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Mists of Pandaria

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With the release of Mists of Pandaria we’re hard at work updating pages and adding new content. For a while we’ve been happily adding new patrollers here and there to police against vandalism. Now and then we see a user who seems particularly knowledgeable about a specific subject, be it information on the game or site mark-up/coding.

To that end we’re announcing a few things:

Experts

The first is the official launch of the Experts awards. Many of you have probably noticed a badge displayed for reaching a certain edit count; this would add a badge to a user’s page identifying them as an Expert in a given area. This is awarded by admins to those users who have shown a solid editing history in a given subject. Note: There aren’t any expectations placed on those deemed experts – they can answer questions as they like if someone asks, but this is just a badge to recognize contributions.

Users can belong to more than one category; likewise, more than one person can be recognized as an expert in a category.

Moderators

Another thing we’ve noticed is that there is a large jump between patroller status and admin. There are quite a few users who have demonstrated a good contribution history but aren’t quite ready to take that step into full adminship. To that end we’ve created a rank right below admin, the Moderator. This position has expanded abilities that sets it across from patroller:

• Moving and renaming articles (including
• Protecting pages (lock them from editing or moving)
• Deleting pages and images (remove them from the public database)
• Editing semi-protected and restricted pages
• Quickly rollback the edits of the last user who edited a particular page (rollback)
• Have one's own edits automatically marked as patrolled (autopatrol)
• Mark others' edits as patrolled (patrol)
• Deleting and editing comments (but they should always note if they do)

Potential moderators, just like patrollers, are invited to the position by current admins. Alternatively, if a person feels they are a good candidate, they can also request the position, subject to review. Number of high quality edits is a determining factor, but the ability to take direction when needed and remain level-headed is also very important. Once a person has been a moderator for a period of time they can then apply to become an administrator – and that is given based on user votes.

Just like the Patroller status, both Expert badges and Moderator invitations can be turned down for any reason by the user.