Greeter

I have asked @Yvonne Smith to help us out here as we are growing a little larger, and she has kindly accepted. She will be serving as what we will be calling a Greeter, which is a form of moderator, but more like a concierge or welcome wagon than a hall monitor or traffic cop. We're still deciding exactly what that will mean.

 

I am looking forward to helping out with the forum.
I know that Ken can’t be there all of the time, and I should be able to take care of some of the little things that need to be done.
He is going to let me know once he gets everything set up, so that I will be able to see when someone is asking for help with something, like deleting a duplicate post, or fixing a typing mistake.
I will be more like a facilitator , that helps when someone needs help with some forum issue. I enjoy helping out; so I think this will be something that I can do to help the forum.

 

Just so you know, this doesn't mean I'm leaving. I'll be here about as often as I have always been.

 

Yvonne is taking a break from the forum. She has been a valuable member of the forum since its beginning, so she is sorely missed, and would certainly be welcomed back, as would Bobby and, for that matter, pretty much anyone else who has been away from the forum for any period of time.

That's not the point here, except that her absence opens up a slot for a greeter, perhaps two. There is no urgent need because I'm here pretty much every day, but I think it helps to have another person involved, so long as we're not stepping on one another's toes. This time around, I would set up a private area of the forum where we could coordinate things a little better, and perhaps conduct some training. Yvonne didn't need that.

You might think of a greeter as similar to what a moderator might be in another forum but I would hope that the difference would be more than another name. On so many forums, a moderator serves as a sort of a forum cop, looking for violations of the rules, letting people know what they can or can't say, and that sort of thing. Of course, there are some things that we would hope that people did not say here, so there might be a little of that, but my intention is not for a greeter to be a moderator.

In my first post, I said that I viewed a greeter as being more of a welcome wagon. A greeter should try to make everyone feel comfortable participating in forum discussions, welcoming new members and encouraging them to become active participants. With the ability to edit posts, a greeter might respond to requests from members who might have noticed a typo in one of their posts after the edit time has gone by, or perhaps some other changes that might want to make, subject to our policies, of course, given that a lot of retroactive editing is generally not a good idea.

There's no pay involved, but neither are any regular hours required. Greeters should be able to enjoy what they're doing too, and no one would be expected to put in more time than they are comfortable with. But neither is it a do-nothing position. Yvonne did an excellent job.

Generally speaking, some of the things that a greeter might do may include...

• Welcome new members to the forum. I send a canned message to everyone whose membership I approve, but a more personal greeting might encourage them to become active in the forum.
• Become familiar with how to do things in the forum, so that questions can be answered accurately.
• Respond to requests from members who might want to make edits to one of their own forum posts after the self-edit time has expired, as permitted by policy.
• Help to moderate disputes, but in accordance with our policies of first letting members try to work things out for themselves.
• Let me know about things that may need further attention.
• As time permits, go through the "Not Sure Where it Goes" subforum, and move threads to appropriate subforums.
• When it becomes obvious that a thread is misplaced, move it to the appropriate place.
• When necessary, split or merge threads, according to policies that can be discussed in the private area, but I don't want to be heavy-handed about this.
• When necessary, change confusing or misleading thread titles to something that is more explanatory.
• Correct misspellings or typos in thread-titles because thread titles are important, although we don't police misspellings or typos in posts.
• Maybe some other things that may be discussed in the private area.

For the most part, we leave whatever forum members have to say alone. They are your words, and I'd rather leave them alone. If I come across it and have time, I might correct an obvious typo but we're not the grammar police. When the mood strikes me, I might make fun of your grammar, but I'm not going to correct it unless you ask me to. Before I would move a thread, split a thread, or merge a thread, I would question whether it really needs to be done. However, for the sake of comprehension and search engine considerations, sometimes it does, such as when a forum thread goes off-topic. Sometimes the off-topic discussion suggests a new topic that should have a thread of its own so that the search engines aren't confused, and so other forum members can read a title and an opening post and have a good idea as to what the subsequent discussion is about.

So yeah, there's some of that but that should be only a minor part of the role of a greeter. Mostly a greeter might be expected to be welcoming to new members, willing to answer questions and to help other members out however they can. Greeters won't be expected to catch everything that could go wrong in the forum any more than I expect myself to do so, and I don't. Mostly, I would want a greeter to be someone who enjoys the forum, agrees with the basic principles that have governed the forum over the past years, to suggest helpful changes, and be willing to help out in whatever amount of time they are willing to spare.

In return, they will be given a few extra powers here, such as the ability to edit posts and threads, with clear expectations that these would not be abused, and they might learn some things about the inner workings of the forum.

Unlike the case with moderators in some other forums, greeters will not have access to the back-end of the forum. They will not be able to view private information about any other forum members, and they won't be able to access your private conversations unless they are invited to the conversation. I can't do that myself.

In deciding on a greeter, my greatest fear would be hurting someone's feelings who might not be chosen. I know you only by what you have said or done here, and I would want to be wholly comfortable with anyone assigned to be a greeter, and I don't necessarily have a lot to go by. There is no great urgency to appoint a new greeter, and there might be a place for more than one, but I'd like to have an ongoing discussion with anyone who might be interested before making a choice.

Let me know by private Conversation if you're interested.