Roles
The following is the description of the various roles in the discussion platform of Julia.
Staff members
Our current hosting in Discourse limits us to only 5, so we need to distribute the moderation of the platform to other roles, while staff members will mostly resolve problematic use cases.
Admins
description: A small group of people who are in charge of making sure that this platform runs well.
capabilities: Can do anything and configure any platform settings.
Moderators
description: A small group of people which consists out of respected members of the community, who are willing to spend time and energy to make sure that this platform remains civil.
capabilities: Can edit all posts and users, but cannot configure any platform settings.
Trust Levels (TL)
They are a core feature in Discourse (recommended read about them here: Understanding Discourse Trust Levels).
TL4 (Leader) and TL3 (Regular) have a limited set of moderation capabilities.
TL2 (Member), TL1 (Basic) and TL0 (New) have no moderation capabilities.
Leaders (TL4)
description: Very experienced users and prolific contributors to the overall Julia community (not just this platform), to perform most of the moderation, with some help from Regulars.
capabilities beyond TL3:
- edit all posts
- pin/unpin topic
- close topic
- archive topic
- make topic unlisted
- Split and merge topics
Steps for transparent election and promotion from TL3 to TL4:
- Nomination by user, explaining why they think the nominee is a good choice.
- Soliciting comments and feedback from the broader community.
- Create Poll and check results after period (1 week).
Regulars (TL3)
description: An automated promotion for users who are very active on this platform, to help the Leaders.
capabilities beyond TL2:
- recategorize and rename topics
- spam flags cast on TL0 user posts immediately hide those posts
- flags cast on TL0 user posts in sufficient diversity will auto-block the user and hide all their posts
Considerations
- Self nomination vs. nomination by other users
- Criteria for success
- Do we want to copy the Archlinux model, where voting is from the current trusted users?
Note: This is a wiki post and feedback is welcome.