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Supervisor Activities
Wondering where to start as a Supervisor? Or maybe you're looking for a new Super Power you haven't tried out yet.
Here is a list of Supervisor activities that sum up what we do on WikiAnswers:
Supervise categories
This is the major responsibility of Supervisors: to watch for spam and vandalism in the category (or categories) we supervise.
Note: Any contributor can edit questions and answers, but only Supers have access to the powerful Revert tool. Only Supers can make changes to other people's posts on Discussion pages. Be careful with these powers. Here are tips on Supervising Discussions.
Supervise all of WikiAnswers
Check out the Recent Site Changes periodically and see what is being asked, answered and edited in real time. It's a form of vandal patrol, and it's great when we can catch a vandal in the act and Block them.
Feature questions
We are the only ones with the ability to feature unanswered questions on the WikiAnswers and Answers.com home pages. We like to find ones that might be interesting and inviting to first-timers. It's a great way to get them hooked.
Besides reviewing new questions, you might want dig through the archive of all unanswered questions. It's especially nice when you can feature timely ones, e.g. related to something in the news, an upcoming holiday, major sports events, etc.
Here is more on Featuring Questions and the complete list of Featured Questions.
Improve popular questions and answers
The questions listed highest in any category are the most popular ones; they are being read by the most people. If you have extra time, this is where a little editing can go a long way.
Split compound questions
The Split in Two function on your left-side menu is powerful. This is useful when you find questions that are actually two questions written as one. This helps each of the questions get answered quicker and clearer.
Watch Merges and Splits
When a visitor asks a question, our system automatically searches for existing questions that might be asking the same thing with different words.
If the visitor selects one of these possible matches, their new question wording becomes an Alternate Wording of the existing question. We see this in history items like "Joe Schmoe asked 'What is the moon?' and said it was the same as 'What is a moon?'".
If another visitor comes along and asks "What is the moon?" they will be redirected to "What is a moon?". If they decide that these are different questions they can split "What is the moon?" into a new, separate question.
This system saves contributors from countless hours of answering duplicate questions and saves Supervisors from having to Merge them manually. It also enables tens of thousands of visitors to get instant answers to their questions. But some visitors don't understand (or care!) what they are doing, so mistakes do happen.
These special Watchlists enable Supervisors to monitor these two unique functions:
Protect and Unprotect questions
Protecting questions is one of our more important Super Powers. We need to do it when vandals or spammers are actively attacking a page. However, once a page has settled down it's a good idea to Unprotect them so that other contributors can make improvements.Watch community pages
Here are special logs for watching Bio Page changes and Message Board posts.
Other ways to contribute
Supervisors are encouraged to read up on Answering Questions and Editing. You can find other tips on advanced answering and editing on the How to Contribute page.
Anything to add to this list? Questions or comments? Email us at WikiAnswers @ Answers.com (remove spaces).
