Written by Janell Brown, Wayward Waymarking

All categories must be managed by a group consisting of a leader (you) and at least two additional officers. Before you can create the category, you'll first need to create this management group by finding two other waymarkers with premium memberships who would be interested in helping to manage the category.

To start your group, click on the "Groups" tab found on the top right of any page on the Website, and then click on "Create new group" near the top of the page. This will open a form where you'll fill in the group's name, and state the goal of the group. Typically the goal can be stated as "The ----- group has been created to manage the ----- category, which will seek submission of ----- waymarks around the world." After you've filled in the two fields click submit, and presto! - you've created a group.

That part was easy, but now you need to find some people who would be willing to help you out with the category. The easiest way to do this is to recruit members in the waymarking.com "Recruiting and Category Proposals" forum. Either start a new thread, or if you already went on the forums to propose your idea, use that thread to invite people to join your group. Be sure to give a short explanation of the category you are interested in creating, and provide a link to the group's page so people can link there to join.

Another way to do this is to send personal invitations to a couple of waymarkers that you'd like to have as officers in your group. It's a good idea to invite someone to join the group who is experienced with the category creation process so you'll have their experience to guide you. To send a personal invitation, go to the group page and click on the "invite" tab at the top left portion of the screen. Enter the username of the person you want to invite to your group, write a short message to them, and then hit submit. Most users will reply to your invitation promptly.

When people join your group, they join as regular members. You will need to promote them to the officer level if you want them to be part of the category's officer team. To do this, click the members tab at the top of the group's Webpage, and then click on the name of the group member that you want to promote. Check the "promote this member to officer" box and click "update" to complete the promotion.

Hint: When creating a new category, to begin with it is a good idea to limit the group to two or three additional officers besides yourself. The reason for this, is that your category will have to be voted on by the officers of the group before it can be submitted for peer review. All officers must must vote yea to pass this review. If someone doesn't get around to voting in the three days that the vote lasts, it will fail. The fewer officers you have at this point in the game, the better. Quality, not quantity. :) Later it's nice to have around six to eight officers in the group to help review waymarks submitted to the category. Make sure that they share your vision for the category, or you may find that waymarks are being approved that don't really fit the category description. If you need to, an officer can be demoted, but it's better just to be careful in selecting your officers and to communicate regularly with them so you can avoid the mess of having to demote someone.

After you have recruited and promoted the necessary officers, you're ready to move on to create your new category.

Next: Creating a Category
Back to: Category Creation Guide main page

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