Working Groups

Working Groups (WGs) preform vital support functions for the Public Lab ecosystem. Largely consisting of organizers and staff, most WGs are open by nomination only so send an email if you are interested in contributing. Full description on Working Groups wiki page.

mapteam@publiclab.org - the Cartography Collective helps stitch images that others have collected, finalizing maps and assisting with annotations to provide context. Most people contribute remotely, however the first local chapter has been formed in New Orleans. Read more and get involved on their wiki page.

moderators - the moderators keep our mailing lists and website a friendly place to interact by watching out for spam. Want to help out? :D

web@publiclab.org - the web working group, focused on support of existing users of the Public Lab website and of our browser-based software.

media@publiclab.org - the media working group, focused on social media, blog submissions, press releases, PR.

kits@publiclab.org - the retail working group, focused on bulk orders, supply chain optimization, kit assembly, distribution, order fulfillment.

Kickstarter Working Group - only active during Kickstarter campaigns.

Nonprofit arm lists

staff@publiclab.org - staff of the nonprofit arm

board@publiclab.org - board of directors of the nonprofit

Graphs

We are recording the growth of these lists over time on this spreadsheet and graphing the results here to track community growth. (You can also see activity over time on the Google Groups about pages)

Guidelines

Please treat our mailing lists as a place of respectful conversation. Our lists have moderators to ensure civility. Moderators review the posts of all new members before approving them to post automatically. Some existing members may be placed into moderation if their posting pattern changes such that it violates our list guidelines (see below):

When posting to Public Lab lists:

1. Stay on topic
- stay on topic to make long threads easier to follow
- if you diverge from the main thread/topic/subject, consider breaking off into a new thread/topic/subject to help others follow along
- avoid sending one-line spurious responses that effectively "spam" hundreds of people and lowers the overall content quality of a conversation


1. Mind your tone
   
2. since we are in a conversation in email form, maintaining a tone of respect is essential. Any of the following can result in a member having their posts moderated before going out to the whole list: aggressive tone, disrespectful tone, mocking tone, off-color tone
   
3. a note on humor: expressing ourselves online in text is different from expressing ourselves in person by talking
   

Before you are placed into moderation, you will be notified on the pertinent list.

References: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Etiquette,
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Community_Code_of_Conduct_(Draft),
https://hackpad.com/HOT-Code-1X2acHIN2HX

List management

Some consistency in spam handling, joining policy, and naming will be very helpful as the # of local lists grows. Also we want to just be careful not to let research-related conversations fragment. Each list should have at least one moderator who's responsible for spam and/or willing to say "Wow! Please take this extremely interesting conversation to the main publiclaboratory list!"