Blog Post - Introducing ComDev Volunteers Team

Today's topic is the creation of the volunteer team for the Brazilian community development, or Triad as I like to call it. In order to better explain this idea, I'm splitting this post into three different parts:

What Does a ComDev Volunteer Team do?
Through the years, our staff team has formed different types of volunteer groups with our most active users to work with a good variety of topics. The main teams that we currently have for Portuguese are: Admins and Mods from Community Central, Vanguard and VSTF.

While observing the current situation of the wikis in Portuguese, I was able to identify some characteristics that were on the way of the development of existing wikis and on the way of the creation of new wikis as well. Each aspect identified requires a certain type of expertise, a user with a specific set of skills.

Thinking about it, I decided to put together a team formed by individuals with unique abilities that once united, would be able to develop our best wikis and make them grow to reach the standards of the main communities in our language.

Based on this ideal, the Triad emerged: A group assembled to work besides the community development staff, where each of its volunteers would belong to one of the following classes:

The Artist - Wiki Design
He or she is that volunteer passionate about editing the wiki's visual elements. This person possess the knowledge and access to editing resources and has the feeling to put together wikis where its visual elements are in harmony, and the final result is more than pleasant to our eyes.
 * Favcon
 * Wordmark
 * Background
 * Theme
 * Main Page Organization

The Engineer - Tech Specs
This volunteer cannot tell if he/she is more fluent in wikitext or his/her native language. Besides, this person also has a good knowledge of HTML, CSS and JS. Another important aspect is that this volunteer seeks efficiency and focus on organization, his/her logical thinking alligned to his/her technical knowledge results in fantastic wikis.
 * Creation and Correction of codes
 * Formatting Pages
 * Creation and Adjustment of Templates
 * Content Organization

The Expert - Content and Engagement
The main characteristic of this volunteer is the deep knowledge of the subjects he/she is interested about. This is a type of fan that could maintain a nice conversation with critics, stilly. More than that, he/she has the ability of engaging readers and spreading his/her knowledge through the writing.
 * Content Creation
 * Editorial Posts
 * Guides (Series, Games, Movies, Comics, Animes etc...)
 * Listicles (The Best, The Worst, The Funniest, etc...)
 * Recap Articles (Movies, Series, Animes)
 * Translation and Adaptation of English Content

Why Should I be Part of It?
Fist of all, you have to take into consideration the amount of free time you have available. Our volunteers don't have obligations, but when accepting to be part of the team they are making a commitment towards its tasks and our staff team is relying on them.

Collaboration
Regardless of titles, we are a collaboration space sharing the knowledge from fans, to fans. If in one hand we do have great admins helping and coaching new editors on their large wikis, on the other there's plenty of new users who have created their own wiki and don't have someone else to assist them into establishing this new community.

The lack of technical knowledge along with the lack of support are the main reasons that make new editors give up on their wikis, and that's why the collaboration from more experienced users is fundamental to transform new users into active editors and therefore growing their respective communities.

Professional Experience
For some of you it might seem that is too early to be thinking about it, but before you realize it's already time to apply for college, apply for an internship or even get a full-time job. Being a Fandom volunteer is an excellent way to use your free time to do something you already like while gaining experience to share in future interviews. For those of you that want to be part of Triad, you can even acquire experience in areas that are already your career choice, making the volunteer experience even more significant. Take a look into some areas that relates well with each Triad class:


 * The Artist: Design;
 * The Engineer: Software Engineering; IT, Computer Science;
 * The Expert: Journalism; Communications; Marketing;

Benefits
Our volunteers are the users that become closer to the staff team, so in order to establish a great flow of communication, they get access to a straight line to us.

Due to this relationship, the volunteers are the first ones to get to know our new projects and ideas, sometimes being part of the ideation and refinement process.

They also are the first ones we reach out to be part of our internal events (ex.: Community Connect) and to assist us in external events (ex.: Game Shows and Comic-Cons).

How Can I be Part of It?
Experience and Knowledge are fundamental to be able to take care of the responsibilities of a Fandom volunteer. With that in mind, the staff team will be considering the following aspects:


 * How long the person has been editing in our platform;
 * The work that has been developed so far;
 * What is the reputation among other users;
 * English level;

However, the main requirement for being part of Triad is the will of collaborating with other users. With that in mind we can grow our Brazilian community by raising the number of well established wikis.

Based on this ideal, if a user has demonstrated interest and commitment to our cause, even if this user does not have all the characteristics above, he/she will be more than welcome to assist us.