Permaculture Bay Area Regional Guild

Small addition:

Maybe we need to give a basic responsibility of adding a minimum number of resources/organizations/events/jobs each month for each editor. This would be a form of "commitment" which would make sure that WE's database is growing at a desired pace and a concrete way of defining the phrase "taking leadership" which has been associated with editors but has not been defined adequately.

I think we should mimic Wikipedia's roles, as they've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about how to distribute roles and responsibilities. The equivalent of WE Administrators seems to be the "Steward" on Wikipedia: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards

They are empowered to grant "rights" to users of their choosing. As of now, the WiserEarth community obviously doesn't need to be as comprehensive in its user rights, as developers and WE administrators can handle the tasks for now. But I believe there are some ideas we should adopt soon.

For example, an "Administrator" is a "user with the technical ability, within a particular Wikimedia wiki, to delete and undelete pages, and view deleted revisions of pages; block and unblock users, individual IP addresses, and ranges of IP addresses; protect and unprotect pages; and edit the interface". Currently, we are being rather loose with the rights that we grant to WE users who become Editors. I have to agree that not all WE "editors" need to delete/protect pages/discussions...it's a pretty significant ability, and we should minimize users who have it. We might be able to trust editors to edit responsibly, but what if an editor's account is hacked?

It also seems common for privileges/rights to be revoked after a user is inactive for a while...http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Administrators#Policy_for_de-adminship

At first I thought maybe I'm thinking too far ahead. But now I think it's smart to think about revoking editor status to the many inactive editors we have. Building a wiki-community requires trust among users/editors/stewards/etc. WE Editors (or whatever we will call ourselves) will want to and need to monitor each other in order to avoid abuse or a mishandling of information or pages on the site. Too many editors = confusion.

A small correction first.
The following portion of text is mine in response to Mike's question "When do we decide that the group is fully operational?". The rest is his response to it.
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- The roles and responsibility of editors and administrators (we at least must achieve some level of agreement on this, especially from Peggy and other admins, and then wait for further feedback from all editors).
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As in response to Mike's comments:
Yep, you've got me confused here Mike :P But you did bring up a fundamental issue we need to address, namely "What does it mean to be an Editor", which might lead us back to my first question when we form the group: "Do we need this group?".

However, I do believe that we need this group, or to paraphrase it, we can do a lot of constructive work and bring improvement to WiserEarth through collaboration done by editors via this group.

Or to put it more precisely, we need a group such as this, where all (or willing) WiserEarthlings can collaborate in a more coordinated manner to improve WiserEarth and to enrich it's dynamics toward realizing the big vision stated in it's slogan "Toward a Just and Sustainable World Created by Community".

I'll ponder a bit more on "What does it mean to be an Editor" while waiting for responses from seasoned editors and admins.

Another thing: I've created a "WiserEarth-Related Groups" wikipage @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/d9aae2c3e7b67a00f8b25b6815fe102b which lists groups that might have overlapping activities with this group. One that is especially related to this discussion is the "WiserEarth Governance" group, whose tagline and description are:

"Rights, Obligations, and Relationships of All WiserEarthlings"
This group emerged out of the WiserEarth Partners meeting held on December 13. Our intention is to open this group up to all that join and participate in WiserEarth.

However, to date, it's just being formed, no activity yet.

Thanks for the enlightening answers Mike, especially this one:
"As WE evolves, I imagine many of us will be able to specialize more on specific tasks. More of us will team up on the same role. Fewer of us will be spread out over the site being involved in every discussion and task."

Lookin' forward for the complete list of existing (and new) roles.

As for the following:
"I also think it's sufficient to say, that those who created this group can be trusted to be admins for the time being until this becomes a more pressing issue."

Though I still retain my "Administrator" privilege, following your lead, I have also deleted the "Group Administrator" role Camilla assigned me as my group role. Whenever deemed necessary, for example, issue such as "democratizing this group" occur, I don't mind at all changing my privilege back to "Member", as long as the group is functioning as it is intended to be.

OK then, I'll try to work a bit more on the bulletin board and wikipages (especially the Quick Guide we discuss a while ago) so that by new year, we'll be more or less ready to invite other editors to join the group.

Some initial thoughts...thanks for these timely questions

- What do we mean by "roles" ?
*Roles indicate an editors tasks that he or she can be relied on to be responsible for.

- What kind of "roles" are there?
*There are some roles that are necessary on a day to day basis. For example: channel comments to appropriate people, review new organizations on WE (to see whether it meets standards). There are some roles which anyone can take part in. For example: areas of focus, participating in any discussions, anything in the shoutbox, focus of the week, review duplicates, make organization profiles look pretty. These roles will be listed.

- Must editors choose from this list of roles, or invent ones on their own?
*There are some editors which have obligatory tasks (those of us who work for NCI: me, Camilla, Michael S, Adam, Peggy, etc) If you don't intern or work for NCI, then I think you should be able to decide for now what to do. We can encourage editors to work on specific "focuses of the week", wikipages (that might require research or compiling feedback) or to work on other specific tasks that we come up with in the future.

- What will happen to the list of "roles" as WiserEarth evolves further?
*As WE evolves, I imagine many of us will be able to specialize more on specific tasks. More of us will team up on the same role. Fewer of us will be spread out over the site being involved in every discussion and task.

Your other questions:
- How should we assign which to whom? (i.e. what privileges to which member?) Who should have "Editor" privileges? With what responsibilities? ....since in WiserEarth term we are all "Editor", does this mean that even "member" can delete discussions using the Set "Removed"?
*You made a very important point here. I think that we need to change a member's ability to remove discussions from the Editor's group. I think the ability should only be given to admins of the site and the admin. of each individual group. I think the best solution is to allow each group's administrators to decide for itself who can "remove comments", among other privileges.

Let's set all new editors as "members". Until I get a response about limiting the ability to remove comments to admins, I'll hold off from inviting new editors. I feel I can trust all the editors we have so far, but you never know...

- Who should have "Administrator" privileges? With what responsibilities?
Let's keep the Administrator privilleges to a minimum, to those who are already admins, and to potentially anyone in NCI, simply because we can keep each other accountable to what we do on the site, and because some of us can be expected to work on the site on a daily basis. I also think it's sufficient to say, that those who created this group can be trusted to be admins for the time being until this becomes a more pressing issue.

<<< Camilla >>>
I think that the group needs to start off small in terms of the amount of work it asks its (non-NIC) editors to do, at least, initially. For example, maybe just focusing initially on being able to give timely and accurate responses to discussions/comments made on the site. What do others think?


<<< MichaelK >>>
WHO IS AN EDITOR? WHO IS NOT?
The current definition of what an Editor "is" and how one can become one, is still a bit vague. As of now, you must "apply" to be an editor, but this process is not a very formal one..and as you can see, there currently aren't too many Editors out of the thousands of users already on the site. I suggest we begin here, to work on a wikipage in addition to a discussion, on who is qualified to be an editor in the first place? The fact that users must "request" to be an editor by sending a message doesn't make the process welcoming.

This is the current description for the WE Editor role. Perhaps another one our initial "focuses of the week" can be to work on this description.:
http://www.wiserearth.org/article/14dec18f90fea9d36f9ef6631a38983c#%3Cb%3EEditor%3C/b%3E


<<< bowo >>>
Expectations for editors and administrators: this is the place to discuss roles and responsibilities editors and administrators should shoulder. Results and conclusions will be sent to the "Expectations for editors and administrators" wikipage.

I wrote also for 'administrators' there in responding to the sentence "We are currently developing additional expectations for administrators and invite the community to participate in this discussion" in the Community Roles wikipage.


<<< bowo >>>
Another thing that will help us in that direction is in Mike's words "The list of "go-to" people will evolve over time, so it should be our role to keep track of who knows what."

Overall, at the early stages of the group's activity, we'll need to recapitulate our current editors know-hows and skills and setup a more comprehensive "task division" also based on the voluntary willingness of each editor to take up certain tasks.


<<< bowo >>>
More on the "go to" editors.
We'll need to increase the number of WiserEarth Helpers and make their whereabout visible to new users. My suggestion was to point out a Helper for each new user upon completing the signing up process (is this done already? I kind a forgot).


<<< MichaelK >>>
A new user receives an automatically generated email from Mike Spalding. I haven't heard him say that this gives him more work than he can handle, but I'll get an update from him. A few editors used to address new users individually (for example: A-J, K-P, Q-Z), but this process has been stopped. In the future perhaps there can be automatic e-mails sent to more than one editor, we'll know when the time comes, right now, the new-user growth rate is pretty stable.

I could begin by explaining what a couple of my obligatory duties are. Besides me and Michael Spalding, there isn't anyone else expected to do this on work days.

1. Review comments, and reply with an internal message including an acknowledgement that it will be addressed. If I can't give a decent response, I alert the person who can best answer it.

2. Review todays new organizations and remove them if they don't fit WE Content Standards (the most common orgs removed are for-profit orgs, which are sometimes disputable, and so are brought to the attention of others through discussion forums: http://www.wiserearth.org/article/Methodology

3. Review emails to user support and respond appropriately (we have a same response template).

Optional: Help edit organization entries

Adam, Peggy, Camila, in addition to other staff and interns also frequently review comments and respond, but me and Michael Spalding are responsible for responding to the comments (and alerting others of a comment that is relevant to them) within a day - the sooner the better


<<< bowo >>>
That is simple enough even for new editors to do. But as the site grows, I suspect we'll need more editors to do various tasks, for example: to maintain each AoF portal more professionally. By the way, how is this done now? And what was the future roles of editors originally envisioned? Especially when thinking of, say, 10 million user base?

<<< bowo >>>
IMHO, ideally editors should be people who not only know the ins and outs of WiserEarth, but also those who have specific skills and know-hows that can benefit WiserEarth as a whole.

'Skills' here can range from technical ones like HTML mark-up skills to social ones such as networking WiserEarth entities and "spreading the word" to the world.

'Know-hows' can mean that an editor should at least have a deep knowledge on a specific AoF, so they can be good stewards of each AoF. And among the things that they could contribute would be to write the kind of "best practices" you mentioned. But of course, not just editors, all users should be encouraged to share their "best practices" with the world via WiserEarth.


<<< bowo >>>
Among all editors, who should be group administrators and editors? with what expectations/responsibilities?