Welcome to the volunteers page, where you can find out all about h2g2's volunteer schemes.

We've got quite a few volunteers helping us out on site, and we'd like to take this opportunity to say a big, heartfelt thanks to all of them. We couldn't do it without them, and if you'd like to join their ranks, we'd love to hear from you - just pop along to the relevant volunteer page, and follow the instructions. Becoming a volunteer means you'll also receive a nice shiny badge of the relevant type on your own Personal Space too!

Here are links to all the h2g2 volunteer schemes... in alphabetical order, because all our volunteers are equally dear to us.

We'd like to welcome all our new Researchers personally, but time zones occasionally work against us. So we've recruited a team of volunteer Assistant Community Editors, or ACEs, to work alongside the Community Team and to meet and greet new Researchers. The ACEs are a friendly lot, and are happy to direct people around the site, answer questions and generally have a good old chat.

• The ACEs' Home Page

The Aviators are not currently in operation.

The Aviators bring a little light to H2G2 by creating audio and visual content to accompany h2g2 Entries. Their ranks consist of a motley crew of film-makers, animators, musicians and people with rather nice voices.

This scheme was created to cope with the increasing demand for unique pictures and illustrations for Edited Entries for H2G2, clubs, societies and other areas. This is also the place to find some of the smiley designers. The Community Artists group has now been combined with the Photographers group.

• The Community Artists' Home Page

Curators help us maintain the Edited Guide, tidying broken links, making quick fixes and replying to postings in Editorial Feedback. As this role involves a great amount of editorial know-how and a greater degree of trust than other schemes, membership is strictly by invitation only.

• The Curators' Home Page

There are more questions than answers, but we've got a whole bunch of volunteers who just love helping out. The Gurus have the ear of the development team and if they don't know the answer to your questions, they'll find out. You can find the Gurus by visiting the Feedback Forum.

• The Gurus' Home Page

The h2g2 Moderators are a bunch of Researchers who help clean up some of the flotsam and jetsam that appears on h2g2. Posts and Entries that break the HouseRules are referred to this team to make sure that the site stays a safe and fun place to be. They do this by using the Transgressions Procedure to try and make all decisions fairly and quickly.

• The Moderators' Home Page

The Operations team is very small, and a little odd - our job is to:

• Look out for and look after those issues that affect the whole site but which fall between or across the other volunteer teams
• Provide behind-the-scenes support to the other volunteer teams so they can do what they do best.

Sometimes it means tracking bugs and enhancement requests, sometimes making announcements, sometimes assigning badges, or perhaps drawing up flow charts and organisation charts and other diagrams. Oh! And keeping track of QOTD!

This scheme was created to cope with the increasing demand for unique pictures and illustrations for Edited Entries for h2g2. It has now been superseded by the Community Artists.

The Post is H2G2's very own community newspaper. Post Reporters are volunteers who submit regular columns to the newspaper, from poetry through to film reviews.

• The h2g2 Post Office

Scavengers are researchers who have rescued at least five abandoned Entries from the Flea Market, thus giving worthy Entries a home in the Edited Guide.

• The Scavengers' Home Page

The Scouts recommend high quality Entries from Peer Review for inclusion in the Edited Guide. They are also responsible for the general upkeep of Peer Review, and assisting Researchers who make their way there.

• The Scouts' Home Page

A few short weeks after the launch of h2g2 we sat down with a stub of pencil and a pint of real ale, and realised that we weren't going to be able to sub-edit the thousands of Entries in the Guide ourselves. Instead of panicking and bouncing off the walls, we realised we needed help, and approached a few valued and friendly members of h2g2 with regard to a new scheme: the Sub-editors. You can see the type of work the Subs do throughout the Edited Guide.

• The Sub-editors' Home Page

The H2G2 University is where research is done into producing top-quality Edited Guide Entries, and the Field Researchers pick projects that they're interested in, and get those of similar interests to help them compile the best Entries this side of the student bar.

• The University Field Researchers' Home Page

The UnderGuide was the underground creative writing side of the Edited Guide, and the volunteers were called Miners and Polishers. Their role was to dig out gems from the Alternative Writing Workshop. The UnderGuide has since fallen into disuse.

All volunteer groups have extra responsibilities on site. Some volunteer groups will have access to more personal or business information than regular Researchers.

Because of this, certain volunteer groups are requested to prove their real life identity via a free, trusted third party, netIDme, who are bound by the Data Protection Act and are certified by eTrust as a bona fide company. This confirms to Not Panicking Ltd. that the volunteer is who they say they are without the need for a volunteer to send personal documents to NPL.

The volunteer groups that are currently included in this group are:

• the Senior Volunteers (the team leaders, who may have access to business and personal information depending on volunteer role)
• the Moderators (who have access to some personal information)
• the ACEs (who have access to limited personal information)
• the Gurus (only those who kindly volunteer to answer tech support emails in addition to providing support on site.)
• some Business volunteers, depending on role (who may have access to business and/or personal information)

Last updated: 20th November 2011
Further updated 22nd October 2012