Overview

Editors are the foundation of the Open-Site Project. Without them, no content would be reviewed, no new categories would be formed, and the taxonomy issues would remain unresolved. Therefore, the volunteers that drive Open-site forward are of vital importance for this community.

Like in any other community, each editor has different levels of activity, as well as different knowledge regarding one aspect or another of the project. Due to those differences, editors have also different interests regarding the activity they feel comfortable of performing, and this results in different permissions been granted to them.

Due to staff’s desire to push all decision-making processes in the hands of the community, there have been created special permissions, which allows the community to self-governate itself. Such permissions are: cateditall, editall, catmv, catmod, and meta.

An explanation about each of these permissions can be found in the guidelines, as well in the How To documentation.

This article wants to offer some answers, guidelines and advices to those interested in such kinds of permissions.

Jumping to the desired levels

Receiving a promotion is different from receiving access in a new category. First of all, those promotions are granted in groups. That means that more than one person receives the promotion at one time. There have been periods when no promotion was granted for several weeks/months. This “wave” style of granting permissions demonstrates one of the basics in understanding how the promotion system works, as well as the main difference when compared to the “new category” promotion.

When someone feels ready for a category, he applies for it. A meta reviews, usually in timely fashion, the request, and forwards a reply to it. The superprivs promotions, due to the fact that they are granted in groups, and due to the fact that their evaluation takes usually much more time compared to a new category request, don’t get granted when the editor is ussualy ready for them. That means that I could be ready for editall since April 2002, but I could receive the promotion in November 2002.

More, unlike new category requests, where the quality and the quantity of the edits, as well as a group of other factors, might provide more or less accurate information about when someone was ready to receive a certain category, in this case we can’t speak about an exact period of time when someone became ready to receive superprivs. There is no such exact period in this case.

Every editor is a human, and one of the main characteristics of the humans is that they are in a continuous transformations. The “accept” and the “reject” replies offered to the metas as ways in which to reply to new category requests represent just snapshots of this continuous evolution. When considering superprivs promotions, metas and staff doesn’t offer a snapshot of such evolution, but it analyses the entire evolution itself, in the past, present and future.

Due to those factors, the promotion can’t be planed for. Promotion doesn’t come when one is ready for them. One does not become ready overnight, but it’s his evolution that makes him ready for the promotion. Editall or meta is not a status that comes when you feel it would be cool to have them. It’s more like the kind of thing that makes you wake up in the morning, and say: “God, what bug is this on my dashboard?”

So requesting those permissions in repeated ways won’t have any good. True, we don’t watch all editors every month, therefore we encourage people to tell us with what type of activity they would feel suitable performing. But meta or editall is not a thing that comes due to the fact that you requested it. It’s more like a thing that comes due to your activity, our commitment to the things Open-Site stands for.

If your focus is to become an editall or meta, you will be very disappointed in not receiving such a promotion. People that see those permissions as a status, as a rank that can be slapped in the forum to the other editorial colleagues will most likely never get it, without a fundamental change of attitude.

Realizing that you can’t plan for such a promotion, that it’s simply the thing that you wake up with, that it’s a thing that won’t come due to your request, but due to your activity and desire to improve Open-site is the first step on the right track. We grant those permissions to people that don’t care about their status when working at Open-site, that had, have and will have always as main target the improvement of the directory, not of their personal status.

The superpriv promotion is granted to those that understand “the big picture”, that is, the very Open-site’s special way of been. It’s a way of telling: “you have understood our goals, our self-governing way of advancing, our desire to share back our data with the internet community, and the way Open-site works. You’ve understood the way in which things work, at the global level, and we do believe that this new permission would represent an opportunity to you to put in practice the things that you already demonstrated that you can do, at a lower scale”.

Few people realize that you don’t need to be a catmod or a meta in order to lead. Many people request the catmod or the meta permission so that they would be able to lead their relatively small area, which is not receiving enough meta attention.

The truth is that you don’t need a superprivs promotion in order to demonstrate leadership skills. It’s those leadership skills that got many current metas in the place where they are, it’s not the superprivs promotion that transformed them in leaders.

What you can do in order to become an editall or a meta?

Absolutely nothing.

What you can do in order to put better in practice the leadership skills that you have, for bringing Open-site closer to its goals?

A lot of things. A base requirement for been a leader is to have access in the area that you want to lead. It’s very simple to propose solutions for the reorganization of Society, when you never edited there. But the real challenge is to transform the: “I think it would be suitable to change that to that” into “I’m ready to help you change that to that, if you guys think that it’s a good idea”. When suggesting a change, feel free to be part of the solution. Feel free to work for making it a reality, and feel free to dedicate your amount of time in order to implement the things that you feel that should be right. In order to do those things, you need editing privs in the whole leadership area.

Do you have a big reorganization for News, but you don’t have editing experience to get there? Then make your way there. Start with your current categories, try to improve those first, and to add new content to them. Take things step by step, and sometimes, in the future, you will get the desired level of editing privileges in order to discuss the reorganization for which you will be able to be a part of the solution.

How we can bring Open-site closer to its goals? By improving its taxonomy, and its editors. Many of the ones that proved good reorganization and taxonomy skills became editalls and catmv, and those that proved something special in the handling of new editors, and their mentorship and way of growing into real stars became catmods.

But those that wait or hope for these permission to be granted will be disappointed. Realizing how much things there are to be done, even in a small category, realizing that it’s a full time job to mentor, reorganize, take care of the unreviewed, as well as sending greeting emails to new editors, in addition to replying to existing feedback, realizing the great opportunity that each editor has in order to improve its local community, and how many things expect each one of us, waiting to be explored, is a step in the right direction in understanding Open-site’s big picture.