From: Jim Tate - Our Time Bank <jimft...@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 20:29:37 -0800 (PST)
Local: Wed, Dec 14 2011 8:29 pm
Subject: Proposal to Expand Site Admin Roles

It looks like CW2.1 may start development in January/February 2012.
This probably means we will not have it to test until sometime in the
spring at the earliest. The subsequent steps of testing, fixing,
documenting, and training could take another couple months. My guess is that the rollout of CW2.1 would not be until summer, some 6-7 months from now.

Many TB’s are suffering now from the many short comings in CW2.0.
Such shortcomings are well known and have already received majority
votes on the CW2 User Voice Forum; their solutions will surely be
part of CW2.1. But why wait another ½ year? A Site Admin can make most of these fixes now! This is not rocket science. We do not need to be Drupal developers. We need to be conscientious and responsible people who can follow instructions, procedures. Our existing SA’s, who have solved most of these CW2 shortcomings for their TB’s have, or can, create procedures, guidelines for a Asst Site Admin to follow.

Yes, I am proposing a new role: Assistant Site Administrator. This
role would not have all the Drupal privileges of a full SA, just
enough privileges to solve some of the most pressing CW2 issues their TB’s are faced with. I believe there is enough knowledge in our
newly forming CW2 Admin Forum, on the TimeBanks Action Hub, to make recommendations for a set of privileges to be assigned to this new role.

With this reduced set of privileges there still remains risk ... risk
that a person in the new role could deviate from the procedures and
cause an accident that would need to be repaired quickly by Geek
Gene, or another 3rd party. Costs of such repairs would need to be born by the TB who caused the problem. These costs could be quite high if they affect other TB’s as well (CW2 resides in a multi-entity
database with several shared features/functions).

Following the procedures and instructions would be at the heart of
making this new role safe from causing possible harm to our Community Weaver Content Management System. I believe TB coordinators only want to do good for their TB’s and would be willing to sign a reasonable agreement to that affect. We can craft a new agreement that is not as intimidating as the existing SA agreement
http://actionhub.timebanks.org/content/site-admin-application-privile...
but still lets one know they must step-up to a higher level of
responsibility and be held accountable.

When CW2.1 is finally released, some of the changes made at some
sites would be overwritten and need to be made again. Other changes
(related to the shortcomings) would, hopefully, be replaced by fixes
built into CW2.1. I think a little extra work when CW2.1 is rolled
out outweighs the negative affect of living with the shortcomings for
another 6-7 months.

Please let us know your thoughts on this proposal by voting and posting your comments.

Thank you,

Jim Tate