WiserEarth Editors
Collaboration in serving the greater WiserEarth community
As active community members, we would like to make this group into a gathering point where we can work together to transform WiserEarth.org into an effective platform of support for the global community of concerned citizens and organizations who are working to create a more just and sustainable world. ...learn more
GROUP DETAILS
Created: Nov 20, 2007
Updated: Nov 22, 2009
Membership: Invitation Only
Semi-Private
Topic: (SETUP) Roles and Responsibilities of Editors and Administrators
Posts (1 - 20 of 32)
Sort by: Ascending | Descending
Login to Post a Reply.
|
Flag comment for removal Camilla about 1 year ago
Thanks Bowo for summarizing the roles on WiserEarth - those are spot on. Maybe those should be featured on the Editors Group home page, so people know how they can get involved. What do you think? I also like the idea of a 'reporter', although that may overlap somewhat with the role of Community Manager.
|
|
From comment section on the WiserEarth Community Roles page, is boatsie's suggestion:
"How about adding another role "Reporter" ... people who keep tabs on
activities occurring, new members joining, significant events of
interest and contribute to a weekly 'newsletter'... Eventually, AofF
stewards could be the contacts who contact Reporters regarding news in
their particular domains. |
|
|
I agree with what Michael said regarding the need for WiserEarth to be "much more community-driven in regards to content management." And his following points is spot on too:
The first one can I think be formalized into Editor "Roles" and given a set of tasks for each. The second one should probably be suggested in the WiserEarth suggestions group. This would however, require that the Area of Focus Editors group and the Global Communities group to be more hardcoded to WiserEarth's platform as compared to other groups. The third one should also be made part of the tasks of an Editor Role.
I think Camilla also pointed out three excellent incentives for users to volunteer their time and effort by becoming a WiserEarth Editor. More intangible incentives can be given to users or editors once the Recognize/reward User contribution in Profile suggestion is implemented as a standard feature in WiserEarth.
Thus, following up and summing up one of the first goal of our discussion here, I'd like to propose the following Editor "Roles" with attached set of "tasks" for each:
Note: Content here includes all entities in WiserEarth from organization page, to user comments.
1. General Content Manager or Content Manager We'll need to create a wikipage for this which will also contain step-by-step tutorials.
2. Area of Focus Editor or AoF Editor As described in the Area of Focus (AoF) Editor page (kudos to Michael) and will work in the WiserEarth Area of Focus Editors group. Any other ideas? 3. Community Steward As described in the Global Community Steward page (kudos to Michael) and will work in the WiserEarth Global Communities. Any other ideas?
4. Helper As described in the WiserEarth Helpers page but with more descriptions on specific skills offered as services to the community (general help, html editing, group development, graphic design skills, copywriting skills, proofreading skills, etc.). Will work within the WiserEarth Help Desk group.
5. Translator
6. Feature Developer
7. Any other ideas?
By formalizing the roles and responsibilities this way, maybe we can get a more focused effort from the editors community?
Any idea how to best assign this role to editors? (i.e. can an editor have more than one role? or should one rolet be limited to a specific time period (a month, etc.)?
Do we need to create a kind of community-designed master plan / timetable with specific goals for editors with respective Role (in their respective groups)? This would make it easier for new editors to "plug-in" and start contributing on a well-defined (yet evolving) plan of action.
Or, is this all too much? and we should just use the simple "Editor" status and encourage editors to go to respective groups as needed and desired? |
|
|
Mike, I appreciate your thoughts and resurfacing this discussion. As WiserEarth completes its first year, I definitely see the need for WiserEarth to engage the community further so that members will want to take on a more active role - given that this site is built for and by community, this is critical to its future success.
You talk about incentives, however, I think that there already are incentives for any WiserEarth editor on both a personal as well as a more a humanitarian one - that is for 1) editors to be able to share their invaluable knowledge with the rest of the community and 2) they will be playing a key role helping the worldwide nonprofit community and those that support their work. For those who are looking to experience more a 'community building role' as Volunteer Editors (I'm thinking that there are many students around the world who would be very interested in volunteering for this role), that their are plenty of ways for them to spread the word and, simultaneously, to build an addditional experience that they can add to their resume. Finally, I think that if there is a good description of the various tasks that editors can take on, then WiserEarth will be able to build up the active editorial participation that it desires and requires. |
|
A while ago Bowo, you said: "As for the accuracy of privileges and
responsibilities of Editors, I
think I resonate with you and Mike that there's no great need for it at
the moment. A few trusted editors can do the job." I agree with you...
but now I'd like to discuss the possibilty of WiserEarth being much
more community-driven in regards to content management.
Instead of just one of two editors constantly reviewing new content, there could be many more users taking charge in monitoring material. Perhaps one or two editors (probably NCI staff) can still keep a watchful eye on new content, but these one or two editors can't possibly monitor all the other content, so we'll have to expand the number of editors on the site. What incentive do users have to be Editors? How do we prevent Editors from not overlapping on monitoring the same content? We can't pay users to monitor material...and it'd be inefficient to just let loose a hundred Editors on the site with no direction...I see a couple incentives... First users need to be motivated to manage their Areas of Focus and their Community groups. We need to encourage users to have co-ownership of their groups with other members so that they would be encouraged to monitor new and old content (and remove or update as needed) in their group. Currently, users interested in WiserEarth Editor status can message Peggy (as explained on the Bulletin Board). How do we create this incentive? - There are no formal guidelines currently, but perhaps Editor status can be tied in with managing an Area of Focus of Community group. Other thoughts? Secondly users need to easily access the information that requires monitoring. Currently the Area of Focus Stewards groups and Global Community Stewards are places for stewards to converge. How do we create this incentive? - These steward groups need their own unique group display to help them manage their areas of focus or groups. Can their aof's / community's organizations, resources, events, etc. be automatically fed into the group and displayed in an easy-to-read manner as new data is entered? All content for communities and areas of focus currently must be manually entered, which makes this a tedious process. While I think we need to work on establishing a core set of volunteer Editors, there is also another (and possibly others?) ways of making sure WiserEarth content is updated and relevant. As WiserEarth's google rankings increase and as representatives from organizations check their e-mails from WiserEarth, they can update their WiserEarth profiles themselves and also help enrich the general content of the site. So I think that a core responsibility of an Editor would be to make sure that an organizations e-mail address is correct (especially for large orgs), because otherwise we would have no way to contact these thousands of organizations. To sum up, 1. Find some committed Users/Editors for Community Groups and Area of Focus Groups 2. Automatically send/feed WiserEarth content into these Groups 3. Updating e-mail addresses for large or "umbrella" organizations should be a priority |
|
|
This comment was removed by a WiserEarth editor for the following reason:
incomplete |
|
|
thanks for those much-needed clarifications David, I might have been using them interchangeably, or without defining them.
|
|
Hey, all:
I am sorry I have not been keeping up, but one clear distinction that must be made is that between a privilege and a right. In a cyber-community, I would say the distinction is not as clear as in the real world, but still here the rights remain with the owner and privileges are extended from that entity. As such, when you get down to it, only a very few have rights, but most of us have a big basket of privileges. The responsibility associated with the privilege is to live up to the ethics and standards of the site. We have a lot of autonomy within limits, to remind and even enforce these standards for others, and to exercise them carefully ourselves. Conventionally, rights are sacred, and can be exercised to extremes without consequence, and even then diligent due process is required. Privileges have no such guarantees of protection at all, and can be changed at the whim of the owner. The success of an entity can be measured by the fairness and discipline of those changes. I guess I have not seen any clear, official statement of conduct and activities, and for most it is not needed, but at some point such a presentation will be needed. Limits will be tested. All open Internet groups have growing pains, and WE are/is no different. David Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun! |
|
One thing I do know from experience is that once you confer a right on someone or some group it is difficult to take it away without inevitable bad feelings and quarreling from those who see those rights or powers diminished. This is one reason - maybe the main reason - why I think it isn't a good idea to give away too much too soon, especially when it comes to governance beyond direct editing for accuracy and timeliness. It IS good to discuss it so when the system is more set you aren't groping around without having thought it through, but if there aren't real problems that need to be solved by granting a lot of powers to groups of people, then I wouldn't do it. There is plenty of time still for such things and it will be more clear later what's needed.
|
|
|
John, regarding your comment: "Encouraging discussion - sure thing. Definitely.", our pardon as admins of the group for not making it clear that the reason why we encourage discussions is first and foremost because the group has only been partially set up. We need ideas and edits from group member to build a solid foundation for the group.
As you will see in other discussions labeled with "(SETUP)", especially "(SETUP) Group Vision and Activities", your concern on providing accurate and up-to-date information on organization profiles and AoFs are also a part of the activity this group wish to facilitate. More recently, through the "Share" and "Weave" initiative, we would also like this group to facilitate users who wish to help in populating WE's database. As for the accuracy of privileges and responsibilities of Editors, I think I resonate with you and Mike that there's no great need for it at the moment. A few trusted editors can do the job. I'm not sure how deep the privileges are hard-coded to the Editor status, but if possible, I would like to see the privileges to edit protected contents (AoF portal and guide pages) and manage a page (deleting/locking/marking protected content, org's, resource, wikipages, etc.) be separated. While the ability to edit such page should be given to editors with expertise in each AoF and in WE's guidance pages, the ability to manage a page should only be given to more trusted editors who understands WE's principles, content standard, etc. This way, we can easily separate the distribution of "edit" and "manage" privileges as needed. However, at present I'm not seeing any abuse yet of these privileges. So perhaps, there's no urgent need to separate the two yet, and the separation of these two might just complicate things a bit. The most important thing I guess, is that, editors should be people who can be trusted not to abuse the privileges that come with the status Thus, I would like to see some clear requirements on getting an Editor status and some responsibilities attached to it, including the possibility of revoking the status based on agreed conditions. ---------------- On AoF portals, I would like to mention the new portal template adam is designing @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/74e8b37279c057c969dc47f0ee40ac1e (compare it to the current portal for the same AoF (Global Beef Industry) @ http://www.wiserearth.org/aof/710) We will see there under the "People and Groups" tab in the "People" section, we have the following division: - Simply Interested - Experienced Activists and Workers - Experts I'm not sure how the template will actually work to facilitate this division, but I imagined that editing privilege for the "Knowledge" tab should only be given to the latter two (Experienced and Expert), which can be given a WE Editor status, while Simply Interested people (regular WE Users) can put up suggestions to improve the "Knowledge" tab in the "Discussions" tab. We can also accommodate Simply Interested people to contribute under the "Sub-Topics" tab, which can be made freely editable/add-able by regular users. Selected contents from the "Sub-Topics" can then be further refined by Experienced and Expert people to later on be moved over under the "Knowledge" tab. Just an idea. Maybe we can get adam to join this discussion and explain his thoughts when crafting that portal mock-up? |
|
|
John, I agree that accuracy of the data should be a priority. Here is a discussion of what an "Area of Focus manager (steward? editor?)" could do: http://wiserearth.org/forum/view/1b34f5d30110d4732aae56b9e8439016
If we can agree that there is a need for quality-control in our data, then we'll need to organize volunteers, interns and well-meaning and informed users to help. However, as you point out, the demand for users with privileges is not high at this early stage of WE... so perhaps its too early to try to pinpoint editors' responsibilities. The responsibilities I have as an editor include checking the non-profit status and appropriateness of new content on WiserEarth, and removing it when necessary. Editors also edit the many protected pages on WE, which serve to describe or guide WE to new users. That is all I need my Editor status for. Perhaps studying the models of Wikipedia and other wiki sites is too much of a top-down approach at this pt. Since quality-control (updating, improving content) is what we need in the site to create value, I think we should think about how we can reach this goal. Once we figure out a system in place for WE users to improve the quality of WiserEarth, we'll be in a much better position to identify and distribute roles and responsibilities. |
|
|
I would think that an editor's main duty/responsibility would be to focus on accuracy. Helping the data be most accurate and up to date, esp on orgs who aren't doing it for themselves. Encouraging discussion - sure thing. Definitely. But again to me accuracy is the mantra for that role. I would be fairly conservative in metering out privileges that have to do with site governance, especially in this very early stage. For one thing, I don't think you need it - the workload isn't that great for such things, and I think it diverts people from the business at hand, which is making the index as good as it can be and helping people inhabit the place.
|
|
|
The following discussion happened between myself and John Coate (http://www.wiserearth.org/user/johncoate) over at the WiserEarth Governance group (http://www.wiserearth.org/group/WiserEarthGovernance) in the "Governance Overview" discussion @ http://www.wiserearth.org/forum/view/577cde7ee0cec34f42aa433ec3d1d3b9
Teleported here with permission from John. <hr /> <<< johncoate >>> "Use the group to discuss and come to resolution on how power, authority, and influence are defined and shared within WE. ((a discussion that will happen at some point, I'm not sure when. Not that pressing probably))" <<< bowo >>> Hi John, Jon, I'm Bowo, currently helping out to set up the WiserEarth Editors Group. Just wanted to share an issue we had there possibly relating to governance. It's about finding meaningful differentiation of responsibilities between regular users and editors. Currently, (to my knowledge) the only note-worthy differentiation is the ability to edit and delete "protected pages" like the "About Us" page and the portal pages for AoFs. Moreover, any user can seemingly apply to be an editor by simply sending one of the administrators a message on it (without clear requirements to be an editor), help out with edits and content management, but then be inactive for several months. This creates a dilemma where any user can easily be an editor, but then be left with not much to do as an editor, because there's no clear responsibilities attached to the privileges of an editor. So, technically, all users can be editors, and it won't make much of a difference to WiserEarth. Beyond the editorship issue, there's also another issue relating to a sentence in the "WiserEarth Community Roles" page, which states: "We are currently developing additional expectations for administrators and invite the community to participate in this discussion." Check this out @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/14dec18f90fea9d36f9ef6631a38983c Any thoughts on these issues? <<< johncoate >>> Is it really that easy to get editor status - just write and ask and you shall receive? I would expect something akin to a cover letter where one demonstrates some sort of commitment to the project. I like the basic structure of user/editor/admin. You are right though, it says what an editor can do but doesn't say what qualifies you for it. Surely though there must have been some sense of who would qualify and what the expectations would be when it was conceived. Maybe some activity minimum? That isn't the best since it could lead to a bunch of busy work or extra jibber-jabber. Maybe it doesn't actually matter and what does count is the quality of the edits one does, esp in the AoF zone where I assume one wants to ensure accuracy. <<< bowo >>> Hi John. I'm not sure about the "just write and ask and you shall receive", but I have seen an editor or two with very low level activity in the site, and some more who have been inactive for months. <<< johncoate >>> At this point I'm not sure it matters much is someone is inactive. I'd be more concerned if someone was consistently inaccurate or something like that. <<< bowo >>> Hi John, a small addition for your comment: "I'm not sure it matters much is someone is inactive". While I agree that if the "someone" is a regular user, inactivity don't matter much, I don't think it's appropriate if that someone is an editor, because, to my knowledge, the editor status have so far been associated with the phrase "taking leadership" within the community. So, while an inactive follower is understandable, an inactive leader is a whole different matter. That's where we again encounter the issue of editor's identity crisis which may be causing the inactivity. And as you will discover after reading through stuff in the editors group, that crisis ended up causing an identity crisis for the editors group as well, which we also need to resolve for the benefit of the group and WiserEarth as a whole. <<< johncoate >>> Could you point me to those particular discussions so I can catch up? Part of where I was coming from on that is to minimize admin work. Maybe there would be some sort of automated way of placing someone who is an inactive editor into some sort of limbo stage or send them an alert telling them they need to participate to keep the status. Also, it is necessary to determine how long a period constitutes enough inactivity to warrant some sort of action. I don't think six months is all that long of a time really. But let me study the history of the talk some more. <<< bowo >>> I think that's an excellent idea to reduce admin work. The phrase "taking leadership" was actually "leadership role" in the "What's Next" section of the "About Us" page @ http://www.wiserearth.org/article/About. The phrase "leadership roles" is hyperlinked to the "WiserEarth Community Roles" page @ http://www.wiserearth.org/index.php/article/14dec18f90fea9d36f9ef6631a38983c/ which contains definitions for user/editor/administrator. <hr /> (Note: After this, I provided John with relevant links to discussions within this group) |
|
|
Hi JP, I agree that we need some sort of "apprenticeship" for new editors or users who wish to be an editor.
We can do that for example, by providing "a space where any user can learn" about WiserEarth, it's big vision, it's nooks and crannies, and direct them to contribute to the growth of WiserEarth, so they can earn the recognition and trust of the community. This group is I think, a good place for that. We'll have to figure out what that space will look like, and the mechanism to show recognition and trust. Decisions to make a user into an editor will of course be made by administrators (who at the moment are the folks at NCI). |
|
Given the problems I have seen and heard about on Wikipedia, and the concern I'm sure that the developers of WiserEarth have about its integrity, it seems to me that some sort of "apprenticeship" program might be created where those of us who have been invited to be Editors could take on tasks in collaboration with, or under the supervision of existing NCI staff or other senior people. I'm sure we all want to well, but we also may have greatly varying skills that could benefit by some mentoring before we are "turned loose!"
|
|
|
Below are a small research result to seed our discussion here a bit further.
Interesting readings on how Wikipedia governance work: "Power Structure" @ http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Power_structure "User Classes" @ http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_classes "Board of Trustees" @ http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board_of_Trustees While discussion on power structure and board of trustees are beyond the scope of this thread, we can see the following parallel between WiserEarth and Wikipedia: Wiser Earth | Wikipedia ------------------------------------------------------------------- User | Blocked User or Banned User | Anonymous User | Newly Registered User ------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor | Registered User | Rollbacker | Oversight/Hiding Revisions | Administrator/Sysop Administrator | Bureaucrat | CheckUser | Steward | Developer ------------------------------------------------------------------- WISEREARTH ------------------ Editor: Editors are registered WiserEarth users who can also: * Edit protected (locked) pages such as the "About Us" page and Area of Focus pages * Manage data and feedback by changing the status of a WiserEarth entity (organization, wikipages, etc.) into "Active"/"Locked"/"Duplicate"/"Out of Scope"/"Spam"/"In Discussion"/"Removed" as described in http://www.wiserearth.org/article/f774081e28910e3041c932aa8db4c494 Administrator: Administrators manage the user experience. They are registered on WiserEarth and can perform a few restricted functions within WiserEarth, in addition to those functions of an editor, an administrator can: * Change users to editors * Change editors to administrators * Delete WikiPages * Protect and unprotect WikiPages * Block and unblock IP addresses To become an administrator, you will need to show the community that you have built up a deep understanding of every aspect of the site, its user-base, and the needs of the WiserEarth community WIKIPEDIA -------------- User: Registered users (excepting administrators or developers) cannot edit or move protected pages. Newly registered users cannot edit semi-protected pages or move any page. Registered users on Wikimedia Commons include trusted users. As Commons has many Flickr images and requires reviewers to ensure that claimed copyrighted licenses are valid, a registered user familiar with Commons licensing may apply to become a trusted user, which is a user sub-class on Commons. Current Commons administrators need not apply to become trusted users as they already have a higher user class than registered users. Rollbacker: The rollback feature is available to administrators and users with the rollbacker permission on Wikipedia as a fast method of undoing unworthy edits, usually vandalism. Oversight/Hiding Revisions: Users with the Oversight class can remove revisions from an article's history. The revisions can only be restored by a developer. Administrator/Sysop: An administrator (also known as a sysop) 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 Bureaucrat: Within Wikimedia projects, a bureaucrat is a user who has the technical ability to: * Promote other users to administrator or bureaucrat * Grant and revoke a user's bot flag * Rename a user A small community generally doesn't need a bureaucrat, because stewards can easily handle the low traffic of requests from that wiki with little delay. CheckUser: CheckUser is an interface for users with the checkuser permission. An editor with CheckUser status on a wiki can in particular check if a user isn't a sockpuppet of another user on that wiki (not on all wikis). By using it, users are able to: * Determine from which IPs a user has edited the Wikimedia wiki * Determine the edits on the Wikimedia wiki of a specific IP (even when logged in) This information is only stored for a short period, so edits made prior to that will not be shown via CheckUser. A log is kept of who has made which queries with the tool. This log is available to those with the checkuser permission: Stewards: Stewards are technically empowered to grant or remove any of the various levels of user rights, including bot, administrator, bureaucrat, oversight, checkuser, and steward. This position was created to dissociate rights management from software development. Developers: MediaWiki/Wikimedia developers are people who write MediaWiki software and/or do systems administration work on the Wikimedia servers. Some developers have shell access, which means that they can change the WikiMedia site's live copy of MediaWiki, change article histories, read server logs, etc. Those with server access can also carry out various non-development tasks. There is a rough hierarchy among developers. Initially, people contribute patches to Bugzilla, discuss issues on the wikitech-l mailing list or participate in discussion there or on IRC. People who are considered trustworthy and wish to contribute code on a regular basis are given access to the code in Subversion. Developers who are particularly well trusted or have a special need may be granted shell access to the server cluster. And several people who are judged to have the appropriate level of skill and trustworthiness are given root access on the servers. |
|
|
JP, I like it. I propose we keep this forum for comments specifically about the roles and responsibilities we think editors should have, while we create another forum for optional introductions...which could solidify into some concrete suggestions for this forum here.
|
|
|
Teleported from "(SETUP) General Questions" forum
--------------------------------------------------------------- <<<Camilla>>> Here's some initial ideas that I had in the early stages of the set up of this group (especially around the group vision) and perhaps helps to answer the question 'what is a WiserEarth' editor? - shares their experiences and knowledge with the community - has fun helping the WiserEarth community. - facilitates discussions, helps to collect feedback and improve content across WiserEarth - shares ideas on improving functionality and usability - gets involved in the bringing to life the vision of Paul Hawken as discussed in his book "Blessed Unrest" in helping to lay the foundations for mapping out and connecting this incredible movement of people and organizations throughout the world who are addressing the key issues of our day. <<<MichaelK>>> Camilla, I think that's a good general description I've been hearing. However, I don't mean to be harsh, but I don't like it because that description allows almost anyone to be an Editor. I think being an Editor means you get a special privilege (or more) over a WiserEarth user who has just joined the site and made a few edits or comments. By being entrusted with that privilege, the Editor uses that privilege specifically to perform an essential function for the site. I can't think of a specific privilege a user needs to share ideas or facilitate discussions. So I don't see why in those cases a user should be given "Editor" status. |
|
|
I am new to the discussion, and have made an attempt to read what has transpired and I very well may have missed somethings, but it seemed to me that perhaps asking each editor 1. what their real [or current] passion is, 2. what their most significant areas of experience are, and 3. what their areas of formal or ojt training are, would both allow assigning task to or creating teams of editors who are more likely to take an active interest in the process. It also would allow the group to identify areas of expertise or experience that are needed, and work to find a way to attract people to help fill those gaps.
|
|
|
In the "(SETUP) Group Privacy Setting" discussion, I've mentioned my thought on why the public forum is not a very good place to host the discussion.
So, I agree on your suggestion on opening up the group for all users to participate Mike. |
You do not have access to post to this record
1 to 20 of 32 Posts