Forum:How To Be Helpful As A Biostar Moderator/Editor?

Question

[aidan-budd]

Noticed recently that I've got "Editor" status on BioStar.

Would be happy to use this to help the Administrators/the site in general, and was wondering if there's somewhere a bit more information on what "Editors" can do, and ways in which we can most usefully contribute to the site, than is given in the FAQ pages.

And/or, other Editors - what kinds of moderation activity do you find yourselves doing, what do you feel are useful ways for you, and other Editors, help support the community?

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

I think I'm going to close that question :-)

[aidan-budd]

Ah... the pleasure of guessing on t'interweb whether people are making jokes or not :)

I guess if you already deleted the question, then I wouldn't be able to reciprocate by in addition deleting your comment...?! ;)

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

I was joking :-)

[Sean Davis]

The only editing I have ever done is to edit posts to make them more readable by fixing formatting of links and putting code into code blocks where the original poster did not. I have rarely edited the content of a post.

[Neilfws]

Plenty of good answers already; I won't add a new one. Improving tags, making titles more informative, fixing typos and formatting code properly are all very useful. Especially the last...I think we need an FAQ entry about how to format.

[Istvan Albert]

Another call to action is that when you see job ad make sure that the title contains the location of the job. That really helps in orienting people.

[aidan-budd]

Thanks for editing the title, Istvan

[Giovanni M Dall'Olio]

Welcome among the Biostar Moderators :-)

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

as an editor :

• I re-format some posts
• I answer+close the post if the question is a duplicate
• I delete the spams
• I ask the user to "improve his question or it will be deleted"

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

oh please, people, don't up-vote my answer. It's not worth it.

[Zev.Kronenberg]

Perhaps vote freezing would be a nice biostar admin feature.

[Istvan Albert]

Also let me mention this for everyone that if a user posts an obvious and blatant spam then make sure to also suspend them. The cost of creating an OpenID is non-trivial and is a good deterrent.

Answer 2

[Istvan Albert]

I like to edit titles so that they are as descriptive/informative as possible - I think that helps a lot in getting a question answered.

Answer 3

[Peter]

I sometimes fix code markup (for legibility), and retag questions (I find the later to be quite important for monitoring project-specific RSS feeds and as a search mechanism).

[Malachi Griffith]

I also think retagging or adding additional tags is useful. Often after a question has been clarified, answers and comments have been given, etc. it becomes more obvious how best to tag the content present

Answer 4

[Zev.Kronenberg]

• Vote
• Avoid editing
• Encourage discussion

[aidan-budd]

Aye. BioStar is the only Stack Exchange-like site I contribute, so my experience comes only from here. But/and my feeling is that voting is, if not the life blood of the experience, then at least a very important (lymphatic?) like adjunct to it i.e. it looks like, on average, the more voting that goes on the better, seeing that what we write is being read and appreciated is an important motivator (for me, at least, I've noticed).

I wonder whether re-calibrating some of the badges associated with number of votes people have made (i.e. having more badges awarded for this, with the first badge coming at a lower number of votes that one has made), might offer some small, but perhaps useful, additional mini-motivation for people to vote more.

And/or maybe it would be of use to query users about ideas for new/different badges that we think/expect/hope might add further motivation for people to contribute in different ways?

[Istvan Albert]

we are drastically reworking the badges to be more trackable (why was this badge awarded?) and make them more rewarding and to make it easy to create/add new ones - right now they are overly hard coded into the system

[Eric Normandeau]

That you should 'vote' is pretty evident, but I think why you should 'avoid editing' is not so evident. Also, how would you 'encourage discussion'? It's a very good suggestion, although rather vague :)

Answer 5

[aidan-budd]

A summary of answers (so far) i.e. a list of the most useful stuff to do as an editor/moderator, grouped into some loose categories:

Tags:

• Correct the spelling of misspelled tags
• Add additional useful tags
• Remove redundant tags

Markup:

• Fix code markup for legibility
• Correcting broken links i.e. where the formatting of the post means they don't appear properly as links when reading the BioStar web pages

Spam:

• Suspending users who post obvious and blatant spam
• Deleting spams

Improving clarity:

• Edit titles to be as descriptive/informative as possible
  • For Job adverts, include location in the post title
• Reformatting for clarity
• Asking users of poorly-worded questions to improve the question or it will be deleted
• Fixing typos

Organising posts:

• Reclassifying posts if they don't belong to the correct/most appropriate category
• Answering and closing posts if the question is a duplicate

And, finally.... voting (OK, for all members, not just editors..!)

[Eric Normandeau]

I found that in StackExchange sites people usually add content like the one of your 'answer' as an EDIT portion at the bottom of their question. That makes it more likely that someone grazing only the top of a post will see it and can use the information.

If I was you, which I am not, I would probably edit this :)

Answer 6

[Josh Herr]

In addition to others editing advice already posted here, I've been lately trying to do tag-clean up on mis-spelled and redundant tags. Like changing "editting" to "editing"... :).

[aidan-budd]

Ah, my stumbling attempts to write and speak my mother tongue after too long away from home (which is just an excuse to explain a since-able-to-write generally spelling lousiness ;) ) Thanks for catching that, Josh!

[Istvan Albert]

we are going to add a much simpler tags editing from the Tags page as well, editors will be able to remove tags and merge them automatically without having to edit the posts.