Always appearing online

What are your thoughts on always appearing to be online with your administrator account... whether it be by setting up an auto-refresh with your browser, viewing the Who's Online page (which automatically refreshes), or using a modification?

I've seen some forum administrators that do this, and I'm not sure if it's to make them seem more active, or if they think it deters misbehavior. For example, do you think a member will think twice about their actions if they know an administrator is online?

 

The best reason is that it just allows for quick access to the site.

 

Quick access yes...but deffo a good modification nick....I do see some users check to se who is online when they log on...

 

I think it would be good to prevent spammers spamming up the forum if they check to see if any staff are online, it would be good to make someone think twice before being very dramatic/cause trouble too.

Personally I tend to always have myself as invisible.

 

i wouldnt ever do that, make it look like im online all the time, but i am online normally a lot of the time

 

No reason to really. I suppose there is some stock in having an admin or mod online all the time, especially for a more busy forum, but I doubt it would really prevent any issues. Most of the time when someone posts something that causes problems they're busy reading the thread and posting in it so have no idea who is online at the time.

I actually use two accounts. One is hidden from the public and is the account with actual admincp access while the account I am visible and post with really only has super mod permissions, but is displayed as admin.

 

Well I'm usually online all the time as it is, unless I've got to go to school or work, but if I didn't get on for a period of time it's not like my members would accuse me of being inactive. Unfortunately for the people who do do this it's really just hurting them, because the whole point of being online is to be there if someone needs you or if something happens on the board that would require your attention somehow. If the administrator 'appeared' to be online, but wasn't answering my messages or banning the spam bot, that would be much worse in my eyes.

If only bots actually cared who was online.

 

Thats the thing, you shouldnt get many bots on your forum with the right protection added. We only ever see human spammers on our boards which are obviously humans because the threads they post are usually on behalf of that damned lockerz site. Any form of display to spammers that they wont get very far is a deterrent and includes showing staff as being online.

A good example, if I was to someday decide I wanted to spam AdminAddict, I would make sure Nick, Gnatster and Savage were offline as I know it would be removed in a matter of minutes.