Notice

This page show a previous version of the article

Corpus Maintainers

What can corpus maintainers do?

Corpus maintainers can:

link/unlink sentences (same as advanced contributors)
tag sentences (same as advanced contributors)
edit any sentence (not just their own)
delete any tags (not just the ones they have added)
delete sentences

This status is given to advanced contributors who are willing to help with maintenance tasks on the corpus. The responsibilities of a corpus maintainer are:

to delete sentences that are added by mistake
to delete sentences that are added as spam
to delete sentences that cannot be in the corpus due to copyright issues
to correct incorrect sentences of inactive users
to delete tags that are not relevant (or not anymore)
generally speaking, to take care of the quality of the corpus

Procedure to become a corpus maintainer

If you want to become a corpus maintainer

Step 1. Contact an admin to inform them of your wish to become one. In your message, please explain why you have decided to apply to become a corpus maintainer. In general only one admin (most likely the one you've contacted) will evaluate your application, but there can be more admins involved if needed.

Step 2. Admins will have their own opinion on whether or not to grant you the status of corpus maintainer, but the opinion of the rest of the community matters. So once the admins have made sure your application is a serious application, they will announce it on the Wall and ask for opinions. By default, the announcement will state that these opinions should be sent only by private message to the admin who posted the announcement. Any reply stating an opinion about you as a candidate will be deleted. You can however indicate in your application that you are okay with people replying publicly to the announcement. In which case the announcement will state that contributors can give their opinions either publicly or by private message.

Step 3. You will be informed by private message of the decision. If the decision was positive, there will also be announcement on the Wall to inform the rest of the community that you are now a corpus maintainer. If the decision is negative, there will be no public announcement, but you will be given the reasons why the decision was negative in the private message.

If you want someone to become a corpus maintainer

Step 1. Talk to them to make sure they want to, and encourage them to apply. We will NOT grant the status of corpus maintainer to someone who doesn't want to.

Step 2. You should as well contact an admin and indicate who you think should become a corpus maintainer. This way admins will know that there is a demand for a specific contributor to become a corpus maintainer, and if they do apply, their application will more likely be accepted.

Current admins

[!] Contact alexmarcelo in priority. He is the main admin in charge of requests to grant advanced contributor status.

Conditions to become a corpus maintainer

Becoming a corpus maintainer mostly depends on how much we need a corpus maintainer for a certain language. It's not about how many sentences someone has added or translated, it's not about how much someone is appreciated by the community, it's about what's needed to improve the quality of the corpus.

The number of contributions and the social behavior of a person will necessarily affect the decision, because of what it means to be a corpus maintainer. It's a higher status, and therefore you would expect higher standards from corpus maintainers.

Well, yes and no.

We wouldn't feel very comfortable granting the role of corpus maintainer to someone who only added/translated 5 sentences, nor would we feel comfortable granting the role to someone who shows or has shown poor behavior, and in general we will not grant the role for such contributors.

But it's not a limitation. If someone has shown that they actively monitor the corpus, let's say by posting comments on others' sentences to report mistakes, spam or copyright issues, then we wouldn't have a problem granting them the role of corpus maintainer, if doing so will greatly improve the corpus, even if the decision is controversial.

Such cases should be exceptional, but it can happen. And if it should happen, we trust the community to be open-minded enough to understand why we took such a decision and bear with us.