FamilySearch Wiki:Moderator

Moderators are volunteer administrators of the FamilySearch Wiki who help encourage contribution within a subject area on the wiki, monitor its content, and guide others as they contribute. If you are interested in being a moderator for a specific locality or research subject, please fill out this form to let us know of your interest.

Responsibilities
The Moderator Job Description includes the following items:


 * Build Community - Help build an active, vibrant community of contributors in a locality or topic.
 * Recognize Contributions - Introduce themselves to new contributors to that locality, potentially recognize contributors for great work
 * Help Resolve Problems - Generally a very minor part of these responsibilities, it will be important to respond when Wiki Guidelines and Policies are broken by contributors, and help when two or more contributors are in an editing dispute by supporting the Dispute Resolution guidelines.

To help you get started, see the detailed Moderator Responsibilities.

Become a Moderator
If you are interested in being a moderator, or part of a team of moderators, for a specific locality or topic,. Copy and paste the following information into your e-mail program and answer the questions. Use “Request to become a Wiki Moderator” (without the quote marks) as the subject line of your e-mail.


 * Name:
 * Username (Wiki login):
 * Which page(s) are you interested in moderating?
 * Have you created your User page?
 * What is your experience in editing in the Wiki?
 * Do you use the FamilySearch Forums?
 * What would you like to achieve by working on the Wiki?
 * Have you ever been involved in genealogy-related projects with a group of people before?
 * What is your experience in genealogy research in the area you would like to moderate?
 * Have you read through the following pages regarding moderator duties on the Wiki, and do you understand the moderator responsibilities?


 * FamilySearch Wiki:Moderator (this page)
 * The Purpose of Site Moderation
 * FamilySearch Wiki:Moderator/Getting Started
 * FamilySearch Wiki:Moderator Responsibilities


 * Are you familiar with the FamilySearch Research Wiki Policies, Guiding Principles, and the Manual of Style?

Your request will be reviewed, and you will be contacted in a short period of time.

Thank you for your willingness to further help in our wonderful Wiki community!

Who are the Moderators?
Our current moderators include:

Historical Records

How-to Articles
All moderators in the Wiki are invited to help write the following articles. Each article is specifically related to being a moderator. Sharing your experiences in the Discussion tab would be a great place to start. The thoughts and ideas you add to the Discussion tab will assist anyone who wishes to write the article. The articles listed below were started as stub articles. Your participation in this effort will help all moderators.

Moderating the Community


 * The purpose of site moderation explains how moderation helps the community of volunteers who are using and contributing to FamilySearch Wiki.
 * How can a moderator expand and grow the community?
 * The best practices for communicating with domain community
 * Ideas for recruiting writers to fill in content holes
 * Policies and procedures for moderating non-English language Wiki pages
 * How to recognize moderator candidates and, or nominate someone to be a moderator?
 * What is the escalation path when issues arise?
 * What is the best way to resolve content-centered community conflict?

Moderating Content


 * To what extent should facts in articles be verified?
 * Reverting Content to Previous Version When should content be reverted back to a prior version? What is proper etiquette when it is necessary to revert content to a prior version? (use "Undo" from the History tab)
 * When should a page in the Wiki be protected from additional edits? How is this done? (this has to do with the "three-revert" rule)
 * Archiving Pages and Restoring Archived Pages What is the process for archiving pages? When should pages be restored from the Archive?
 * Moderating the deletion of pages How does the moderator discover that pages have been incorrectly deleted? "Watch" all the pages in your area of expertise. When you are watching the pages, you will automatically be notified when a page is deleted.
 * What should be done when a page needs to be deleted?
 * How to Patrol a Wiki Article

Things you can do
The following items are things that a moderator can do to help improve the content in their area of expertise and also grow the community of volunteers authors and editors:


 * Review and edit content as needed
 * Showcase content from your area of expertise
 * Upload images
 * Encourage the creation of new pages
 * Encourage users to clarify ambiguous page titles
 * Discuss, approve, interpret, and clarify policies
 * Get good ideas from other moderators and areas of the wiki and lead contributors in your area to implement them
 * Communicate important issues to other contributors in your subject area
 * Organize and lead wikiprojects
 * Identify and invite knowledgeable people to help with the wiki