Groups: Member roles
Daily Kos Groups serve two key functions: they help organize content for readers and they support site members who create such content.
Groups consist of at least one Admin (Administrator), who is the group's creator. Extending invitations to join the group to others is optional, at the group creator's discretion. Each group role has specific permissions relative to the group.
Actions available to a group creator/Admin
Confirmation of the group means that it is ready to function in all aspects. These four categories of actions are available to the group creator/Admin.
- New members can be invited to join the group, and their roles can be changed once they accept the invitation.
- New draft posts can be added to the group's queue, edited within it, and published from it.
- Posts already published by anyone else on the site may be republished to this group.
- Kosmail messages can be sent to the group,which means that they will be sent to all Editors and Admins within it. This feature is obviously moot unless the group consists of at least two members who are Editors or Admins.
Group roles defined
Every group has four possible member statuses: Admin, Editor, Contributor, or Invited.
Invited
Invited members have been offered the option to join a group. This offer does not expire. An invited member is not obligated to accept the invitation, but if they do they enter the group as a Contributor.
Contributors (sometimes called Members)
Contributors achieve this basic status by accepting an invitation to join a group. They acquire one key capacity as a Contributor: the ability to suggest content to the group's Admins and Editors. This means they can put a draft story into the group's queue, and they can select the Add to Blog option related to this group for any story already posted by anyone else on the site. Contributors can view their own additions to the group's queue but not the full queue, and they are not able to complete the publishing or reblogging process through the group's queue (although they retain full control over publication of a story under their own individual username).
Editors
Editors can do what Contributors can do, but they have several additional abilities. They can see the group’s full queue; they can edit posts that are in the group queue or that have been published originally to the group blog; and they can read messages sent to the group via Kosmail.
Admins
Admins can do everything that Editors can do, but in addition they can manage the group's membership and the group's profile page. This means they can add, remove, and set privileges (change roles) for users. They can also edit the group's description, banner, and other settings on the group’s profile page.
Group membership considerations
A group must have at least one member, its creator, who is automatically its Admin. But there is no outside limit to the membership of a group.
Group followers are not members of a group. There is no constraint at all on the number of followers a group may attract.
As a practical matter, groups become unwieldy with more than a handful of Admins and a few dozen Editors. If there is sufficiently strong interest in a single group there may be value in creating several related groups, each more narrowly defined.
Once someone accepts an invitation to join the group, the current group admin(s) will be able to change the new member's role, if that is preferred. Please note that any group status changes are no longer announced via Kosmail. Changes in member roles information are now only available on the group's profile page, or through the individual's own list of group memberships and roles within each.
Only Admins have the right to invite or to remove members. Any Admin has the right to remove any other admin.