Moderator User Guide

This document acts as an instructional guide for ProductWiki moderators to help with their moderating duties. Below is a list of the moderator-only capabilities, and a brief set of instructions on how to use them. Along with each privilege is a corresponding set of policies that are being created as ProductWiki evolves.

Current moderators & admins

• Erik *
• Omar *
• Amanie *
• silence_omo7
• dialupinternetuser
• squalorking
• jan
• tyrion
• charon9
• dakalvia
• asatruer
• yaminb (new!)
• rabidpotatochip (new!)

* indicates an admin with full delete privileges

Table of Contents

1. Promoting Products
2. Competitors / Related Products
3. Pros & Cons
4. Comments
5. Deleting External Links
6. Modifying a Category's Settings

1. Promoting Products

Moderators have to ability to control what product reports appear on the front page of ProductWiki.com. There are two sections: 1) Report of the Day, and 2) New Reports. To access the promoting functionality, click the small "+" link next to the breadcrumb and above the product title on any product report:

A dialog will appear allowing you to access both featuring and pinning functionality:

1.a) Featuring products (New Reports)

The featured reports are the list of chronologically sorted product reports on the ProductWiki home page. Look in the "Promotion Status" section that will tell you if the current product has been featured, when and how many times. To promote (or re-promote) a product report to the home page, simply click the Thumbs-Up image next to Promote it:

Notes:

• product reports should meet a minimum quality threshold before being promoted (ongoing policy)
• the effects will take place immediately
• you can un-promote (or even demote) a product to undo your promotion
• you can re-promote a product to bump it to the top of the list
• products will get pushed to page 2, page3, etc.. as new products get promoted above your own
• these products appear in the ProductWiki RSS feed

1.b) Pinning products (Report of the Day)

Pinning products is similar to featuring a product, except that it will appear in the "Report of the Day" section of the home page. Typically, ProductWiki will only promote one product to this section per day, and the quality restrictions are much greater (requires more contributors, more quality information, should be timely and relevant, etc.).  To determine what should be "pinned" please come by the IRC channel to reach consensus. However, if no products have been pinned in a day, please be bold. Pinning a product is done in a similar fashion:

Notes:

• all the same principles apply to pinning as featuring plus:
• there is a stricter policy for quality standards for reports of the day
• only one product should be pinned per day
• pinned products also appear in the "Best of ProductWiki" section

2. Competitors / Related Products

Anyone can add competitors or related products (and vote in the case of competitors), but only moderators can remove these relations. This should be used to remove irrelevant connections between products, and should be used sparingly as it is permanent.

2.a) Removing Competitors

This functions removes connections between products as competitors, but does not remove the product itself. To remove a competitor, you must scroll down to the competitors section and complete the following 3-stage process (to avoid accidental deletes):

step 1 - click on "Vote"

step 2 - click on the "+" next to the competitor listing you want to remove

step 3 - click on the "delete" link that appears (a red "deleted" will appear notifying that it is complete after clicking)

Notes:

• you are not deleting reports, only the connections between them
• you will also delete any votes associated with the connection
• again, ongoing policies are being developed for this feature
• obviously irrelevant and spammy relations can be removed without worry (especially without any votes)

2.b) Removing Related products

The same principles apply to related, but it is done in 2 steps instead of 3. Also, voting is a non-factor in this case (since related products do not have votes associated with them).

step 1 - click the "+" below the related product you want to remove

step 2 - click the "delete" link that appears (again it will change to red after clicked)

Notes:

• same principles apply as competitors
• ProductWiki's policies are more relaxed with related products than competitors

3. Pros & Cons

Moderators have the ability to: 1) delete, 2) modify, and 3) convert to comments pros and cons submitted to the collaborative review. These modification are typically done soon after a new point is added to the review, and very rarely done after others have voted on the point.

3.a) Deleting Pros & Cons

If a completely useless pro or con (as determined by policy) is added to a review, you may want to delete that point. It is a 3-step process to remove a point (and it's associated votes):

step 1 - click on the "see how they voted" link at the bottom of the Pros & Cons section

step 2 - click the "+" next to the point you want to remove

step 3 - click the "delete" link that appears (it will turn red after clicked)

3.b) Modifiying Pros & Cons

Instead of deleting a Pro/Con you may want to make a minor correction such as a spelling mistake. Follow this 3-step process:

step 1 - click on the "see how they voted" link at the bottom of the Pros & Cons section

step 2 - click the "modify" link next to the point you want to modify

step 3 - modify the statment and click "save"

3.c) Converting Pros & Cons into Comments

Sometimes contributors will accidentally post a comment to the collaborative review instead of to the comments sections. Please use this procedure to convert the pro/con statement into a user comment:

step 1 - click on the "see how they voted" link at the bottom of the Pros & Cons section

step 2 - click the "+" next to the point you want to convert

step 3 - click the "convert to comment" link that appears (the point will disappear from the section)

4. Comments

To modify comments to prevent spam, profanity, and other abuses, moderators have to ability to either delete or modify comments of other users who are not moderators (or admins).

4.a) Deleting Comments

Click the "delete" link next to any comment. The effects are immediate.

4.b) Modifying Comments

Click the "edit" link next to any comment. An edit window will appear, where you can make any necessary changes.

5. Deleting External Links

Often, ProductWiki will get irrelevant and spammy links submitted to product reports. To delete a link, follow these three steps:

step 1 - click the "more" link next to the link

step 2 - click the edit tab as you normally would to edit a link

step 3 - click the red "delete" button

6. Modifying a Category's Settings

An advanced feature for modifying ProductWiki's taxonomy (categories, facets) is now accessible to moderators from the category page. You can use this to add new categories or features of a product category. Click the "+" link then to the "product list" on any category page.

  7. Featuring Users To The Home Page