Forum Roles

VIF Forum members can have different roles depending on the tasks a member has to carry out. This document describes the roles and tasks of VIF Forum members.

Super user: The super user (SU) is the person administrating the application's technical aspects.
The super user installs and sets up the forum application, configures the database connection, the mail host and other aspects of the application (see configuration). In addition, the super user creates the first entries in the member table for the forum administration and assignes the administration role to these members (see adding members).
The super user has the right to manage permissions and, thus, is able to edit the settings of permissions the different roles have.
Forum administration: The duty of the forum administration is to set up discussion groups and to assign forum members as discussion group administration (see managing discussion groups). To set up a discussion group, the forum administration has to provide a unique group name and a meaningful description of the discussion theme. Moreover, the forum administration has to enable reviewing of contributions (by setting the number of reviewers to 1), to set the privacy state of the discussion group, the groups visibility to the unauthenticated public as well as the minimal number of participants the group must have before the discussion becomes operational.
Finally, the forum administration can create new member entries and assign the forum administration role to these members (see adding members).
Discussion group administration: The task of the discussion group administration is to provide the initial questions for the group's discussion. These starting questions have to be precise and understandable because they have to attract forum members to register for this discussion group. The more interesting the questions are formulated, the more members will register and the more vividly the discussion will evolve (see creating the starting question).
Discussion group administrators can edit the settings of their discussion groups, e.g. adjust the description of the discussion group, assign other member as co-administrators of this group etc (see managing discussion groups). Moreover, they can set the discussion group open, meaning open for registration. As soon as the discussion group is opened, forum members see the group in the list of groups available for registration and as soon as enough members have registered, the group becomes active, i.e. the participants can start to create contributions (see discussion group lifecycle).
The role of an administrator of a discussion group is group specific, i.e. the same member can act as group administrator in one discussion group and as normal member (without administration privileges) in another group.
Forum participant: A participant in a forum discussion is a forum member that registers for a discussion group. As a participant, the forum member can create contributions to the group discussion. Moreover, she or he can be chosen as reviewer of a contribution of another participant.
The participant role is group specific.
Forum member: A forum member is a person that can log in to the VIF Forum and, thus, can register for discussion groups. Therefore, each forum member has an entry in the member table.
Guest: A guest of the VIF Forum is a person that reads the contributions of a forum discussion without logging in. The forum or discussion group administration can define how many levels of a discussion group are open to the public (i.e. readable for guests). Setting this level to 0 means the discussion group is invisible for the public. Setting this level to 1 means that guests can read only the discussion group's starting question whereas each follow up question is invisible.
Excluded participant: An excluded participant is a forum member and a participant of the group that misbehaved and, thus, got excluded from further participation by the group administration. Excluded participants, however, can register for other discussion groups and contribute there.