The Scheme.org charter

Introduction

Technical assets

• The scheme.org domain name. The current registrar is Gandi.

• DNS service for scheme.org. Currently provided by Gandi.

• Web server for serving the www.scheme.org website.

• Git repositories at github.com/schemeorg.

• Mailing list schemeorg@srfi.schemers.org.

Social roles

• Domain registrant. The person who is on file at the domain registrar as the registrant of scheme.org. Currently Magnus Ahltorp.

• Domain techical contact. The person who is on file at the domain registrar as the technical contact of scheme.org.

• Domain billing contact. The person who is on file at the domain registrar as the billing contact of scheme.org. Currently Arthur Gleckler.

• DNS administrators. One or more people who have the credentials to update the live DNS records for scheme.org.

• Top-level administrators. One or more people who are responsible for the DNS, git repo and web server.

Current people

• Domain registrar: Gandi.net (Magnus Ahltorp, Arthur Gleckler)
• DNS host: Gandi.net (Magnus Ahltorp, Arthur Gleckler)
• Git host: GitHub.com (Arthur Gleckler, Lassi Kortela)
• WWW host: Vultr.com (Lassi Kortela)
• Mailing list host: SimpleLists.com (Arthur Gleckler)

Special projects

www (subdomain www.scheme.org): The scheme.org web front page.

lists (subdomain lists.scheme.org): @scheme.org mailing lists.

staging (subdomain staging.scheme.org): Staging versions of production projects.

Email

The following standard @scheme.org email addresses:

• hostmaster
• postmaster
• webmaster

All other @scheme.org addresses are reserved for mailing lists hosted at lists.scheme.org.

Community projects shall not run mail service on their subdomains.

Owned projects are free to run public and/or private mailing lists, and to have private mailboxes, on their subdomains if they so choose.

Rules

All Scheme.org projects need to follow these rules:

• No cookies or other local storage. Exception: session for users who explicitly logged in.

• No tracking of user behavior. Exception: ordinary server logs (web server and ssh logs, etc.) So-called analytics services are not allowed.

• No embedded content from commercial services (video, audio, images, maps, status badges, etc.). These contain hidden trackers so often that it's easier to have a blanket ban than examine on a case-by-case basis. Links to commercial hosts are fine as long as the link itself does not contain a tracking or affiliate token.

• No commerce. Links to commerce outside scheme.org are fine, as long as the link does not read like an advertisement.

• No political, religious, or lifestyle advocacy.

When in doubt, please ask on the schemeorg mailing list.

Procedures

Adding a project

Re-assigning a community project

If a subdomain administrator of a community project is out of reach for an extended period of time, the top-level administrators may remove the subdomain administrator status of that person from community projects.

If allsubdomain administrators of a community project are out of reach for an extended period of time, the top-level administrators may remove the DNS records for the subdomain or change them to point to a new server.

Settling disputes between project administrators

Subdomain administrators strive to settle all disputes between themselves and with the subdomains' users without requiring the intervention of top-level administrators.

If they cannot come to an agreement, top-level administrators will act as tie breakers, deciding what to do about the subdomain.

Dealing with content that is against the rules

If someone notifies the top-level administrators of content against the rules, the top-level administrators send a private email to all subdomain administrators of the subdomain in question.

7 full days from the time the first mail was sent, if the content has not been removed, the top-level administrators may hide the subdomain link on the www.scheme.org front page.

30 full days from the time the first mail was sent, if the content has not been removed, the top-level administrators may drop DNS records for the subdomain.

Once all problems have been fixed, the top-level administrators will restore front-page links and DNS records ASAP.

Dealing with security problems

If a subdomain compromises the security of visitors or of scheme.org infrastructure, the top-level administrators may immediately hide the subdomain link on the www.scheme.org front page. If the problem is especially severe, the top-level administrators may also drop DNS records for the subdomain. In both cases the top-level administrators send a private email to all subdomain administrators of the subdomain in question. If the top-level administrators judge that it is safe to do so, they will also send a public email to the schemeorg mailing list - either immediately, after consulting with the subdomain administrators, or after waiting a while and the subdomain administrators have not responded.

Once all problems have been fixed, the top-level administrators will restore front-page links and DNS records ASAP.

Dealing with reliability problems

If a subdomain server has been unresponsive for 7 full days, the top-level administrators may remove it from the front page so as to not confuse visitors.

Once all problems have been fixed, the top-level administrators will restore front-page links ASAP.