MemberRole

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I'm unhappy about this refactoring, because a CommunityMember and the MemberRole are quite different terms. For example a person can become a CommunityMember by some formal step, but the MemberRole may be undefined in the community. Or it is defined and the CommunityMember acts against the MemberRole. It would also be nice to keep the VisitorRole, GuestRole, MemberRole symmetry. That's something I just started to work out, and even before a discussion about roles and role transitions has happened, the page is refactored away. Is this a result of a redundancy allergy? Or the result of a hidden political bias working against a role model of online communities? -- HelmutLeitner

Well, don't get cynical. I don't see the difference between MemberRole and CommunityMember either. What is a CommunityMember but not a role? The concept of "CommunityMember" is very wide, so teasing out the differences requires less subtle names. I'm not so sure VisitorRole or GuestRole are well named as a visitor and a guest are roles according to our nomenclature of characters and roles (CategoryRole), so it's a bit redundant. I guess a better question "visitor to what?" and "guest to what?" and then if you can answer that, a name appears, like maybe CommunityVisitor? and CommunityGuest?. I might posit both visitor and guest are too subtly differentiated anyway. NewComer may be a term to maybe capture both, even if the text remains separated in different sub-sections. It also works well with the OutcastNewcomer page. Maybe a reorganization will help clarify the thought by providing a new perspective. Anyway, just a suggestion. -- SunirShah

Looking at what was written - it seemed to be the same questions and themes on both pages: what is a member, how does one become a member, what does it mean to be a MeatballMember, what are the rights and responsibilities? Intuitively the two pages just seemed to be the same concept.

Do you wish to draw a distinction between formal membership (as of a company, for example), and the more informal membership often seen in online communities? I can see that this might be an important distinction to draw - there are things that can be done with the one that can't be done with the other. --MartinHarper

CategoryRole?

MemberRole

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