Field Guide — a walkthrough
Live: https://conferencefieldguide.org · Each conference has its own subdomain — Río Texas (riotexas.conferencefieldguide.org) and North Georgia (northgeorgia.conferencefieldguide.org).
Field Guide is a community guide to annual conference. It does three things, in this order of priority: help people understand what conference is and does, let them ask about anything that's unclear, and surface where people stand on what's being decided. It's a multi-conference platform — two conferences are live today, and onboarding another is data, not a fork.
Everything is built from each conference's own public materials — pre-conference reports, session handbooks, the Conference Journal, and the Book of Discipline — and every report carries a citation back to the exact page of the source document. Field Guide isn't affiliated with or published by any annual conference or by The United Methodist Church; it's built by an active UMC pastor as a community resource.
This document explains what's there today, what moderation looks like, and what's possible next.
1. The public experience — understanding conference
Everything below is open to anyone, no account required. Each conference lives at its own subdomain with a top nav; the paths below are relative to it.
- Start here. Two orientation pages greet every visitor: Holy Conferencing, framing the session as a Wesleyan means of grace (grounded in the first Methodist Conference of 1744), and a short History of the conference, naming the predecessor bodies and the sitting bishop.
- This year's schedule (
/schedule) — the full timeline, hour by hour. Business and votes are highlighted; worship, meals, and logistics read quieter. Items that decide something link straight to the explainer for what they are. - Up for a vote (
/actions) — the reports and resolutions conference is actually asked to approve, from the pre-conference report's "For Conference Action" sections. Each has full text, a plain summary, the Book of Discipline references it cites, and a link to its exact page in the official handbook. - Reports for information (
/information) — the "For Information Only" reports, where a lot gets lost in the volume. Each is explained in plain language, with the full text underneath and a source-page citation. - The agenda (
/agenda), Agencies (/agencies), How it works (/process), Motions (/motions) — the evergreen spine: who does what; how membership, the consent agenda, resolutions, and floor motions work; and an interactive parliamentary helper ("what do you want to do?" → what to say, whether it's debatable, the vote required). - The Book of Discipline (
/discipline) — every paragraph the guide cites, in full. Any "¶604" reference shows a hover popover and links to the complete paragraph.
Sourced, not asserted. Each conference's handbook or pre-conference report is hosted on the guide, and every report's citation deep-links to the exact page — so a reader can always check the official source for themselves.
Bilingual. An EN/ES toggle switches report and resolution content to Spanish using the conference's own published translations (we never machine-translate), and the menus and labels are bilingual too. Conferences that don't publish in Spanish — like North Georgia — run English-only.
2. The community layer — asking and weighing in
On every body, agenda item, process page, action item, and information report, anyone can take part:
- Ask a question — "What does this actually mean?" Answers thread underneath.
- Share a note or perspective — add context, a concern, a clarification.
- On things up for a vote, perspectives are organized by where people stand: In favor · Concerns · Clarifications · Alternatives. This is the heart of it — not a yes/no poll, but the range of considered views, attributed and readable.
- Endorse a helpful contribution, or flag one that's off.
Anyone can contribute. Signed-out contributions are always reviewed before they appear. Signing in — with Google or an email magic-link, no password — lets you build standing in a conference over time, and one sign-in now carries across the whole site and every conference subdomain.
3. Trust — how standing is earned
Standing is per conference, not global. Five tiers:
| Tier | Who | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Visitor / Member (0–1) | new or signed-in | contribute; everything is reviewed first |
| Regular (2) | earned automatically | contributions auto-publish (no queue) |
| Editor (3) | appointed | also reviews the moderation queue |
| Steward (4) | appointed | also appoints trust and applies edits |
Members reach Regular on their own: when their published contributions are endorsed as helpful, they earn reputation, and at a threshold they're promoted automatically. Editor and Steward are appointed by a steward — judgment, not just volume. The first steward of a conference is granted by hand (pnpm grant-trust <email> <conference> 4); after that it's all in-app.
4. What moderation looks like — the Steward's desk
Editors and Stewards get a Steward's desk (/moderate) in their nav; nobody else sees it, and every action re-checks trust on the server, not just in the UI. It has four sections:
- In the queue — every pending question, note, and perspective, with its target and author. One click to Publish (it goes on the guide and the author earns reputation) or Reject.
- Proposed edits — suggested changes to the guide's own text, shown as a before/after. Apply writes the new text straight into the guide and credits the author; Reject sets it aside.
- Flagged — published items someone reported, with the reasons. Dismiss the flags or Unpublish.
- Members & trust (Stewards only) — see each member's reputation and appoint them Editor or Steward.
The whole point: the official spine stays trustworthy because a person decides, while the community does the heavy lifting of surfacing questions and perspectives. Nothing from the public reaches the published guide without a steward's nod, and stewards can act in seconds.
5. A living guide — wiki edit-proposals
The spine isn't read-only. On any page, a signed-in member can "Suggest an edit" — pick a field (a summary, or the full text), edit the current wording in place, and add a note on why. It's always queued (even for Regulars — the canonical text is shared), and a steward sees the before/after diff and applies or rejects it. Over time the guide gets more accurate because the people who know correct it, with a steward in the loop.
6. What's possible from here
The foundation — multi-tenant, role-aware, bilingual, sourced to the public record, with a full contribute→review→publish→edit lifecycle — opens several directions:
- More conferences. Two are live; a third is a row in the database plus its spine and a subdomain, not a fork. Each gets its own community, stewards, and trust.
- A fuller Spanish reach. Report content and the menus are bilingual today; extending Spanish to the explainer, body, agenda, and history pages (English-only for now) is a contained next step.
- The long tail of reports. Beyond the formally-flagged reports, the non-bannered sections (seminaries, congregational vitality) can be folded in.
- Gamification & recognition. Reputation already drives auto-promotion; it can power leaderboards, badges, and "trusted answerer" signals to encourage good participation.
- Real-time during session. Because the schedule and votes are structured data, the guide could light up live during plenary — what's happening now, what just passed.
Status
Live in production at conferencefieldguide.org, each conference on its own subdomain, with sign-in and moderation active; the old guide.wrootlabs.com now redirects here. New stewards are added with pnpm grant-trust <email> <conference> 4 after they sign in once — from there, stewards appoint others in-app.