Roles

Version 3

Trustee

The Trustees of GENUKI are appointed to manage the service in line with the Trust Deed, the UK Charity Commission requirements, and any other legal requirements. Ultimately they take legal and financial responsibility for the service. They also provide leadership, day-to-day management and practical support for maintainers. The Trustees are responsible for setting the standards to be adhered to by maintainers. These standards may only be amended after appropriate consultation with the maintainers.

The Trustees deal with any formal agreements entered into by GENUKI, they register and renew the GENUKI domain names and they ensure that the GENUKI trademark is maintained and defended. They have power to give copyright permissions on GENUKI content when it is clearly possible to do so without infringing others' copyright, and to pursue infringements of GENUKI's own copyright.

Maintainer

GENUKI maintainers are volunteers who give their time, effort and skills freely to support the objectives of GENUKI in developing a freely available "virtual reference library" of genealogical information that is of particular relevance to the UK & Ireland. A maintainer is given a section of GENUKI (usually, but not always, a county), which is under their control and it is their responsibility to maintain, develop and keep updated, according to the GENUKI standards. A maintainer has an implied contract with the Trustees of GENUKI, and is given delegated authority to act as an agent of the Trustees, under the requirement that the maintainer will not knowingly post or publish anything that will bring GENUKI into disrepute.

Normally the Trustees will grant autonomy for a maintainer to develop and maintain their pages in any way that the maintainer sees fit, within the limits set by the GENUKI standards. However the Trustees reserve the right to make a collective decision to override a maintainer with regard to any aspect of GENUKI content that might bring the service into disrepute or cause legal action to be taken against the Trustees. Where the Trustees have supported a maintainer in the matter of content which is subject to legal dispute, they will seek, if possible, to provide the maintainer with protection from legal action.

Some senior maintainers have additional rights and resposibilities, e.g. to do with setting up and managing the Drupal-based infrastructure that maintainers use. These are described in the page User Types.