How Should We Select Moderators for this Site?

Question

NYC Tech Ops is in the process of bringing this site online to the public, as a new community resource for the Occupy movement.  Part of that process will be selecting community managers and moderators for the site.

The creation of a new community space online (like the creation of a new community from liberated property) gives us a chance to experiment with different models of empowerment and governance - in terms of selecting who can moderate content + user behavior, and what can be moderated.  

I'm going to suggest some models for how site admins can be selected.  Feel free to comment / vote or suggest your own.

Currently the site is operating under a "Network of Trust" administrative strategy.

Comments

If anything other than "everyone is an admin" is used, would we do well to have a system for demotion as well?

Answer 1

"Level Up"

A combination of "Gamification" and "Representative Democracy"

Users on the site are granted points for providing useful answers or asking pertinent questions.  We can set thresholds (like 10,000 points = moderator, 100,000 points = admin) after which a user would be granted new admin privileges.  They would subsequently lose privileges if their points fell back below the threshold.

Comments

May consider voting on a set of rules or guidelines for admin to follow & be graded on.

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How would someone lose points?

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the points system adds points if your answers are voted up, and subtracts points if they are voted down.  it's possible to break even.  i think you would end up at zero, but can't go negative.  I'd have to review the code to be totally sure on this.

Answer 2

"Network of Trust"
Site creators choose trusted individuals to promote to site admins.  Those people will be empowered to invite and empower whomever they see fit, and so on.

This is the model we've adopted for map.occupy.net.

Comments

i think this model works/worked well for the beginning stages of this domain...and it is an amazing project!  but once this gets pushed out to every web-enabled occupier...the level of trust in the admins will likely, and naturally, decrease.  examples include the many FB and twitter hijacking occurances due to meeting new people and trusting too soon.

Answer 3

"Everyone's an Admin"

We put our commitment to horizontalism and individual empowerment to the test - all users are granted the maximum amount of administrative power (just short of exposing private user data such as passwords, or taking the whole site offline).  

Users would set their own community standards as to what behavior was acceptable and the defacto consensus would be based on what coalitions or people would care enough to keep clicking / editing to their liking in the case of disputes.

There could be a "safe" version of this policy where no actions are permanent - edits and deletions could be restored from version history.

Wiki's in their pure form operate this way.

Wiki.occupy.net works this way. Wikipedia used to, though there is now a management-appointed cabal who can lock certain actions or certain users.

Comments

The "everyone's an owner" is also the model for some of our collaborative spaces like project trackers (in Pivotal tracker everyone was an owner because there was a narrow focus to the kinds of action people could take and they were work-oriented and not social spaces).

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I'd love to see this tested out for a week.

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i highly advocate for this model.  especially with the ability to restore from history - that makes it more reliable and difficult for one or few people to wreak havoc with irreparable damages.

the locking of certain actions, seems like a reasonable idea - with the actions that will have this feature on them choosen by a consensus.

Answer 4

"Whoever Gets There First"  

We open the site for a limited time for sign-up + training.  Anyone who joins during that period will be an admin.  

This is the policy that was adopted for NYCGA.net - site working group were selected from training meetings during the week before the site launched to the pubilc.