Welcome to the new admins, and thank you for agreeing to help out!

Here are some hopefully helpful bits and bobs (shorter summary to follow for those speeding through):

Re new applicants: when someone applies to join the club, we try to leave them up for around 24 hours to allow all admins a reasonable chance to see them before they come in. There’s no timestamp on the applications so we guess this in a slightly fuzzy fashion but it tends to work out.

If someone knows a reason they shouldn’t be allowed in, we can voice that in the notes (here in the HQ group). Reasons might include knowledge of a person’s bad behaviour in some other club, or perhaps you noticed something about their profile, club memberships, or such that suggests malintent, that sort of thing. Upon bringing it up in the notes, other admins may agree or disagree and between us a decision will be made. Before now, sometimes we’ve disagreed internally and the compromise has been to message the applicant to further determine their intent. If in doubt, we tend to lean towards accepting entries, and keeping an eye out in case of trouble.

Upon declining an applicant, a note should be put in HQ mentioning it, just for record-keeping purposes.
Upon accepting an applicant, they should be welcomed in the main club notes

If you think someone would be a good fit for the club and want to invite them, you can use the “invite to join my club” feature. If they accept this invitation, they won’t appear as an applicant, they’ll just jump straight to being in the club. Welcome them as normal and if there’s anything you think we should know, mention it in the HQ notes.

Re team matches, vote chess, etc: if you feel like setting up team matches and/or vote chess games, go for it. If the club is challenged to such, feel free to accept unless it seems like we already have too many at once. It’s really hard to go wrong with this, so follow your heart.

Re club moderation: we very rarely need to moderate the club, as the above policies tend to keep the place quite pleasant. However, sometimes we need to discuss here how to tend to something there if discussion gets heated, and/or someone is posting content that attacks some part of the community (it happens rarely, but it happens).

If someone wants to advertise another club, or anything really, they should ask for permission first. We’ll probably grant it especially if it’s related to LGBT+ stuff, but requiring members to ask first stops the club from getting bogged down in spam. If someone advertises something without getting permission first, just delete it on sight (no need for a discussion here first), and then mention it here.

If someone breaches the site rules or the club rules in some posting of theirs, again just delete it and then mention it here. Consider screenshotting or at least copying the text and posting it here, if you think it’s something serious. If a member is causing trouble and you don’t know if you should kick them out or not, there is an option (in the “members” tab) to simply mute them while we decide what to do.

Re club rules: our club rules are pinned at the top of the main club forum. Sometimes we need to hash out between ourselves some policy decision—for example, if something comes up and we need to not only decide if it’s a problem per se, but also, what specifically is the problem with it, so the policy becomes reproducible and fair to all members. This can be discussed in the notes (here in HQ) or the forum (again, here in the HQ) if more room is needed.

Re disagreements amongst admins: we’re not a hive mind and sometimes we disagree on what to do. We don’t have a hard-and-fast mechanism for resolving such, but by and large we simply try to come to some sort of compromise.

Any questions? If ever you're not sure about something, be it club policy or the physical machinations of performing some admin action, feel free to ask, and you'll either get a prompt answer or else we'll figure it out together

LGBT Club HQ

Super Admins

Admins