## Tag curator 

*I intend this literally, as "one who [curates](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curate) (posts in) a certain tag"*

This draws from:

- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/260166/close-vote-superpowers-for-other-badges-in-low-volume-tags

- https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240700/empowering-tag-badge-holders-part-ii-lets-look-at-silver

- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/256537/extending-the-gold-badge-rights-to-further-close-vote-reasons

- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/253324/give-high-rep-users-extra-weight-on-close-votes

### What and why

This role identifies users with some degree of domain expertise, usually represented by tag badges; *and* some degree of platform expertise, in the form of commitment to a specific tag.

Curating (old) content is one of the main differentiators between a repository of high-quality Q&A and a helpdesk.

In my view, the main difference between gold badge holders and tag curators is that users with domain expertise who are also interested in tag curation will edit, vote-to-close, dupe-hammer and/or answer **old questions**. 

Users with gold tag badges who are *not* interested in curation, typically will only answer, and possibly cast votes only on newest questions. For them, older content is simply not interesting. Tag curators will also [curate](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curate) existing older content in their tag.

### How to identify such users

Tag badges (possibly just gold, but also silver and bronze) + number of actions (edits, close/reopen votes, delete/undelete votes<sup>1</sup>) on older content with the relevant tag where they didn't participate in tag editing. Some sort of "Archeologist" badge on a specific tag could be used as a metric<sup>2</sup>.

I don't have a threshold in mind for how old content need to be in order to qualify. Probably the same as "Archaeologist" or "Necromancer" badges, just to avoid introducing more foreign criteria.

The count of such actions should *exclude* questions that have been asked or answered by that same user. Maintaining your own content in good shape doesn't imply an interest in broader tag curation<sup>3</sup>.

### Privileges of tag curators

**Note**: If the goal of this brainstorming is simply to define new user roles to give credit where it's due, it is not strictly necessary to attach privileges to it. In my view, additional privileges make sense and are a nice addition.

As it was already suggested elsewhere, extended vote powers. 

- Gold badge holders with tag curator status may have binding close and reopen votes *at least* for "Needs details or clarity", "Needs more focus", "Opinion based", "Needs debugging details", "Not reproducible or caused by a typo" close reasons, along with "Duplicate".

- Silver badge holders with tag curator status may have their close and reopen votes weighted 2 instead of one.

- Bronze badge holders with tag curator status may be granted access to close/reopen vote privilege below 3.000 reputation — and possibly edit privileges below 2.000 reputation —, in that tag.

Deletion privileges shouldn't be affected. Personally, I do consider deletion as an important part of curation. However these are actions that remove/hide content and are harder to properly oversee. Further reducing thresholds could become a vector for abuse.

### Use case

This stems from a practical issue. Tag curators who scavenge for old content, especially when looking for dupe targets, may *very easily* come across off-topic content that didn't get moderated on time. If a several-years-old off-topic question has also received answers, casting a close vote more often than not results in... nothing. The close vote will just age away in the close queue. 

This is even more true for low-traffic tags, where the chances that new content gets timely moderation are lower, and off-topic material just piles up forever.
When such off-topic unclosed questions receive new activity, they may get eligible for concerted action in certain chat rooms, but this simply doesn't scale. 

<hr>

footnotes:

1. Not sure if in-queue reviews should count for this. If close/reopen votes are counted, it doesn't matter where the votes were cast from. 
2. I'm not suggesting to introduce a new kind of "Archeologist" badge. Just saying it could be useful to reuse the criteria.
3. This follows the award criteria for Editor, Strunk & White, Copy Editor badges