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New site setup process?
I proposed the new site Electrical Engineering, and I see that the basic framework has been created. Thanks.
However, there is a difference between the basic mechanics of a site, and a fully up-and-running site. Now that the dev team has worked behind the scenes to create the site, how can we now take it the rest of the way, preferably without having to involve them? Some specific issues:
1 - I want to put up a single page explaining more about the site, what is on topic, what is expected of questions, etc. Basically, I want a "Site Introduction" page I can fill in.
2 - Most, if not all, of the original core group should be moderators. How does that happen?
3 - What are the moderation tools? We'll need to delete bad/spam questions, delete comments, handle flags, etc.
I'd really like to take it from here with as little involvement of the dev team as possible. I expect they'd like the same thing.
2 answers
I'm not fully familiar with everything that's possible and not with the current software, but I'm a moderator on two Codidact sites (Writing and Scientific Speculation), so hopefully I can provide some useful insights.
1 - I want to put up a single page explaining more about the site, what is on topic, what is expected of questions, etc. Basically, I want a "Site Introduction" page I can fill in.
Moderators can add help pages to individual sites, which are linked from /help on the respective site (which is "Help" in the top bar), through "Create a help center page" under "Moderator tools" in the side bar. We might want to have some discussion about what pages should be common across all sites (and just filled in with content for each respective site) to make them easy to find. For example, I found the fact that the site scope page on SE was always at /help/on-topic useful. The usefulness of its content varied, especially on beta sites, but what was there was always there and not somewhere else so once I learned that pattern there was no need to go looking for that content.
2 - Most, if not all, of the original core group should be moderators. How does that happen?
Each such person should create a Codidact account (to the extent that this hasn't already been done). Once that has been done, an administrator can set that user as a moderator. Each such user will, of course, need to somehow show that they should have moderator powers.
3 - What are the moderation tools? We'll need to delete bad/spam questions, delete comments, handle flags, etc.
Everything you mention is available, as well as some other things. What's available is linked from "Moderator tools" which becomes available once you're logged in as a user with moderator privileges on the site in question. If there's something in particular that you (broad "you") feel is needed, but which isn't available, certainly go ahead and suggest it as a feature-request here on Codidact Meta.
We need to create some better "new community" documentation, but moderators will be able to do most of what you need, so first we have to identify the initial moderators. (Eventually each community will choose its own, but to get started we'll need to appoint two or three pro-tem moderators.) The dev team doesn't want to be a blocker on site progress; that doesn't scale.
The following tools and customizations are available now:
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Creating help topics. A starter set of help topics for all sites (for the stuff that's common or commonly-needed) is on the development to-do list but isn't there yet. Y'all should definitely create a help topic about scope; if there are any points you haven't worked out yet, you can use your meta to reach consensus.
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Close reasons: there's a default set of reasons for closing questions. If there are site-specific considerations you can add to or edit these reasons.
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Flags: moderators are notified of flags globally and also in-situ if they happen to visit a page with pending flags. Mods can mark flags as helpful or decline them. And, of course, mods can delete posts and comments, with or without them having been flagged.
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Category definitions: you can add categories, change the text descriptions of them (markdown is permitted), change the default license, and define sets of special tags that are styled differently (like "proposal" and "idea" on the Site Proposals category on Meta). I believe only Codidact admins can make these changes, but if moderators request them we'll make them for you.
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Unilateral close, reopen, delete, and undelete.
Meanwhile, one thing founding members can do right now is to start creating good questions and answers. A site introduction is important too, but the first thing visitors will look at is the list of existing questions, and that doesn't take any special privileges to start building.
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