Topic Moderator Discussion

The idea behind having and showing topic category moderators is:

  1. bring higher credibility to Appropedia
  2. bring more experts to Appropedia through incorporation
  3. maintain and encourage quality

The topic experts page should have guidelines on:

  1. the responsibilities of the topic expert
  2. how to become a topic expert (e.g. description
  3. how the topic expert is replaced (e.g. after no reply in one month)

This would be better if it:

  1. could be administered not in the wiki text
  2. would show up below articles and subcategories
these changes will probably take a progammer

Currently I am the moderator for many topic categories. I have in mind a few experts for some of the topic categories, such as adobe and cobb. Are there any offers, e.g. Singkong2005 for Category:Open source?

What do you think? --Lonny 22:20, 14 October 2006 (PDT)

Looks good. Good suggestions, though I'm not able to put time into developing them right now.
I've put myself down for two topics. Re Category:Open source, I think Category:Information and communication technology is the one to look at (as it covers all the open source articles, at present). I'm sure there are others who are much more familiar with the topic than I am... I have taken an interest and some initiative with the Low cost computer guide, but I'm far from an expert. Are their other volunteers? (User:Curtbeckmann? Aaron? Only if there are no other takers, I would accept it as a temporary role. --Singkong2005 · talk 08:42, 15 October 2006 (PDT)
Thanks for the feedback, let's see if there are any other volunteers on this. --Lonny 11:55, 15 October 2006 (PDT)

Administrators

Administrators can approve any topic expert, including themselves.

  • What do you think about this policy? I think that it encourages growth, and is still conservative since, ostensibly, the adminstrators have already been approved for their expertise. --Lonny 08:46, 24 October 2006 (PDT)
    • Should be fine I think, where there is no "topic expert" already, but we may need to develop the policy slightly as Appropedia grows. It's conceivable (likely, even) that we will be dealing with enthusiastic and well-intentioned but misguided individuals in the future, pushing such "solutions" as cars that run on water and other "free energy" ideas (unwittingly supporting false ideas). Though hopefully we would have spotted such problems before their adminship. There's also the question of having more than one topic expert. I don't see a problem with this - in the unlikely case of conflict, they would need to reach consensus, with or without the help of the community of editors). Anyway, at some stage a policy might be needed, but I don't expect it would be more than a couple of paragraphs. --Singkong2005 · talk 22:25, 14 November 2006 (PST)

Apply to be a topic moderator

Thank you for your interest. Place your username and requested topic category here. The admininistrators will consider your request and direct you to further action.

Discussion

I notice several topic experts on the Category:Topic page that do not appear on this Appropedia talk:Topic experts page. Is that intentional somehow, or merely a maintenance thing? Happy to chip in from a maintenance perspective... We could "semi-automate" by creating a Topic experts category? --CurtB 16:54, 7 December 2006 (PST)
See the new Category:Topic admins. Is that what you meant?
I assume the idea that all categories would eventually have topic experts. Some subcats could have different experts, from the parent cat - making things more manageable by sharing the load (as Lonny now manages Greywater, whereas I'm managing Water). --Singkong2005 · talk 02:51, 13 December 2006 (PST)
Chris, Thanks for making this category and assumption. I agree that eventually most topic categories will have a topic moderator. It is possible that the metatopic moderator will moderate those moderators of subordinate topics...but we can work on that as it comes. --Lonny 01:59, 18 December 2006 (PST)

Name: moderator, topic expert, or topic admin?

The terms moderator, topic expert, topic admin are used in different places - I think it would be clearer if we picked one term as the standard, and moved pages, cats and templates to reflect this choice.

I'm not keen on topic expert - it might be true in a sense, but it's more about managing input from many people (some of whom may be experts themselves). Moderator sounds good to me. --Singkong2005 · talk 02:48, 13 December 2006 (PST)

Let's go with Topic moderator. --Lonny 01:48, 18 December 2006 (PST)
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