Understanding User Groups and Roles

User groups are, as you might expect, groups of users in Freebase. Featured users and Metaweb staff are a couple of obvious examples of these. Typically, these user groups are attached to domains. There are a few special user groups that have defined permissions and characteristics. They are:

• Administrators - these users have the keys to the kingdom, or at least the domain. Administrators are expected to have a pretty deep knowledge of schema modeling, and at least some interest in and knowledge about the domain they administer. They can edit the schema (or type definition) for any types within the domain. This includes creating and deleting new types and properties, moving types between the domains they administer, and documenting types. These users also have the ability to add and remove other administrators and experts from their respective groups in that domain.
• Experts - Experts are the equivalent of editors in a domain. They can't change schemas or add others to the domain, but they can edit property and type descriptions.  As with any user in the system, experts can also add/remove types and data to topics, as well as engage in discussions about anything in the domain.
• Members - these users may be very active in a domain without necessarily helping to document it or responding to other user's questions. While Freebase doesn’t treat members as a formal user group, because, unlike administrators and experts, they don’t have any special permissions, these users have expressed interest in a domain and are listed as members on that domain page. By becoming a member of a domain, users get a link to that domain on their homepage, and can more easily find and communicate with other users who share their interests by viewing their profiles in the domain's member list.

A note on these roles and how people get them. We fully expect that different domains will develop different standards and processes for adding administrators and experts.  The policies for roles in the commons domains will be solidified as Freebase moves to Beta, but they may well evolve, just as the process will for user-created domains.