Allowing superusers to edit content - Good or bad idea?

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.