Group registration

This page de­scribes group reg­is­tra­tion and the use of the freen­ode group con­tact. Group reg­is­tra­tion al­lows your project or or­gan­i­sa­tion to main­tain un­am­bigu­ous con­tact with the freen­ode project vol­un­teers and group reg­is­tra­tion rep­re­sents an of­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship with freen­ode.

On-topic groups

Groups con­sid­ered to be on-­topic for Freen­ode are pri­mar­i­ly free and open-­source soft­ware projects, and oth­er peer-di­rect­ed pro­jec­cts, for in­stance Lin­ux User Groups (LUGs), stu­dent so­ci­eties, and oth­er col­lob­o­ra­tive ef­forts, or projects/com­pa­nies of gen­er­al in­ter­est to our user base.

Group registration:

Rep­re­sents an of­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween freen­ode and your project or or­gan­i­sa­tion.

By reg­is­ter­ing your group, you are in­di­cat­ing that you are main­tain­ing an of­fi­cial pres­ence on the net­work. If your group is a le­gal en­ti­ty, we want to make sure that man­age­ment has ap­proved your reg­is­tra­tion.

Re­quires no spe­cial type or lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion.

You may main­tain as lit­tle or as much con­trol over your chan­nels as de­sired. You may cloak your mem­bers, em­ploy­ees or par­tic­i­pants, or not, as you de­cide. You may ap­ply to spon­sor a serv­er if that is some­thing you wish to do.

Is ac­com­plished by dis­cussing your reg­is­tra­tion with the com­mu­ni­ty team.

If you think a group reg­is­tra­tion would ben­e­fit your project, let any mem­ber of staff know over IRC; they'll as­sess whether your group ap­pears to be on-­topic and ad­vise you on what kind of in­for­ma­tion and au­tho­ri­sa­tion you'll need.

Two types of group contacts exist for freenode:

The primary contact.

This con­tact reg­is­ters to es­tab­lish that your group in­tends to cre­ate a re­la­tion­ship with freen­ode. The pri­ma­ry con­tact should have the au­thor­i­ty to make the de­ter­mi­na­tion that your group in­tends to reg­is­ter, with the specifics de­pend­ing on the type of group:

1. Le­gal en­ti­ties. A pri­ma­ry con­tact should be­long to up­per man­age­ment or the or­gan­i­sa­tion's board. This au­thor­i­ty can be del­e­gat­ed fur­ther in the case of larg­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, but it is not rec­om­mend­ed; in cas­es where such del­e­ga­tion oc­curs, con­tact with the or­gan­i­sa­tion is of­ten lost and the group reg­is­tra­tion must sub­se­quent­ly be re­moved.

2. In­for­mal, pro­jec­t-ori­ent­ed groups. In­for­mal groups vary con­sid­er­ably in their in­ter­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion. If the group is run by a sin­gle project leader or de­vel­op­er, that per­son should sub­mit a group reg­is­tra­tion. If it is run by a larg­er core group or by vot­ing across the project, the vot­ing group should make a col­lec­tive de­ci­sion to reg­is­ter and should ap­point one of their num­ber as pri­ma­ry con­tact.

The secondary contact.

Sec­ondary (or ap­proved) con­tacts are ap­point­ed by the pri­ma­ry con­tact. A sec­ondary con­tact may be as­signed lim­it­ed ac­cess and/or priv­i­leges. They need no spe­cial lev­el of au­thor­i­ty; del­e­gate what­ev­er lev­el of au­thor­i­ty seems ap­pro­pri­ate. We will not ex­pect them to make pol­i­cy de­ci­sions, just to find out the an­swers to any ques­tions that are raised.

Group registration provides:

1. Ad­di­tion­al chan­nel man­age­ment ca­pa­bil­i­ties. Projects and or­gan­i­sa­tions are en­ti­tled to own chan­nels bear­ing their names. Your group con­tact can re­quest changes in chan­nel own­er­ship in ac­cor­dance with this pol­i­cy and can di­rect­ly re­quest changes to ac­cess lists and con­fig­u­ra­tion for any chan­nels you own.

2. Group host­name cloaks. Cloaks al­low your project or or­gan­i­sa­tion to grant of­fi­cial recog­ni­tion to project par­tic­i­pants. Your group con­tact main­tains this cloak list.

3. Prob­lem solv­ing. When there is a prob­lem with one of your chan­nels or if there is a com­plaint by a user or a ques­tion about pol­i­cy, we will pass it on to your group con­tact.

We aim for a rea­son­able de­gree of flex­i­bil­i­ty where we deal with groups. If you men­tion any par­tic­u­lar needs your project might have, we'll try to ac­co­mo­date you.

Your group contacts:

Are des­ig­nat­ed by your project or or­gan­i­sa­tion. For ex­am­ple, a group con­tact might be your IT man­ag­er or some­one in­volved with your project in­fra­struc­ture.

Can be one per­son or sev­er­al. You de­cide who acts as group con­tact. Each con­tact can be des­ig­nat­ed to han­dle is­sues per­tain­ing to your en­tire group, or to a lim­it­ed set of projects or users. You can des­ig­nate pri­ma­ry and back­up con­tacts if you wish.

Acts as your "goto". When you need some­one to talk to us about a net­work is­sue, your group con­tact is the per­son. They are your for­mal point of con­tact with our net­work staff.

Acts as our "goto". We will ask your group con­tact when­ev­er we have any ques­tion about your project or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al poli­cies as they per­tain to par­tic­i­pa­tion in the net­work.

freenode Group Advisory Board

In or­der for freen­ode to pro­vide the best pos­si­ble ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ties we serve, it is im­por­tant for us to re­ceive feed­back from the projects with which we have re­la­tion­ships.

We in­vite all cur­rent (and fu­ture) Group Con­tacts to join GAB, the freen­ode Group Ad­vi­so­ry Board. While we hope to see many Group Con­tacts in­volved with GAB in an ad­vi­so­ry ca­pac­i­ty, GAB mem­ber­ship is of course op­tion­al.

freen­ode will con­sult the GAB on mat­ters re­lat­ing to ser­vices giv­en to groups/projects, any ad­di­tion to, or change of, group spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy and oth­er rel­e­vant is­sues.

If you are a cur­rent Group Con­tact and wish to get in­volved with GAB, please con­tact staff on IRC or email groups at freen­ode dot net for in­struc­tions on how to sub­scribe to the freen­ode-­groups mail­ing list. If you're con­sid­er­ing be­com­ing one, just let us know your email ad­dress when reg­is­ter­ing.

We'd love to hear how you feel we could im­prove the ser­vice for your com­mu­ni­ty. Thanks in ad­vance for any help you can pro­vide!

Group Management & Community Team

The Group Man­age­ment & Com­mu­ni­ty Team com­pris­es nhan­dler, e, tomaw and chris­tel; to­geth­er they will act as your li­aisons dur­ing the group reg­is­tra­tion process and through­out your tenure on the freen­ode net­work. If you wish to dis­cuss the group reg­is­tra­tion process, find out if freen­ode could be a good fit for your project or reg­is­ter your project as a group, please feel free to drop any of the team mem­bers a line on IRC.

Once you have dis­cussed your project with a staff mem­ber, you'll be asked to email projects@freenode.net with the de­tails of your re­quest, in­clud­ing any for­mal ver­i­fi­ca­tion in­for­ma­tion that might be re­quired. If you're a PGP user, feel free to en­crypt to:

445B 4A56 5E9D F351 DD80  CE98 FCF3 9BAB 6166 AFB8