America Online Community Leaders Program
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
America Online Community Leaders Program or AOL CLP was the offical name for the large group of volunteers who moderated chat rooms, message boards, and download libraries. It was established in the early 1990s, and discontinued in 2005.
Differences between CLs and regular members
Community Leaders, especially the CLs working in high profile positions, usually used what was commonly referred to as a "uniform". The "uniform" was a specially created screen name using a designated prefix that regular AOL users could not use. CLs also had the ability to determine what version of AOL a member was using by if they received an e-mail from them. The accounts of CLs were provided free of charge for the duration of their tenure as CLs. They also received access to special, "confidential" areas on AOL, including the AOL CL hang out, CLHQ or Community Leaders HeadQuarters.
Types of Community Leaders
- Chathost -- moderated Chatrooms, enforced the Terms of Service TOS.
- Empowered Chathosts--Chathosts with the ability to cut off a member's chat --using what was called the Gag tool--if they became too disruptive. Prior to 1999 only a select few (who had proven themselves to be fair and responsible) had access to this tool. Afterwards, all Chathosts had this ability.
- Guides -- If regular and empowered Chathosts were the military, the Guides represented the Marines. When a chatroom became too rowdy for a regular or empowered Chathost to handle, they would call for a Guide's assistance. Up until 1997 (?) Guides were the only ones with the Gag tool.
- LDRSs--Similar to Chathosts in that their primary medium were Chatrooms and Messageboards, the LDRSs were responsible for training the CLs for their positions.
- Rangers -- gave guided "tours" of the different AOL areas.
- Message board moderators-- What Chathosts did for the chatrooms, Moderators did for the Message boards. They read through all the messages posted on the boards that were assigned to them, and hid the ones that were deemed inappropriate.
Most Community Leaders (CL) were Chat Hosts and Message Board Monitors. However, other CL's responsibilities were much more vital to the company itself. There were Community Leaders manning the technical support rooms, and designing the areas that members made use of. This included creating the chat rooms, message boards, and download libraries themselves.
