hello,
my final year project is to make a web application for a discussion forum for a university environment. i am about to submit my requirement specification document.
i guess the context diagram for this system will have three actors,
1- Students.....who post questions
2- Moderators/ Instructors...... who reply to posts
3- Administrators.......takes overall care

can someone please tell me the difference in privileges of a moderator and an administrator in such an environment, how do i show these two actors in my context diagram. my project supervisor is not satisfied with my system diagram as yet, need to improve.

regards,
nemo

Here's how the forum hierarchy is organized on DaniWeb (some things have been purposely left out):

Admin -> Has complete control over the forum. They tend to handle things such as technical details of running it, as well as high-level issues and other stuff.

Super-Mod -> Kind of like the duties of a regular moderator, except that they have control over all forums. Their main goal is for the general well-being of the forum. Think of them as supervisors over other moderators.

Moderator -> Take care of low-level issues that come in the specific forums where they have expertise in. They do things such as snipping profanity, deleting spam, infracting/banning people. They also do a lot of helping for other people with their problems.

Regular Member -> Asks questions, helps other members out. Has the potential to become a moderator if they prove themselves knowledgeable enough.

So in terms of your diagram, I'd say you need to specify that moderators take care of the more low-level tasks. Another key thing to remember is that moderators don't have power over every forum, only the ones that they have expertise in.

Thanks, i hadn't thought about the super moderator, this is a nice feature and i am keeping it too. still will keep things simple so that i am sure i can make it in the end.

any idea what algorithm to use for scheduling? though i havn't reached the design stage but would welcome comment on it.

hey thanx for the information
its is very helpful for the assignments

i think both admin nd moderator can help u a lott