Help:Champion role

Wiki – A Web site developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content.

PetroWiki – A web site developed and moderated collaboratively by SPE members, to facilitate knowledge that supports the community of the upstream oil and gas industry.

Page Champion/Moderator –An advocate, protector, guardian, arbitrator, and/or a mediator.

Overview

Wikipedia allows the entire world to contribute content and relies on that large audience to identify and change incorrect information that is added. The fact that this doesn't always happen promptly underlies Wikipedia’s reputation as a source that can’t always be trusted. SPE has a much smaller base of potential authors/consumers and believes that the consequences of having incorrect information available through PetroWiki are too great to rely on “crowdsourcing” to catch errors. Even Wikipedia has people dedicated to identifying things that are clearly biased, need supporting references, or are a source of an ongoing dispute. SPE believes that we need to go a step further and have a couple of people look at content before it is fully incorporated into the wiki.

Page Champion Role for PetroWiki

SPE has added the important role of page champion to PetroWiki. Our best analog for the page champion role is what happens during the peer review process for our journals. However, the nature of what is being moderated in the wiki is shorter and less text heavy than a technical paper. Many changes may entail only a few added paragraphs, or the addition of links to other materials of interest. It is not our intent that all knowledge has to be in the wiki – if it exists somewhere else and we can link to it, that’s great. Approximately three page champions will be assigned to each content page in the wiki and be associated with a number of pages of related content.

How the Moderation Process Works

Email notification

Page champions are sent a *daily email notifying them of any pending moderation tasks. *Daily only if an edit occurs.

Task list

When an authorized user makes edits to a page, all of the assigned page champions for that specific page will have the pending edit within their “Moderation Task” page. The page champion will see a listing of only the pending edits he/she has been assigned. When the page champion clicks on the pending edit link, he/she will be directed to the edited section of the page. After the page champion has reviewed the changes he/she can then accept, reject, or make modifications to the edited content.

Rejected edits

If the edit is rejected, the page champion will provide a short statement to indicate why the edit was rejected. The rejecting page champion’s name is not revealed to the individual that made the edit. PetroWiki administrators will handle all feedback to authors of rejected content.

Approval of two

Acceptance by two page champions is required for content to be considered “approved” and publicly available. Once the second page champion accepts the change, the task will be removed from the task list of any additional page champions. If one of the page champions personally edits the content (unless the page champion is only correcting typos, etc.), those changes must be reviewed by one other page champion before they are approved.

Collaboration between page champions

If a page champion would like to collaborate on editing a contribution with the other page champions of that page, they can access the discussion function in the wiki to have a private discussion among themselves about whether an edit is correct or how to reword something. Pending discussions show up on the moderation task page as well.

Time commitment

The more successful the PetroWiki is, the more edits are likely to be made, therefore the greater the time commitment by champions. Typically, around 1% of wiki users are frequent contributors, 9% are occasional contributors, and the remaining 90% of users are likely only to read the content in the Petrowiki. SPE anticipates that there may be a higher level of activity within the 6-8 weeks after the PetroWiki is fully launched in September. After that, the level of activity is likely to taper off at a low level. SPE anticipates champions will spend less than one hour per week moderating the PetroWiki. SPE will monitor the levels of activity carefully, and if the time required for champions becomes burdensome, more champions will be added and the number of pages per champion reduced. Feedback from the champions will be key to this assessment.

Important considerations

Within our industry, there are issues about which there are two or more technically sound, but divergent, points of view. To the extent that both are recognized as technically sound, SPE wants to represent both within PetroWiki. While a dispute resolution process will exist, it is better to avoid such disputes by presenting valid alternatives where they exist. This may not always be easy for a champion who comes from one of the schools of thought, but especially with members of the general public able to view content, there is value in showing that there may be more than one approach to doing something.

Many contributors are likely to label things as a “best practice” or “recommended practice.” Because these terms mean different things to different groups, SPE believes it is important to avoid these terms wherever possible. In the case of an API RP document, clearly the term recommended practice is appropriate and has the necessary context. It will be challenging in some cases to word content so that it is clear we are describing a practice that is typically used or has proven appropriate for certain situations. SPE staff are willing to help with wordsmithing when needed. But it will be important to remember that the term “best practice” can have far reaching implications and is best avoided whenever possible.