Special members status is not linked to post count alone, and it is a form of a privilege.
In general, special members group was originally created to allow members - which in the administrators/moderators opinion advanced and safe enough - to be ?less moderated?. Those are allowed access to one thread that we don?t look at as much as others.
In practice, this ?privilege? has not been actively used for some time, and probably quite a few members that should be ?special members? are not. Somewhere on our agenda is to review the whole policy and decide how we proceed with those categories ? but to be honest ? it?s not currently very high on the agenda. Each of us is doing his job in the UKPS voluntarily in our own free time, and the little free time we have means few things take priorities over others.
BigG
P.S.
If there are no objections, I will kill this thread in a week?s time ? and if someone wants to start the thread over under a similar name, that?s fine by me.
Personally, I have never, ever seen a "Buddies of the moderators system" (or whatever euphemism it gets called) do any good apart from cause a political mess that is not in anyway needed or wanted on any forum I have been on. They normally end in the "privileged" group forming a dictatorship with in fighting amongst themselves in their little power struggles and taking out their ego trips on the "Underprivileged".
Privileged status - secret sections - people we can "trust" (...and who decides? Yes, the very people who has elected themselves as above everyone else in the first place.) = All very 1984! (That was 22 years ago: let's move onward and away from that sort of thing that has never worked anywhere else either.)
I have no objections in this thread being killed in a weeks time as it has now turn into a political thread and nothing much about Pyro.
Ah-hah, so thats what it means!
You've spoiled all my bizarre conspiracy theories about "Special Members" now.
I can think of some adult jokes about "Special members", but that's entirely inappropriate here!