will be discussed first with the other senior staff members, such as Supervisors. The Administrators also perform the technical maintenance of the site, such as managing the server infrastructure, programming new feature and site skins, and more. They also manage everything related to funding.
Chief Editor
The Chief Editor is the leader of the Magazine Staff branch of the staff. They are in charge of all editorial content, such as front page news posts and reviews. They are also responsible for reaching out to video game publishers in order to acquire review copies, which are then distributed to the other staff members.
Moderating Staff
The moderating staff is responsible for keeping the forums clean of spam and to serve as arbiters in the various discussions on the forums. They are granted additional tools over other members that allow them to effectively perform this job. Some of their abilities include editing any user's post, deleting posts that have no value, turning threads into "sticky threads" to keep them on top, and more. They also have access to advanced analytical tools that allow them to judge where to prioritize their attention. All registered members on the site may alert a moderator by using the "report" feature available on most content of the site.
Supervisors
As the name implies, the main responsibility of the Supervisors group is to supervise the other (lower-ranked) staff members. As such, users who have a problem with a staff member can contact a Supervisor through private message to resolve the issue. Supervisors are generally experienced senior staff members, who will assist the Administrators in managing the various aspects of the site. They have limited administrative abilities, and can change user names, ban users, add new forums, change permissions, etc. Aside from this, they may also act as Global Moderators on the forums.
Global Moderators
Global Moderators are moderators that have proven that they are able to make effective use of their moderating abilities for an extended period of time, and are thus granted moderator access to all forums of the site. Although their reach on the forum is global, they may still have increased focus on certain forums over others.
Moderators
Moderators are members of GBAtemp who have been chosen by the current active staff to help maintain the quality of the site. Their moderating abilities are limited to a certain number of sections, in order to both keep them focussed, and to not overwhelm them with work. The exact criteria to be chosen are only available in private to staff, and may change over time, but in general, active members with a good track record will be picked.
Magazine Staff
The magazine staff are the main providers of editorial content on the site, such as front-page news posts, and reviews.
Senior Editors
Senior Editors serve as the main assistants to the Chief Editor to manage all editorial content of the site. They have additional responsibilities over the other magazine staff members, such as contacting publishers for review copies and proof-reading reviews before publishing. They have the same level of access as Supervisors, but are mostly expected to use their abilities in context of editorial content.
Reporters
The Reporters are a group of members who are responsible for creating the editorial content available on the site. They search the web for news and write GBAtemp-original pieces as well. They also use the review copies provided by the Chief/Senior Editors to write offical reviews for the site.
Contributors
Contributors are creators of editorial content, similar to Reporters. Magazine Staff members will usually start out in this group, which lets them get used to their role, before eventually becoming a full Reporter.
Other Staff
Former Staff
- Main Article: Former Staff members.
The members of the Former Staff group are those that have previously been promoted to one of the staff groups, and have contributed a fair amount to the site in that role. In such case, when a staff member decides to leave their position voluntarily for any reason, they will be placed into the Former Staff group as a ways to recognize their contributions. Some of the Former Staff members may choose to keep limited moderator abilities, provided they had them in the first place, and are still active enough to use them. Regardless, these members are not responsible for moderating the site, unlike the currently active staff members.
Regular Users
Members
Once a user of the site posts at least 100 valid posts on the forums of GBAtemp, they will automatically be placed in the Members group. This will unlock some of the site features that are not available to Newcomers: they can access and use the Trading Forums and Shoutbox, and set a custom user title which appears under their avatar.
Newcomers
When a user creates an account on GBAtemp, they will be placed in the Newcomers group to signify them being new to the site. They will remain in this group until 100 posts are reached. In this group, certain features are disabled until at least 5 posts are made on the forums, such as the ability to send private messages. This restriction is lifted automatically once the fifth post is made.
Infractions
Members who violate the general terms of use of GBAtemp may be limited in their access to the site by a member of the moderating staff.
Suspended
Members who are in the Suspended group have been excluded from accessing the site for a limited period of time. Suspensions are given after repeated violations of the rules, or after a single larger violation. Once the suspension period ends, the user will regain their access to the site.
Banned!
A user can be permanently Banned from the site for various reasons:
- Repeatedly breaking the rules, even after a temporary suspension.
- Posting spam - This will cause moderators to immedialy nuke the user's content, and set a permanent ban.
- By considering or committing ill-intended actions against GBAtemp or its members.
- By mistake! It is possible that your IP is similar to that of a known spammer or banned user. In such cases, you may contact site support to get your account unbanned.
- For mysterious reasons that the Staff wishes to keep confidential!
Keep this in mind: Having access to a forum is not a right, it is a privilege.
Unregistered
Guests
Guests is not a member group, it is actually the fact of not having any member group at all! Simple visitors who are not logged in are considered as Guests. Since GBAtemp is a community, and values its members above all, Guests are not able to post messages, and can not view some forums. In order to improve performance, they may also be served cached pages, with occasionally slightly outdated content.
