What is an Editor?

What is an Editor?

A Genius Editor is a contributor who has proven that they can consistently contribute high-quality annotations, song bios, album bios, and artist bios. They must also exercise sound judgment when accepting or rejecting annotations, suggestions, comments, and Q+A. Each annotation an editor creates, edits, or accepts should add knowledge to the referent and be written with style, without formatting, grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors.

Editors are leaders on the site, setting a high bar for quality through annotations and interactions with other community members. This includes providing feedback to other contributors, participating in forum discussions maturely and constructively, helping mentor new users, and encouraging great content.

Editor permissions:

• Lilac badge
• All Transcriber permissions
• Access to the Genius Editorial Board
• Access to the Genius Moderation forum
• Accept/reject/edit annotations
• Accept/reject suggestions
• Merge/reject proposed edits
• Integrate/archive annotation comments
• Clear votes if vote total <0 (on accepted annotations)
• Delete text pages and songs
• Delete albums
• Lock/unlock albums
• Edit artist page
• Edit album tracklist
• Edit text on locked pages
• Lock/unlock pages
• Edit artist names
• See Chartbeat
• View the activity tab on user profiles

How do I become an Editor?

If you feel your contributions adhere to the Contributor Guidelines, tag @mentors in the suggestion section, and a member of our editorial community will take a look. Alternatively, you can send a message to a community staff member, and they will help guide you through the process. A great way to get noticed is to take the weekly Annotation Survey that's pinned to the music forum.

Before reaching out, ask yourself a few things:

• Do my annotations highlight all the relevant lyrics?
• Do my annotations teach me something about the lyrics, song, and/or artist?
• Are the facts in my annotations credible and well-sourced?
• Do the pictures, links, and/or videos add depth to this annotation?
• Are my annotations written in complete sentences with correct grammar and punctuation?

If the answer to these questions is yes, chances are you should be an Editor!

Essential Reading for Editors

Song pages can get chaotic, but don't panic—here are a few tips to help keep song pages looking fresh! As an Editor, you should be thinking critically about the following:

• Refining Language: How can you make a good annotation even better? Strong writing! ---> More on refining language
• Cleaning up a whole song page: Be ready to merge annotations and extend referents. ---> More on cleaning up an entire song page
• Avoiding Stretches: Stay objective and grounded! ---> More on avoiding stretches
• Annotating Problematic Lyrics: Don't reinforce stereotypes or hate speech! ---> More on annotating problematic lyrics
• Contextualizing: Provide as much context as possible. Don't assume the reader knows everything. ---> More on contextualizing
• Structuring annotations: Does my annotation flow nicely? ---> More on annotation structure
• Using formatting and markdown: Are you italicizing album titles, putting song names in quotation marks, and linking properly? ---> More on formatting
• Writing great song bios: Does my bio contain all of the necessary information? ---> More on writing bios
• How to approach surface level lyrics: Doing research is key. ---> More on annotating surface-level lyrics
• Lyric corrections: Are the lyrics right? You can't have a good annotation without correct lyrics. ---> More on correcting lyrics
• Annotating songs that have more than one language: ---> More on annotating songs that have more than one language
• If you haven't got around to it, please familiarize yourself with our Ten Annotation Commandments.

Can I lose my role as an Editor?

Yes. As an Editor, your annotations and edits will be scrutinized. You may lose your role if you accept poor-quality annotations without editing or make sloppy annotations. However, if your edits, annotations, and judgement improve when accepting and rejecting annotations, you can become an Editor again.

Here are the guidelines for losing the Editor role:

• If you've been an Editor for under six months and your editorial output is not up to par with our editorial standards, you will be given two warnings. You will lose your role if your output continues to be below standard.
• If you've been an Editor for more than six months and your editorial output is not up to par with our editorial standards, you will lose your role on the spot. Contributors who have been Editors for over six months should know editorial standards well.
• If you are abusing/harassing other users, breaking forum guidelines, exploiting the IQ system, or plagiarizing, you will lose your role.
• Genius editorial standards are always evolving. Your account will be under review if you've made less than 30 annotations/edits in the last 12+ months. If your work is high quality, then you will remain an editor. If your work needs to be improved, you will be given a warning. You will lose your role if your output continues to be below standard.

To stay up to date with best practices and our evolving editorial standards, follow the Genius Editorial Board Forum and join us on Discord.