Hey! It's been a while (nearly two years!) since the last time we did promotions and a fair amount has changed since then, so I think we're due for another round.
To outline exactly where we're at with things, I do think that the mods on the site are "active" in some capacity except Ninja and probably DT. If we count activity by actual posts, that can be reduced to Kyron, trachy and I. Editors make few additions to this; though Sempiternus and fondant are around for admin stuff occasionally, we don't have any truly "active" editors at the moment. This won't improve as most of us are doing tertiary education, work or finishing high school, so I think we should bump up the amount of auth members we have to fill these gaps -- perhaps even going as far as to promote experts prior to 6k points, which we've refrained from doing for years. A break in that culture would do us well I think.
Presently, these are the two that I think would be most fitting for the position of editor (users who can hide, show, approve and reject any post), but this is absolutely open for discussion (I have other thoughts about this too, should this amount/ timezones be insufficient). If you have any other ideas or suggestions, leave them below!
- !'•-Indigo-•'! has been active for the best part of three years and has made substantial contributions to the community, with over a thousand answers and another thousand comments. She could lend Sempi and I a hand covering Asia-Pacific timezones.
- Astronautical has been a consistently active and high quality contributor for over two years, and in that time has made several thousand posts. His timezone can help fill the gaps left by some of the less active staff members in North America.
With regards to experts (users who can edit any post, anywhere), I'm more interested in hearing what the general community/ Pokemaster has to say about them before we start doing anything. Whilst it's fully within our (mod's) power to promote experts whenever we want and to whoever we want, I don't think it's ever been done and as stated before, and I think it should be in our interest to start making use of the feature. The more people we have improving and fixing posts, the better off the site is. The criteria for expert should be that a. we think we can trust the user and b. believe they would be able to better the site by editing other's posts. 6k points can simulate that criteria, but there are plenty of people who have been (and more that I think currently are) deserving of the powers well before they had the sheer quantity of posts required to satisfy a point requirement. There should be more manual input from mods and the community here. I also think a stronger culture of improving others' answers should be encouraged and welcomed; this isn't a forum, it's about producing the best possible answers. Having more experts can facilitate that. (See this comment for more on what I mean by this. Bascially I think more frequent use should be made of the editing features.)
So, should we start doing more "manual" expert promotions? Do you think anyone else qualifies for the editor position? Feel free to leave your input below.
April '17 update: we still need these promotions!
Instead of thoughtlessly bumping this post like I was about to, I figured I'd update it a bit since it's been some time since I made this post. The bottom line of what I have to say here is that increasingly, I feel like I'm currently the only staff member who is consistently able to not only check the admin but actually moderate the site on a regular basis. I went and had a look at the main section's account pages for other staff members, and according to the moderator's "last write action" field (which I know includes interactions with the admin), the only staff members who have made any actions in the past month are trachy and I, as of today. I can go through pretty much the entire "hidden" section of the admin and remember my own decisions on much every post in the list, which indicates to me the extent of this problem. At this rate, if I were to suddenly disappear for school or something, new posts might as well go for multiple days in the admin before trachy or someone else gets to them. This is why we need editors now, please. I/we can only do so much.
In my opinion the site could absolutely do with more frequent and perhaps less stingy promotions. I said it above with experts, now I'll say it again for editors and mods: the more we have, the better off the site is. Both of the users mentioned in the original post remain good candidates for promotions, and I can suggest others as well, should that be necessary. People aren't active forever -- we should start taking advantage of reputable and active users whilst they are able to pitch in instead of doing promotions rounds every one or two years and more or less relying on the same people constantly. That approach will continue to make problems like this.
I also want to mention here these posts I made recently, both of which would make the admin and moderation process easier on staff members and hopefully for everyone else as well.
