FamilySearch Wiki:Moderator Responsibilities

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As a Research Wiki Moderator, you are responsible to:

• Build Community - Help build an active, vibrant community of contributors in a locality or topic.
• Recognize Contributions - Introduce yourself 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 contributors are in an editing dispute by supporting the Dispute Resolution guidelines.
  

As a new moderator, you will:

1. Watch the pages in the locality to be aware of the work being done on them. This will: 1. Help you know when others are contributing to these pages, and 2. Give you information you need to reach out to contributors. You'll watch at least:
   • The main locality page (e.g. the Missouri page)
   • Sub-locality pages (e.g. the counties in Missouri)
   • The locality topic pages (e.g. Missouri Bible Records, etc.)
2. Learn about the following, so that you know what to do or where to refer people when they have questions:
   • How to use Talk/Discussion pages to communicate with other contributors
   • How to use the Wiki Forums
   • How to find help information in the wiki
   • Wiki Guidelines and Policies, "How the wiki works"
   • The Manual of Style
     
   • The dispute resolution process
3. Populate the "Help Wanted" page for your locality
   • Add Stubs, Beginner projects, and Wanted links to the page for volunteers to work on
   • Update the links as the pages are completed
   • Work with the volunteers so that they know the criteria being used for the locality
   • See Help wanted on the Ohio pages  for an example.

The Dispute Resolution Guidelines are outlined on the FamilySearch Wiki:Dispute resolution page and the links from that page.

Ongoing, you will:

Stay updated by doing the following:

• Watch important Wiki pages:

• Guiding Principles 
• Policies
• The Manual of Style
• Moderators
• Moderator Responsibilities (this page)
• Other pages you feel are important.
• The Help Wanted page for your locality
   

Best Practices

Build Community

• Share best practices with others as they contribute.
• Recruit those who you know have good knowledge about the area

• Adoption of pages by organizations is a great recruiting tool
• Social media is also a great way to spread the word
• Starting a WikiProject can help you recruit those who need a specific focus to know how to help

Recognize contributions

• Know how to contact other users through their user discussion pages and the E-mail this user feature.
• Visit the User Contributions page of contributors to see what they have been working on to know what to recognize.

Help Resolve Problems

• Be familiar with the Guiding Principles and Policies of the Wiki.
• Be familiar with the content in the subject area you moderate.
• Be familiar with how to contact administrators when needed.
   

Notes

• There can be a single moderator for a topic/location, or a team of moderators that work together.
  
• These responsibilities can take anywhere from a few hours here and there to as much time as the moderator will allow.