Development Group Report 2017 03

Development Group Report : March 2017

Members 69 - we have welcomed 3 new members since our last report (Development Group Report 2017 02)

Task 61 - Contacting Groups Procedure

The discussions on this concluded and a poll was set up to see whether the group wished to recommend the new procedure to the Board for adoption. The poll ran for 4 days, 18 people voted, all voted ‘yes’ to recommend. The Board confirmed on 24th March that the procedure had been approved, so it was uploaded on the wiki - http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Contacting_Groups_Procedure - and will be implemented once Contact Admins are appointed. This procedure is now in place so that the annual confirmation of affiliation, representation on Central and use of a viable platform can be pursued. A new database of information will be established so that the procedure can be implemented.

Task 55 - Sharing Moderation on FD

This was a new topic on the group, continuing previous discussion and polls on Central. We produced a basic summary of how this could be done, so Edward agreed to do some preliminary work to gauge the extent of irregular moderation to see if a notification process would be useful.

Task 66 - Abandoned Group Procedure review

This procedure was reviewed in the light of experience of the Mentor Team when using it in practice. A poll was run on whether to recommend adoption of a revision on the definition of an abandoned group, which was carried unanimously with 15 votes. The following revision was recommended to the Board for adoption: An abandoned group is one with an absent owner. Absent owners are those who: have not been active on the group for an extended period (eg. 6 weeks), or totalling more than 6 weeks out of a period of 12 weeks, and have not responded to reasonable and extensive attempts to contact them; or have responded to contact attempts but are frequently inactive for periods of 24 hours and over, and have given no prior notice or other information that may explain their absence is temporary.

Task 67 - FD hosting for Caretaker groups

We have started a discussion on whether we change the hosting for Yahoo based groups that are looked after under the http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Caretaker_Groups procedure to hosting on FD. Currently the thinking is that this is sensible, but needs to implemented carefully and appropriately. We are also considering whether it is acceptable to consider moving a group to FD hosting when the group is being run by a moderator without full moderation privileges and the owner is absent. Further clarification of a caretaker group has been proposed along with appropriate action within the Abandoned Groups procedure.

Resignation of Deputy Coordinator

Sheila sadly tendered her resignation as Deputy Coordinator of the group. Sheila has an enormous workload in various national Freegle roles and her work on Development has been very appreciated. There is a vacancy for this post, so if anyone would like to know more and/or apply, please do so to freegledevelopment-owner@yahoogroups.co.uk

All volunteers are welcome to join Development Group - http://freegle.in/Development - and participate in discussions and decisions.

Links

• Development Working Group
• Previous report Development Group Report 2017 02
• Following report Development Group Report 2017 04