What is a Mozilla Community Group?
Mozilla Community Groups are groups of people who meet regularly and work collaboratively to advance mozilla’s mission. Anyone who is working to advance Mozilla’s mission can start a Community Group. Groups can meet in-person or virtually and can be organized around a region, contribution area, identity, or interest. All groups must respect and adhere to the community participation guidelines and naming guidelines below. Only groups that have been vetted by a community manager will appear as “verified” groups.
What are the eligibility requirements?
All Mozilla Community Groups must:
- Adhere to and uphold the Community Participation Guidelines.
- Adhere to and uphold the Volunteer Leadership Principles.
- Be open and welcoming to everyone who shares Mozilla’s goals and want to contribute in a healthy and constructive manner to participate.
- Be easy to join and cannot restrict membership.
- Contribute to Mozilla by regularly participating in campaigns, activities, events or other Mozilla related projects.
- Be active demonstrated by having more than 5 members and hosting at least 1 event every 6 months.
Naming Guidelines:
Group names should be informative and help new and established community members identify the groups that are most relevant to them.
Group names should strive to meet the following criteria:
- Reduce confusion - Names should be descriptive and accurately reflect the focus of the group. Groups that have the exact same focus and mandate may be asked to merge or revise their title or description to be more descriptive.
- Avoid exclusivity - Using more descriptive titles helps avoid the appearance that a particular group exclusively represents the entire topic or area throughout the movement. Groups may overlap with other groups i.e. French Localizers in Quebec City and MozFR but people are never obligated to join a group to participate within a focus area or region. Mozilla encourages names that allow a multiplicity of groups to pursue our shared mission and will not acknowledge any hierarchy between groups.
The system will not allow multiple groups with the same name in the portal and where two groups wish to use the same name the following guidelines will be applied.
What is a “verified” group:
Anyone can add a group to the Community Portal however after 3 months, all groups will be reviewed by a Community Manager. Once a community manager has reviewed and approved a group a “verified” mark will appear by the group title (Note: we might change the word “verified”, open to suggestions!).
Groups that fail to meet the criteria at the time of the review may be asked to update their group profile, or be removed from the portal. Validated groups will be reviewed on an annual basis to ensure they continue to uphold the guidelines and criteria.
In order for a group to be verified, at the time of review (3+ months after creation) it must meet the following criteria:
- Meet all of the eligibility requirements above.
- Have a completed profile with all of the relevant information for the group including ways for newcomers to get involved.
- Have at least 5 active members.
- Have held at least 1 event registered in the portal.
- Have 2 group contacts.
What does it mean if a group is not verified:
There are two reasons that a group may not be validated in the portal.
- They are new and have not yet been reviewed by a community manager. (Reviews only begin after 3 months of being in the portal).
- Be working with a community manager to create the changes required to become validated.
How does a group remain “verified”:
Every year groups will be re-verified by community managers. At the time of review, groups must meet all of the criteria above and also demonstrate that the group contacts have changed since the previous year.
What is a group contact?
Group contacts are the people who are responsible for maintaining the group’s page on the portal and liaising, on behalf of the group, with Mozilla staff. There must always be 2 group contacts and they must change every year.
What do group contacts do?
- Maintain the content and activity of the group page
- Answer questions from community managers during the “verification” process
In order to be validated, group contacts must be responsive and able to answer and address issues on the group page. We recommend that group contacts are people who feel comfortable communicating in English. And have a good understanding of what is happening inside their community.
Note that group contacts do not have to correspond to governance roles inside the community. Communities are free to create their own internal structures and governance though all leadership roles should follow the Volunteer Leadership Principles.
Updated: October 24th, 2019.
