Then came Loz...
As Pete has said he got to a place where he needed someone else to look after KA. He hadn't mentioned it until the day I was surprised to be invited to take the helm. I didn't much like the idea of being the sole "buck stops here" person so asked if it could be a shared responsibility between me and Timo. However, Pete said he wanted a firm chief position, so having thought it over I reckoned if the goal of the site was to reach as many people suffering all over the world as it possibly could, I could make a difference.
As I saw it that goal required that several things needed to be assured, the key word being accessibility:
1) From the technical standpoint the site must be viewable on all PCs and all browsers. Luckily Timo was already on the case there.
2) It needed to be near the top of the major search engines results. Again Timo was way ahead of me.
3) It needed to be a place where and all races, sensitivities, religions and political leanings could feel comfortable together. Hmmm....
I decided to imagine a super-sensitive, politically correct and prudish person with AS and tried to figure out how they could be made to feel just as comfortable on KA as any more easy going sufferer. It seemed to me that that meant keeping an eye on the content of posts and toning down where necessary - the idea being that it's easier for a broad minded soul to tone down the content of their posts than for a sensitive prude to remain un-offended. So I gathered a team of inexperienced but willing moderator volunteers. Perhaps it's not surprising that the coinciding influx of new members and the embryonic moderating policy would cause difficulty. On a personal level I found that time incredibly difficult to handle but I persevered. Pete then made Jeanna an administrator and in partnership Jeanna and I developed the "rights and responsibilities" which has been an invaluable document. Having added the remarkable skills of the Funksterman to the team I was able to ask him to include that document as part of the registration process so everyone who joined knew what was expected.
I figured if people joined with an understanding of the expectations they would stay longer because fewer arguments would ensue. Well, at least I was right there - the number of active members has continued to rise at a remarkable rate.
KickAS is now a more robust place, with procedures in place to handle all sorts of eventualities. The chief job is a hard one to say the least, and I'm afraid to say I eventually burned out and had to throw in the towel. So who would be chief next? I was immediately impressed with Holly when I invited her to join the admin team but I didn't know then that I'd one day be so impressed that I'd be giving her the helm. Now I feel for Holly every day I visit, the poor woman has an awful lot on her plate. I added mig to the team to try and create a balance of techinal and interpersonal skills in the team. Mig has my utmost respect.
As a post script I'd like to give credit to moderator Cheerful. The hours he puts in and the effort he makes have both been remarkable.
