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Hi Guys 

We are wondering if it would make sense to grant our superusers the ability to edit content in our community as a special privilege to encourage activity and to feel special. But also the ability to moderate, when moderators are not online. 

What are the thoughts about this and does any other communities have experience about this? Pros and cons? :relaxed:

Thanks for a great community here! 

Have a great day. 
Kasper 
 

When you “appoint” super users, you’re doing it because they’re not only very active and constructive on your community, but also trustworthy. So giving them the permission to edit other users’ content is - in my opinion - not only an incentive and a reward, but also a show of trust.

The most important things are:

  • having a clear moderation concept
  • onboarding and oversight of their activities in the control panel

Moderation concept: You need to give them clear instructions as to what content they are allowed to edit or moderate (e.g. remove personal information) and how the edits need to be performed (e.g. adding an edit message to show who edited what, when, why).

It is very important to give them clear boundaries regarding removing content because it can’t easily be restored once it is gone. So when in doubt, I’d always recommend to not let them do it on their own but use the report function in order to alert a moderator.

Control Panel: Also, as far as I know, super users can only edit other users’ content if they have access to the control panel. And that’s a whole new system they need to be familiar with because moderating a topic in the control panel is very powerful, needs a good introduction, needs support, needs oversight.

In general, enabling the super users to help editing can be of great help regarding work load, building trust and cooperation, but it is also something that needs to be managed and monitored very closely on a daily basis.

Hi @bjoern_schulze 

Thank you for your good reply here! :relaxed:

After reading your reply and learning some more about this, we’ve decided to skip this idea. Instead we will go another route to acknowledge our best users. 

Have a great day! 

We’ve given our most knowledgeable members the superuser role - allowing them to mark responses as best answer. I don’t think I’d give them the ability to change other member content though. That’s not exactly a fun role, you know? Plus you’d never want to put them in a place where they have to explain why they removed something to another member.

If you want their help identifying inappropriate stuff, I’d ask them to flag things. 

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