Welcome and introduction

"Welcome!" to all visitors and members who have interest in the work of providing advice, administration, moderation, and other kinds of support for the management and development of our network.

Currently, the de facto administrator and moderator for almost all groups is the network creator (Peter Matthews). This has happened because I have added many groups as part of an overall structure and direction for our network. The forums and groups are all designed to maximise opportunities for members to meet each other in useful ways.

However, it is impossible for me to give adequate attention to all areas of our network, on a regular basis. Our network continues to expand, so I should start seeking volunteer advisors, administrators and moderators to support management and development of our network, and interactions with our members.

The roles of advisors, administrators and moderators can be described in broad terms as follows.

Advisors - give advice to (a) the chief administrator (currently the network creator) whenever they have ideas about something, and (b) any other member of the network, when there is occasion to give advice.

Administrators - help with (a) overall management of the network, and (b) technical management of particular forums or groups. They are not expected to interact socially with members of a group (the role of moderators), but can do so if they wish. The creator of any new group is automatically the first administrator, but can give this role to another person at any time, if another person can be found for the role.

Moderators - help (a) engage the interest of members of Research Cooperative in our forums and group pages, by making greetings, initiating discussions, responding to questions, and so on, and (b) warn or suspend group members who publish inappropriate, obviously irrelevant, or offensive messages, comments, and content.

Visitors to this page and members of this group are welcome to ask me about these roles, and the volunteer help that we need.

In my next message, I will start preparing a list of all groups that need the help of one or more moderators (our aim is to have 1-3 moderators for each group, depending on the size of the group).