Geeks Team Remit

This remit was adopted by the Board on 25th March 2015 and revised on 30th December 2018.

The Freegle Geeks Team can be found at [1]. This team is responsible for ensuring that www.ilovefreegle.org and modtools.org stay up and evolve.

The Board decides whether this work can be achieved purely using volunteers, or whether to contract for services. Any contracted personnel will work as part of this team.

Remit

The team was announced and launched to Central on 30th November 2010 - message [2] 17685. This is a ‘closed’ team due to the confidential discussions that take place. The main responsibilities of the team are:

Infrastructure:

• Managing servers and ensuring they are secure and up to date.
• Monitoring the reliability and performance of our service, and taking steps to improve it where necessary.
• Maintaining and testing backup and restore procedures.
• Managing the ilovefreegle email accounts.
• Keeping data confidential.

Software:

• Developing and maintaining the website.
• Developing and maintaining the Freegle mobile application.
• Ensuring we have a platform for national discussion groups.

Third parties:

• Supporting any integration with us, e.g. TrashNothing.
• Managing relationships with services we depend on, e.g. DNS, PayPal for donations, Twilio for SMS notifications, Azure for storage, Google and LiveIntent for ads. Freegle email addresses will be used where possible, rather than personal ones.

Communication:

• Maintaining documentation for our environment and procedures.
• Liaising with Data Protection Officer.
• Liaising with Media Director about publicity on the website.
• Updating the rest of Freegle about any significant changes.

Communities

Geeks can promote people who have lost mod or owner status, once they have established to their own satisfaction that this is a legitimate request, but must always notify Tech when they have done this

Technologies

Freegle is open source software, and the preference is for using open source where possible. The Geeks may select technologies, 3rd party services and hosting at their discretion, subject to agreement of any costs with the Board.

Details of the website, servers etc are kept on a geeks private spreadsheet that can be accessed at any time by the Board.

Discussions

Many of the Geek discussions, while highly technical, aren't particularly sensitive and are better conducted on Tech out in the open and where others can get involved. Confidential Geek discussions may take place on platforms of their choice, as long as they are secure, e.g. Yahoo Groups, Slack, private email, messaging apps.

Team Members

The current active Geeks can be found through https://modtools.org/modtools/teams

Links:

• Providing geek access to our servers
• Hosting provision
• Glossary
• Document Approval Policy
• Previous Freegle UK documents - Freegle Geeks and Freegle Tech Team