Staff list
Note: This Document is archival and is currently incorrect as the organization of staff is currently under development. Instead you could try: TeamPages.
Overall Structure of the Staff
Governance
- Systems
- Development
- Style
- Content
- Business
Governance [Barrabas:Founder and Chairman]
- Solicits regular feedback from The Community on direction and goals
- Provides overall direction and management of the Overlords of functional groups
- Receives recommendations from Group Overlords on implementation strategies
- Coordinates between groups when a project or initiative crosses functions (ie, assigns project manager)
- Maintains master list of projects and status
- Made initial decisions regarding staff/Overlords
- Pays the bills during startup phase
- Grants/revokes @soylentnews.org email accounts on recommendation from overlords
- Communicates on a regular basis with the staff, community, and audience
mattie_p: General Manager
NCommander: Lead Developer (keep the main thing the main thing)
Administration Support Subgroup[a][b][c]: [mrcoolbp]
- Answers support and contact emails
- Tracks volunteers and staff
Systems Group[d][e] [zford]
- Responsible for maintaining the servers in good working order
- Ensure proper operating environment for slashcode
- registrars
- DNS
- hosting
- sys admin
- Infrastructure/Architecture
- load balancing
- varnish
- sphinx
mechanicjay
Development Group [NCommander]
- Writes and maintains the codebase for the main site of SoylentNews
- Provides documentation for codebase for future support
- Perl
- MySQL
- Javascript/client code
- Fusion Forge / bugtracker
- Prioritizes and fixes bugs in slashcode[f]
- Develops SoylentNews 2.0?[g][h]
Robinld
Volunteers include: stderr, Bado, amblivious, FatPhil, martyb, paulej72 (bugtracker)
QA/Testing Subgroup [paulej72]
- Responsible for testing patches/updates before release to production
- might become its own group
- audioguy
Style Group [MrBluze]
- Responsible for the look and feel of all the community sites and platforms
- Theme and look
- Designs web frontend for dev implementation
Art Subgroup- [FrogBlast]
Frontend - [paulej72]
- audioguy
Content Group [Vacant]
Editor Subgroup [Dopefish]
- Responsible for ensuring quality content for SoylentNews
- Determine editorial standards
- Provide feedback to submitters to provide better stories
- Works with potential authors via journal entries
- Determine optimal story cycle
- Editorial staff - Dopefish, Cactus, LaminatorX, janrinok, girlwhowaspluggedout
Site Communications Subgroup [Vacant]
- Responsible for developing, operating, and maintaining community involvement mechanisms
- Wiki - FunPika (Overlord), mrcoolbp, gaaark, Cactus, (sfm ?)
- Forums - applesmasher (Overlord), gaaark
- IRC - Landon (Overlord), xlefay, MrBluze, kobach
- Social Media [xlefay (temp until 10 April)]
audioguy (staff/volunteer?)
cosurgi (volunteer)
Business Group [Vacant]
- Responsible for business model, finances, etc
- Marketing
- Legal
- Finance
- Incorporation
The Community [Everyone who joins, logs into, and uses the site]
- Reads and comments on stories
- Provides feedback on overall goals and projects to staff via various mechanisms
- Directly (donations) or indirectly (ads or other mechanisms) provide revenue [Future]
The “Audience” [Anyone who views the site]
- Views the site
- Directly (donations) or indirectly (ads or other mechanisms) provide revenue [Future][i]
- Note: this term is somewhat sarcastic, but there will be people who sit out the outskirts and just watch. We need to be aware of their presence.
[a]Regarding granularity on volunteers' skills/current tasks:
-martyb: QA/test
-bado: analyzing options for slashcode (fix or re-write?)
-janrinok: content/editor
-stderr: sys <--looks like IRC now see below:
[b]-stderr working on better IRC cloaking, Landon and xlefay would like him on staff there
Kobach - IRC volunteer
[c]We *do* need staff for channel management however, that *should* fall outside the scope of the IRC staff imo.
[d]Technically, the IRCd and such should also fall under the purview of Sysop, and the IRC staff should be there to moderate it. After all, the web hosting and such also falls under them _but_ they don't do editing and such themselves, that's for the editors.
Technically, it doesn't make sense to put the IRCd and IRC services under the purview of the IRC team since, like editors, they _shouldn't_ need to deal with the system itself, etc.
Another reason why this should be is simple, if the IRCd, services and whatnot under the IRC category runs on SoylentNews's servers, it _should_ be under the direct control of the Systems group, because in the end, they'll be responsible for dealing with breaches, etc.
tl;dr, ircd, services, webchat, etc, *should* technically fall under the purview of the systems group, moderating and such under the purview of the IRC team; This is no different than the website being under the purview of the system teams and moderating and such for editors.
[e]On a second note, the mailing lists should _also_ fall under the Systems group, as well should the MTA, etc.
[f]Is there already a proper process to prioritize and fix bugs? What order, etc..
[g]Last I heard, this wasn't the consensus anymore, ncommander will know more.
[h]Still up for debate.
[i]adblockers are very tricky, best to figure out whch ad providers are on the adblocker's whitelist, since those ads will be displayed and are infact, generally "good" and "non-intrusive" ads, they might however bring less revenue, this is something that _someone_ will need to look into.