"Grrr. I got two errors before I was able to save my reply successfully, but apparently it was..."
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 bases. 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 base. Administrators can create views and edit the schema (or type definition) for any types within the domain. These users also have the ability to add and remove other administrators and experts from their respective groups in that base.
- Experts - Experts are the equivalent of editors in a base. They can't change schemas or add others to the base, but they can edit property and type descriptions. As with any user in the system, experts can also add or remove types from a topic, add information to topics, and take part in discussions about anything in the base.
- Members - these users may be very active in a base by adding information to topics or participating in discussions, and often choose to join a base because of a special interest in the subject matter. By becoming a member of a base, users get a link to that base 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 bases will develop different standards and processes for adding administrators and experts, since we leave it up the community to decide the what makes someone an expert, or administrator, for a particular subject area.
