The Work Behind the Scenes

About Unstuck
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This is a breakout from the “Ads on Unstuck” thread here, but I think it’s a worthy topic of discussion in its own right.

There is a significant amount of work that has gone on behind the scenes to support this community since (and including) the original migration from 2p2. Some of the past discussions can be seen on Exiled Politics in these forums:
*Governance Committee Forum | Exiledpolitics
*Tech Committee Forum | Exiledpolitics

This thread has a few purposes:

  • Increase awareness of the work necessary to stand up and maintain a site like ours (i.e., what is being done)
  • Increase transparency for community members of the individuals currently working behind the scenes (i.e., who is doing it)
  • Raise any related issues

I think it best to exclude moderators from this discussion for now–there are already threads dedicated to that topic. I’ll start by tagging some of the members I am most aware of, but there may be others: @zikzak, @anon46587892, @microbet

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@smrk4 and @kre8tive have also been doing work that should be recognized.

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Thanks for adding them. You mentioned it in the other thread as a response to SA, but do you mind reposting the list of things that you do / have done and adding
a) how much time you’ve spent to-date, approximately
b) how much time you spend on a recurring basis, say weekly
I assume a lot of it has been discussed on the old forum, but I also assume that most members avoided wading into those governance subforums. Hopefully others can post similar summaries.

It’d be nice if posting all of this information publicly leads to additional volunteers to reduce some of the burden on you all, but I won’t hold my breath.

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b) About an hour a week.

a) meh? An hour a week * however many weeks

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And to be clear, that is mostly as treasurer? Like collecting donations, managing balances, replacing money stolen by daughters :slight_smile:

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I post stuff on twitter

No clue, but not a herculean amount

I try to spend an hour a day sifting through the forum specifically to post content on twitter, but have been falling short lately.

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Setting up the accounts with Patreon and AdSense and working on their Discourse settings, direct dealing with donors for paypal and reporting.

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Not sure if this is a good place for it, but I am now in a place where I can volunteer an hour or two a week towards the site. I’m not sure in what capacity I can be useful - I’ve got pretty basic computer knowledge - but if there’s anything I can do to help take some burden away from the current small team I’d be happy to do so, and would not expect compensation (which is not to say that the people who currently work on the site don’t deserve it).

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I want to say again that at least I don’t feel like there’s been a shortage of applause and respect or sentiment that the work has not been recognized. For my part all I resent are accusations that people stole power.

@catfacemeowmers, I don’t have any ideas for what you can do at the moment, but my feeling, as some flavor of Anarchist , is that what you can do is see something that you think should be done and just walk in like you own the place and do it.

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Yea, hopefully being more transparent regarding what is being done will help people a) understand what others are doing and how they can reduce the burden, and b) highlight what isn’t being done, so people feel empowered to tackle those activities.

Not sure if we want to go full corporate and start creating titles, but we could try to formalize some roles (Treasurer, for example) to allow it to be passed between members as needed/desired. Unfortunately that may not work as well for the roles requiring specific technical knowledge.

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Treasurer is neither my inclination nor strong suit, it’s just that I’m so god damned trustworthy (and not risk averse and known irl by a number of people). I haven’t really put the time in that I should, but I’d rather be trying to like make a plug-in for a dislike button or whatever.

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a) I’ve put well over a hundred hours into getting this place up and running, dating back to late April. And in case he’s too shy to say so, ggoreo has put in a similar number. microbet is understating his contributions to get us here as well imo.

b) At least a half hour every day monitoring server logs, forum reports, threads, etc., and making sure everything is running smoothly. Additionally, tackling new issues as they arise, like the hour+ I’ve already put into understanding how Adsense works and how we can configure things to better suit the community. There is also ongoing interface work that I started with ggoroe but is currently stalled because I’ve been too busy with IRL work and the tiny bit of free time I have keeps getting spent on things like last night’s blowup.

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I am acting as a sysadmin at my job for a rack of ~15 servers. I’d be glad to help anyway i can on that front

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I think at least some rotation of duties would be good. I’d be happy to rotate out of the Treasury and administration if there’s an acceptible alternative. The job takes hardly any time. Just takes being known and trusted and I think known by some people irl.

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Some people have been wondering who does what, and while that information has always been openly shared, it’s scattershot across the forum and not easy to keep track of if somebody isn’t paying close attention. So this is my attempt to put that info in one place for reference. If I’ve missed somebody or misstated something, please say so.

Admins
zikzak - Set up the forum, manages the server that is leased in his name, DNS account, email accounts, forum updates, backups, linked accounts for Twitter and Google logins, and currently the advertising account in the absence of an ad manager. Also provides a donated development server and does some theme work.

ggoreo - Set up and co-manages the forum, manages most themes and does most UI development including custom coding for specific theme requests. Does additional troubleshooting, support, and just generally helps with everything.

Moderators
■■■■■■■■■■■, gooftballer, MrWookie & smacc_25 - Moderate all site content, responsible for setting and enforcing posting policies and general user management.

spidercrab - Treasurer, controls all money, in and out. Has one Paypal account in his name, another under his control, and maybe the advertising account under his name too if we can ever get that figured out and he’s willing.

microbet - Former treasurer, former admin. Key to getting the site launched, signed up for and set up Patreon and AdSense accounts. Currently doing community organization.

simplicitus - Has the domain name registered in his name, has declined reimbursement for the registration fee.

kre8tive - Manages the Unstuck Twitter account, which is one of our biggest traffic sources.

smrk4 - Spearheaded site branding, logos and graphics work.

LodenPants - Setup a GitHub repo for the forum. We should probably use it more than we do.

I’ve probably missed somebody or somebodies. If you’ve made contributions to the site above and beyond posting content, please say so. If you would like to make contributions or be involved in some way, please do! The more people involved the better.

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I honestly had no idea this much work was involved in running a forum.