Should we rename group admins?
Robert Guthrie
Public
Seen by 81
I'm soo tired of seeing the term admin around loomio.
It's used in 2 ways: managing the loomio system (accepting new group requests etc), as well as having special privileges in groups.
So I want to suggest we use another term for the latter purpose of facilitating discussions and managing groups - Keeping admin for the system sense.
I see most other communities use the term Mod, short for moderator. So I will suggest we use that. I would like to suggest the term facilitator too..
ANYTHING but admin. please. Your thoughts?
Alanna Irving Fri 26 Apr 2013 1:22AM
@yagoabati you really believe that most popular = best? Think about how that works in the real world. I have a feeling you have many experiences where the popular opinion really isn't the best one. By forcing people to wrestle with the options, not just having a poll, as you can see people's thinking evolves. See what happened to Rob's opinion? That's the beauty of Loomio.
Personally I prefer "facilitator" for the group admin role, and admin for the Loomio admin role.
Richard D. Bartlett Fri 26 Apr 2013 2:16AM
I think currently our Group Admins are doing mostly administration and a little bit of facilitation. They are the only users that can perform administrative functions, so it makes sense to identify them on that basis.
I don't feel good about calling them Facilitators or Moderators, because anyone in the group can facilitate or moderate.
We want to encourage facilitation to be as widely distributed as possible, so I think it could be quite problematic to label a couple of people Facilitator, because the inference is that the rest of us are Not Facilitators.
Potentially in the future we will want to identify a Facilitator for particular discussions, but I don't think it is a role that needs to be named yet.
@robertguthrie if we called the Super Admins 'mechanics' or 'gorillas' or 'execs' or anything, and left Group Admins as they are, would that feel better?
Robert Guthrie Fri 26 Apr 2013 3:28AM
Yep. System admins.
iacocoba Fri 26 Apr 2013 10:05AM
@alannakrause i didn't mean I believe that. I think the most popular=best when you have a significant sample of people. This sample of people have to be informed and connected with reality. If you create a Loomio group you have to add people in order to make everything work in this direction.
iacocoba Fri 26 Apr 2013 10:16AM
@richarddbartlett This is the ideal situation. @alannakrause Obviously you will never have this ideal situation. In this case i wondering if is better to have a liquid feedback so people who are more informed and better prepared could have a delegation over them so they have extra votes.
Danyl Strype Mon 29 Apr 2013 12:24PM
I think @robertguthrie has raised a good point around the confusion created for the Loomio team. Important to remember though that only the term for Group Admin is a user-facing term. It should be a term that has the same meaning in Loomio as it would in a face-to-face meeting. I agree with @richarddbartlett that the actual mechanics of the role is more administrator than moderator or facilitator. Perhaps "engineer" could replace admin for Super Admins (this phrase makes me cringe too ;)
Poll Created Wed 15 May 2013 12:11AM
Rename group admin to "Group Coordinator" Closed Sat 18 May 2013 12:16AM
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Agree | 94.7% | 18 |
|
| Abstain | 5.3% | 1 |
|
|
| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 882 |
|
19 of 901 people have participated (2%)
Richard D. Bartlett
Wed 15 May 2013 12:13AM
Admin, facilitator, moderator... all these words have connotations that don't quite fit the role. Talking about a 'coordinator' feels more neutral and accurate to me.
Joshua Vial
Wed 15 May 2013 12:19AM
I prefer coordinator personally
Megan Salole
Wed 15 May 2013 12:34AM
Love it.
Robert Guthrie
Wed 15 May 2013 12:59AM
No really happy about a 2 word label - but the meaning is captured well. I wonder if we're worrying too much about the meaning when we just want a simple term people already understand. The double use of admin is not user visible so not a big prob
Alanna Irving
Wed 15 May 2013 4:05AM
I prefer simply "coordinator"
Matthew Bartlett
Wed 15 May 2013 4:26AM
coordinator
Benjamin Knight
Wed 15 May 2013 5:03AM
'coordinator' is great!
Alanna Irving
Wed 15 May 2013 5:09AM
I prefer simply "coordinator"
Chloe Waretini (Loomio Helper)
Wed 15 May 2013 8:12AM
Yay for coordinator :-)
Matthew Bartlett
Wed 15 May 2013 8:34AM
coordinator
vivien maidaborn
Thu 16 May 2013 6:12AM
yeah, just coordinator is great
Ivo Gruner
Fri 17 May 2013 8:42AM
for it just makes so much sense :)
Robert Guthrie Wed 15 May 2013 1:05AM
Maybe we should do a UX test on this. Something like "Here is a screenshot from loomio - from looking at this, which users would you contact if you wanted to suggest someone to invite, or required someone to remove a comment from a discussion" and look a the results using admin vs coordinator
Or we do what we want.. and teach the users our style/system rather than trying to meeting their expectations all the time :)
Matthew Bartlett Wed 15 May 2013 1:23AM
@robertguthrie What about 'coordinator' by itself?
vivien maidaborn Wed 15 May 2013 3:22AM
Yeah I like coordinator by itself, can we make that change in the proposal @richarddbartlett ?
Richard D. Bartlett Wed 15 May 2013 5:03AM
Oh yeah that's what I meant. Rather than starting a new proposal, treat it as if it just says "coordinator". If that pleases you please click green!
@alannakrause @matthewbartlett @vivienmaidabornloo
Richard D. Bartlett Wed 15 May 2013 5:44AM
See how it looks in context:
Robert Guthrie · Fri 26 Apr 2013 12:53AM
Today, I'm pretty happy with the user facing term Admin. Why was my opinion so different yesterday?