This is a reminder, the deadline for comments on this proposal ends on 2022-09-14T22:00:00Z, after that the @forums-governance will review all feedback and take a decision on next steps.
Apart from some frequent visitors I think the most visitors (at least of the Dutch forum) do not check the forum often and for sure not daily. I would make each of the periods that long that they at least include a weekend.
Thanks everyone for your feedback and input in this topic.
As a result, the @forums-governance team came up with five improvements to the initial proposal:
- In order to reduce the voting burden, polls to validate proposed moderators will only take place during the initial category creation or during later additions/removals of moderators when the evaluation of mods requirements fulfillment turn not to be obvious.
- The time for the initial discussion and voting will take 5 days each, but always having weekend days in the middle to optimize for everyoneâs available time.
- Once a year, a reminder to communities will be sent to open a conversation to check on their moderator group health: Do you need new mods, does someone want/need to step-out because is no longer fulfilling the requirements?
- A feedback mechanism will be established to allow individuals to flag to the @forum-governance any issues with a moderator at any given time. Their fulfillment of the requirements will be evaluated.
- New mods can be suggested by the communities at any given time, as long as they fulfill the requirements and accept the role.
Wording has been changed in the original post to reflect these changes.
Again, as a reminder, this is a version 1 that will be tested starting now, and the process will be evolved/updated as its being used and what works and doesnât work can be analyzed.
Thanks again for helping shape this process!
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bit late ⊠but maybe food for thought at the next turn: what about some minimal set of badges, that show some knowledge and familiarity with the platform? if âmoderatorâ weâre talking about is a task, not a title.
Not sure about tying it to badges (although that has the benefit of objectivity!), and at the moment, asking for experience with this particular platform is tricky because itâs still quite new.
But once thatâs no longer the case, I do agree that familiarity with the platform is desirable for moderators. So in the long term, I would personally read
- Actively contributing in the community conversations at least in the last 6 months.
as looking for participation in community conversations on this platform, even if it doesnât say so explicitly.
That would also apply for the later health checks, of course: If a moderator has not been active on this platform for quite a while, that would be a clear reason to revoke moderator privileges and look for someone more engaged.
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indeed, the objectivity of badges was what appealed me;
point taken, the platform is now too new to provide insight on commitment;
concretely, I had noticed three âGetting Startedâ badges:
autobiographer
certified
licensed
and, oops, I have not one of them. but that can be fixed, with limited effort. btw: Tutorials? hadnât even noticed thereâs tutorials for this platform. my bad, or looking for excuses, lacking advertisement.
⊠6 months is a long time. can we make it 3?
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Better not. The moderator has to be someone well known to the community.
oops, Iâm sorry, I had read it the opposite way ⊠I thought we were looking at months of absence from the platform, and 3 months absence seems to me enough to form proof of loss of interest.
still, for a proof of familiarity and commitment, 6 months is a long term.
IMO, we need some flexibility, somehow, but Iâm not making further suggestions, beyond a selected set of badges.
Hello, good night from Mexico.
I donât understand the role now of a moderator, at least not the one they want to assign here on the new platform.
For me, a moderator role has a simple charge: To have an order in a forum.
Report spam, block comments that may cause problems or upset, etc.
For when there is a discussion between two or more members and that can incite more lack of order, the moderator should intervene asking for the fight to stop. And if the users involved do not intend to stop, the moderator should report it with the next level
The next level will take note and make the necessary charges (temporary suspension, or permanent block).
I donât know how many levels there are here, but normally there are only 3: moderator, administrator, and finally the legal representatives.
When a moderator abused the power of it, all the posts (messages) had a âflagâ to report the user author of that message. Who reported a user, had to add the grounds for him to report.
And if it was a moderator who was reported, among his fellow moderators they tried to solve the problem, before taking the problem to the administrators.
But throughout these years on the old forum, I saw no need for problems beyond the scope of a moderator.
I donât know if here they intend to add new functions to the moderators.
Sorry, just copy and paste on online trasnlater.
Hello @JeSe-MX
You described examples that fit into the responsibilities and process listed here.
I wonder what are the concrete requirements or responsibilities defined here that you mention you donât understand.
Cheers.
Hi, good morning all.
Yes, sorry, I dinât wanted extend too. Maybe I did understand bad, but I copied and pasted all text to the translate app to know the meaning, and maybe Iâm confused.
About the responsibilities, is all ok. Just I comented because I have experiencie from many years ago (maybe in this times the somethings is changed) and for so that there are no misunderstandings.
The than I think is âaddedâ*, is about the voting to moderator. simply if a moderator abused the power of it, his partners modetaros will be the responsible for solving the problem.
But as I said ago, I think none moderator will abused of the power. Well, I never saw it in my years as a moderator in the previus forum OSM.
*sorry, today I used complety my know about english. I dind`t used a translator.
The current proposal details a list of requirements, if a moderator is not fulfilling them, the @forums-governance can evaluate to revoke their rights if needed.
Voting is only used during the initial validation of proposed mods and when the @forums-governance canât determine in an obvious way if someone is fulfilling a requirement or not.
PS. Note that the forums provides you with messages translation in your (forum account configured) language if you click the 
icon below. You can also write in Spanish and other people will be able to translate into their language.
The current proposal is a good step forward. I also like the idea that a moderator has to show some kind of previous interaction with the community and the forum (do we still call it like this? I mean discourse).
I feel that a âvoting periodâ of 5 days is way too short. You, as a hard-core participants of discourse might check for updates multiple times a day. But especially in low volume sub-sections I would expect much longer response times.
So my idea would be a voting period of 21 days
Yes, our hearts beat for OSM, but often personal things have priority.
If we want to over-engineer it, we might also variate the voting period based on the typical time interval of of users interacting each week.
Maybe discourse can provide some statistics on how frequently users do visit the site.
I agree that 5 days is a bit short time frame to give feedback. But conscious also of the times for this specific process/thread, I suggest we revise (in 3 or 6 months?) all things flagged after the deadline for the moderator selection criteria, in order to adjuts accordingly.
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As itâs something that is applied in the whole forum, which contains communities varrying in how often they would respond in such discussions/votings, and the admins are trying for an average solution which covers most cases of those variations, I think 5 days are perfectly fine.
Do you want 6 for the case of Monday-Saturday (as in a day which for sure someone will have returned from work to deal with the forum visit)? Ok for that. But much more than 5 days will become negative for progress of communities with low traffic.
I tend to agree with some of the comments here: 80% is super high.
Actively contributing is not well defined.
Is editing in OSM enough?
Is creating a group in facebook that actively help people contribute to OSM is enough?
Bottom line, I donât think this can be well measured and thus creates a problem to define if someone is fulfilling this requirement.
My 2 cents, I guess.
I think 80% is fine, we should not have moderators that are contested by more than a fifth of the mappers. The moderation job is highly sensitive and moderators should be trusted by ideally everybody, realistically a large majority.
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Itâs not about objection to moderator, itâs about getting 80% of the people to vote.
Saying that if more that 20% actively object is not the save as saying that 80% agree, because you need to say what happens if you donât vote. The way it is defined now, as far as I underrated, is that if you donât vote you object⊠And thatâs why I say 80% is highâŠ
The current wording talks about 80% of the votes, not 80% of the community. Mainly because itâs impossible to know how many people âisâ part of a community. The community concept is different from person to person and also how to consider yourself part of it or not.
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Ah, that makes a lot more sense, thanks for the info!
1 Like