Handling enthusiasm without experience
June 11, 2009 - 7:12pm
June 11, 2009 - 8:44pm
Ditto
I just gotta chime in and say that I agree with Ed...excellent question and a great possibility for a future episode. Oh, and I don't have an answer either. The only thing that comes to mind as a Christian is "Love first...everything else second". Beyond that, it's tough and I pray you find some answers and direction in that. (if so, share them!)
June 17, 2009 - 8:40am
The other thing I have
The other thing I have noticed is the same people I am having trouble with on the other board are spamming the forums with I don't want to say useless posts but small one sentence posts that are more of a comment then actually helping to solve the problem or answer the question that started the post. So as the moderator of a site is it your job to notice problems like that and send them a pm politely asking them to be a better community contributor or just let the spammish (that should be a word) messages go because they don't do much harm besides filling threads faster. I have seen one guy post every other message on some threads and it gets a little much.
To bring it full circle is a moderator of a site suppose to be a baby sitter for the site or just make sure no spam gets in and for a Christian site to keep the profanity and other bad topics contained? I guess I would say if I wanted this to be a G&G episode I would want it to be How to be a Christian website moderator. Also included in that would maybe be some tips as how to pick good moderators as an admin.
I am working on a project with a hobby robotics group I am a part of. These are non Christians but I am sorta using this as a learning experience in how to coordinate people through the internet and cooperatively work on projects together. We are designing a robotics standard to be used by hobbyists.
Anyway. With Lost ministries I want to do more of this as my community grows and have run into a problem on the other project that would be very tricky in a Christian environment. So I thought I would ask here and see if anyone had a good idea for the best way to handle it.
In the robotics group we have some teenagers that are excited and want to help but lack the technical experience to even really grasp the finer points of the standard we are developing. I am leader in the project and am building the infrastructure. Well these teenagers are causing a problem because they keep contributing to the project by building websites or modules for the standard that need to be designed by professionals and they are hacking them together. Well no one wants to tell them no you can't make this because your not experienced enough. What is the best way to minimize the impact from their inexperience but maximize the used of their enthusiasm without holding their hand through the process?
For example if I was to start a project with my ministry to design a system to easily transport water without power. I want to use everyone that is willing to help but I also don't need people who are not necessarily trained in the right areas trying to contribute. Now their opinions and ideas are welcome but how do you tell someone nicely that they are not on the right track? I guess the problem is how do you direct a collection of people that are all volunteers trying to do the right thing but keep the focus on where it is needed?
Do you just politely tell them they are wrong and shouldn't be helping with a project they don't understand or do you listen politely and then through moderator controls limit the impact their suggestions/work has on the project? I hope I'm clear enough on my ideas but I guess the main point is how do you organize a large community like an open source hardware community that is all working to a common goal without offending some people? Or is that impossible because we are all human beings?
Jonathan Bowen
jbowen@lostministries.org
www.lostministries.org