MLK Community Team

[DGFone]

To add thing or two on top of my previous post:

It's not that I am against the idea - I just don't see the point of this. My understanding of the idea is to give limited mod powers to members who are seen as community leaders. Just that my take on one main responsibility of a mod is to be a community leader in the first place, and to swing the banhammer around last, making this community leader position simply redundant.


So in a nutshell, if it's very easy to implement, since the general consensus is positive towards the idea - go for it!

As for who to place into these positions, I wouldn't look into time on MLK too much. Pick who you feel will fill the role the best without worrying about arbitrary designators too much.

[Panda-chan]

Just chiming in to say that I agree with WS and the others that this is a good idea for the site at its current activity level. It's definitely too soon to have proper moderators at this point where we barely get 10 new posts a day. And honestly, this could be a chance for these members to prove themselves whenever MLK becomes active enough to need moderators again.

In addition to editing posts, perhaps one of the additional responsibilities of the Community leaders could be to approve new members? I know that can be a pain for only one person to handle especially when you have to sort the real people from all the botspam.

I'm not sure how I would go about selecting people for the team. In previous years we've had a nomination thread go up and then a voting round, but there is of course the possibility that it will turn into a popularity contest, so I think Az should have the final say in who gets selected. Call me crazy, but I think there should be some community input when selecting the Community leaders, lol.

EDIT:
Oh crap sorry I missed your most recent post there Az. Good thoughts all around. I do agree with DG that the role of the MLK staff team, whatever they call themselves, should be to promote and encourage the community first, and police second. I'm not sure how I feel about permanently removing the moderator group because discipline would still be needed for the 1% of members that do act up. At the very least, I would support a permanent name change for the moderator group to something more positive and friendly sounding. Hence the reason I like the idea of "community leaders"; the focus is on the community rather than on "moderating" ie warning/banning.

[quote="Azdgari"]I guess I'm leaning towards adding two community leaders, and am toying with the idea of splitting between one veteran member and one 'newer' member. Do people think that's a good approach?[/quote]
Yep, I think two leaders is plenty for now I don't really have an opinion on how it gets split up, so I'll leave that up to everyone else to decide

[it means no worries]

[quote="Panda-chan"] Call me crazy, but I think there should be some community input when selecting the Community leaders, lol.[/quote]

Nonsense, the MLK Politburo is handpicked by the Vanguard of the revolutionary party, a true dictatorship of MLKertariat.

[WildSimba]

[quote="Azdgari"]I think I’m leaning towards implementing this. While I agree with many of DG's points, I actually would rather see the 'moderator' position evolve into this 'community team' position longer-term. I think that a lot of people, including the moderators themselves in some cases, have interpreted the mod's job as being enforcers or disciplinarians a lot of the time. My opinion certainly isn’t the final word and obviously my staff tenure here has been short, but in my view, staff are community leaders and organizers 99% of the time (as you rightly said, DG), and finger-waggers 1% of the time. And while MLK does not have a huge content moderation problem, I also selfishly like the idea of having a few other people on a formalized team with me from a 'running the community, encouraging growth, etc' perspective. Not to say that everyone else isn't capable of leading on MLK--the opposite, really, since this whole community is impossible without great members who do great things like run writing contests and provoke interesting TLK discussion and hang around for ten years. But having a dedicated team is always nice too.

I guess I'm leaning towards adding two community leaders, and am toying with the idea of splitting between one veteran member and one 'newer' member. Do people think that's a good approach?[/quote]

I have absolutely no issue with that approach, personally.

[Azdgari]

Glad to hear it!