Many folks have a real problem with the idea of anybody you invite to your Wave being able to edit what you have written.

To address this problem there has been much written about Google Wave Etiquette. However, I think a really important Wave that has been posted is one by Elliot Cable (elliottcable@googlewave.com) titled Moderating Your Wave. Folks that follow the instructions in this Wave simply add the following to their wave:

*This wave is edit-moderated. Please follow these rules (Moderating Your Waves) when contributing.

I post this Wave here because, again, many of you may not have been familiar with this Wave and also many of you that do not have access to Google Wave cannot read this. If you have ideas that you would like to add to the rules then visit the discussion page Wave if you have an account. However, if you don’t have an account but want to add to the discussion then leave a comment below and I will update the discussion page on your behalf.

Here are the rules as written by Elliot Cable:

Currently, there are no ACLs in Google’s Wave server, nor in Google’s web Wave–client. This means that if you give anybody access to your wave, they can do anything they want to it—edit your IB (initial blip), add tags, change the title, even delete messages… and possibly worst of all, invite anybody they want to do all of those things.

Since you can also make a wave ‘public,’ that is, give access to the entirety of the Google Wave preview group, these can become catastrophic problems.

Many standards, or suggestions for standards, are emerging in these first few days and weeks of public access to Google Wave, and here I’d like to propose (possibly temporarily) another such standard… one to mitigate the lack of programmatic ACLs.

This standard is moderation.

A ‘moderated’ wave is a wave that the IBA (initial blip author, or the person who created the wave in the beginning) has declared to be, in some way, restricted. For instance, the IBA could declare their wave to be reply–moderated, meaning they will restrict how and when people are allowed to reply (for instance, instructing people to reply in a separate discussion wave, as the Google Wave Etiquette wave has)… or he could make his wave edit–moderated, meaning perhaps that readers should not edit the IB, or possibly that they shouldn’t edit any blip in the wave without explicit permission.

In general, if some aspect of wave participation (replying, editing, deleting, etc) is declared to be ‘moderated,’ you should not perform that action on that wave, or you will make people (likely the IBA) angry.

Moderation types and tags

The major operations that should be moderated are editing, replying, and deleting. In general, any moderation of these operations applies to the entire wave; though sometimes it could only apply to the initial blip.

When you declare one of your waves to be moderated, you add a tag to your wave, and optionally add a note to your IB, linking to this wave, to explain/remind readers of your chosen form of moderation.

These rules are laid out in RFC 2119 format—that is, “should not” is a strong suggestion that you do not do so, and “must not” indicates somebody will come and eat your face (… not really) if you break it.

tag:moderated

The simplest moderation tag, this form of moderation is intended for serious discussions that are open to the public or many members, but which the IBA still wants to keep clean and purposeful.

General:

you must not edit the title of the wave (the first line of text in the IB) in any way

you must not use any gadget that hasn’t yet been added to the wave

you should not add tags to the wave… instead, you should consider replying with a blip suggesting a good tag for the discussion, that the IBA can then add or approve you to add

you should not delete tags from the wave

you should not add bots, groups, or special participants (such as public@a.gwave.com) to the wave

you may use any gadget previously utilized in the wave… but keep gadgetry to a minimum, and only use it where appropriate. If in doubt… ask!

you may add real people to the wave… but be aware of the etiquette of adding people to waves without asking them privately first

Editing:

you should not edit the wording or style of other peoples’ blips

you should not edit the grammar of other peoples’ blips

you may edit the spelling of other peoples’ blips

you may edit the content of your own blips, after the discussion has moved on… though standard etiquette considerations apply, and you should be careful not to appear to be trying to do something sneaky.

Replying:

you may create inline replies

you may reply to the wave… but you should expect off–topic threads of conversation to be pruned regularly, to keep the wave full of primarily useful/relevant content.

Deleting:

you should not delete other peoples’ blips

you should not delete your own blips… as they may contribute to/be essential to the discussion at hand (though, if you make a stupid mistake, the IBA who is moderating the wave will most likely delete it for you)

tag:edit-moderated

A moderation tag intended for original content published in an IB… no restrictions are placed on replies or deleting of replies, only the IB’s content is moderated.

General:

you should not edit the tags on the wave… the tags on a wave usually correspond to the IB, and thus are considered part of it for the purposes of permissions to change them

you should not delete tags on the wave

you may add participants (real people, bots, groups, and special participants) to the wave… but be aware of the etiquette of adding people to waves without asking them privately first, and never add destructive bots (in general, avoid adding bots unless you know it’s a useful/good idea, especially in these early, unstable days of Wave)

you may use any gadget… but be aware of the etiquette around doing so!

Editing:

you must not edit the IB… if you want to suggest changes to the document contained in the IB, you should do so in a reply.

Replying:

you may create inline-replies to the IB… but only to suggest changes or argue the document, and you can expect the replies to be deleted as soon as they are resolved

tag:reply-moderated

Designed for complex waves, where the IBA intends to create a separate, or possibly multiple separate, discussion waves separate from the primary moderated wave; if you want to comment on or talk about the content of this wave, you should do so in a separate wave (probably the one linked from the IB).

General:

you must not edit the title of the wave (the first line of text in the IB) in any way

you must not use any gadget that hasn’t yet been added to the IB

you should not delete tags from the wave

you should not add participants (real people, bots, groups, and special participants) to the wave

you may use any gadget previously utilized in the IB… but keep gadgetry to a minimum, and only use it where appropriate. If in doubt… ask!

you may add tags to the wave

Editing:

you may edit the IB… unless otherwise stated, of course

Replying:

you must not reply to the wave

you should not create inline–replies to the IB

tag:locked

The most severe form of moderation, this is intended for waves not intended for contribution/editing of any form, such as heavy–dispersal ‘welcome waves,’ informational waves, and so on. If a wave is tagged as locked, you really shouldn’t touch it at all.

General:

you must not add tags to the wave

you must not delete tags from the wave

you must not add participants (real people, bots, groups, and special participants) to the wave

Editing:

you must not edit the IB

Replying:

you must not create inline–replies to the IB

you must not reply to the wave

Closing notes

The overriding intention of this standard (or, rather, proposed standard, I guess) is to help improve the signal–vs.–noise ratio of public waves on Google’s Wave server. Following these rules helps everybody enjoy these public waves more, and in general get more useful information out of them; so please, please respect the wishes of the IBAs who tag their waves with these forms of moderation.

Of course, these are not hard rules, and cannot be enforced beyond the IBA deleting the blips of authors who disobey; and I understand that this standard cannot be enforced. The reasons for laying out the rules anyway are threefold:

Help good–natured editors to realize the intentions of the IBA, without adding a lot of fluff to each and every wave describing said intentions (since they usually fall into one of the above categories)

Warn editors that the IBA can, and will, actively police the content of the wave, deleting blips that he doesn’t think are contributory or relevant

Provide a common notice at the top of many waves that links to these rules, thus allowing uninformed (‘newbie’) editors to educate themselves on the etiquette of editing that wave.

Obviously, anything here can be overridden by the IBA; if you’re writing a wave and want to go into more detail about your wishes regarding contribution/moderation, I very much suggest you add a one–line note at the top of your IB with a link back to this wave (the wave ID is googlewave.com!w+qAbwoITGc, if you’re trying to add a link), and then add an inline blip at the end of that line with more details. That way, once a visitor has read your instructions, they can minimize the inline blip and focus on the content of your IB, and that of the entire wave, instead of this meta–data. (Here’s how I implement this, I don’t think it messes with the signal/noise of the blip too much: http://pic.im/cfO)

Neat note: You can search for partial tags separated by dashes, so tag:moderated will list all moderated waves, whether they’re tagged as tag:reply-moderated or tag:edit-moderated or just tag:moderated!

Also, if you will note at the bottom of the viewport, this wave itself is tagged ‘reply-moderated,’ so feel free to reply(here) and let me know what you think! I’m also interested if any of you think these instructions/rules should be modified

Just to re-iterate if you want to add to the discussion going on with this Wave, leave a comment here. I will add your comment to the discussion and update the comments with any replies you receive in the Wave.

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