Moderator Guide

Process and responsibilities

Toolkit moderators are contributors to the Activist Toolkit with certain additional abilities and responsibilities. Moderators provide help and advice to new contributors, and as such should have a certain level of familiarity with using the Toolkit. Moderators, along with the Toolkit administrator, have the final say on any content disputes. Moderators can also permanently revise, edit or remove content. The decision to remove an entire piece of content (instead of just editing or reverting it) should be made by at least two moderators. To become a moderator, a contributor may simply contact an existing moderator or send a message to toolkitmoderate@rabble.ca.

The existing moderator group should make a consensus decision to approve new moderators. Discussions about this and other issues related to moderating can take place in a separate forum and an e-mail discussion list that exist solely for Toolkit moderator use.

Most of what being a moderator entails will occur as interaction with contributors on the "Talk" pages attached to each content page. However, moderators are also encouraged to maintain certain areas of the Toolkit based on interest. For example, a moderator who is a union activist might follow development related to union activism; the moderator would check on existing pages on that topic to ensure that no inappropriate edits are being made and would encourage the process of content creation by proposing/creating new pages. Any Toolkit user has the ability to "flag" content for moderation. Moderators who have decided to look after a specific page or pages should watch for these flags. Ideally, every page within the Toolkit should be actively maintained by at least one moderator.

Moderators should also spend time responding to user questions in the forum dedicated to the Toolkit

(see: http://rabble.ca/babble/rabble-content/activist-toolkit).

General guidelines

The moderator group's purpose is to help maintain and grow the Toolkit. To this end, they should be active contributors in their own right and demonstrate model behaviour in their interactions. If a contributor has a concern involving a specific moderator, they should try to resolve it with the individual involved. If this does not succeed, the contributor should appeal to another moderator who shall attempt to resolve the issue. If this fails, the second moderator should take the concern to the entire group of moderators. At this point, the contributor may also wish to take the concern to the Toolkit administrator by sending a message to toolkitgrumpy@rabble.ca.

Expansion

This brief guide is a work in progress, and will evolve along with the growth of the moderator group. Changes and additions may be proposed and implemented (and are in fact encouraged) by the moderators themselves in conjunction with the Toolkit administrator. In the future, moderators may also be given the ability to limit or approve new contributor accounts in conjunction with the Toolkit policy in particular and the policies of the rest of rabble.ca in general.