As most of you know, Hillrunner.com has since its inception in 1999 been a one man show. While everyone who has participated has played a big role in shaping Hillrunner.com and especially those who take part in the forums have added greatly to the highlight of the site, it's been all up to me to maintain, moderate, and develop for the site. Personally, I wouldn't want to have it any other way. I feel like Hillrunner.com is my "baby" and I want to continue to guide it for as long as I can.
That said, over the years, Hillrunner.com has obviously grown and that growth has increased the demands on my time. Likewise, my life has changed a lot over the last 8+ years and many of those changes have also increased the demands on my time. As a result, I don't always have as much time as I'd like to do things like scavenge up people to beta test new functionality or proofread new articles. I also am sometimes not able to visit Hillrunner.com for days and I always am worried when I'm away that some spammer will take advantage of my time away to make everyone's lives miserable. Finally, as Hillrunner.com grows, I think it's important to develop Hillrunner.com by higher professional standards. In order to do so, I need help from others.
As a result, I've decided that I need to ask for help. I feel like many of you have already taken some form of ownership in Hillrunner.com. You are regular visitors, in fact I view you as regular contributors through the forums. You add to the site through your postings and you make my work worthwhile by taking advantage of everything I offer throughout Hillrunner.com. I would like to ask for a handful of volunteers who would be willing to take their ownership to the next level.
I'm looking for around 2-5 people, possibly more if the interest is there, who would be willing to volunteer to take on some extra responsibilities at Hillrunner.com. At this point, I have three primary responsibilities in mind, of which you can choose at any time which you would or would not want to take part in.
The first responsibility would be moderating the forums. Basically, keep an eye out for spam. If you see spam, delete the post and let me know the username of the individual who posted it so I can issue a ban. If a post is questionable, let me know about it so I can take a look (of course, this is something everyone can do now and will continue to be able to do).
The second responsibility would be proofreading articles. I wasn't an English major and my writing sometimes (probably frequently) reflects this. While I hope nobody is expecting such a standard from articles on Hillrunner.com, I want to make sure articles are easy to read and get the intended point across. I always find it hard to find proofreaders on the fly, so I'd like to have some people always "on call" and available, as their time permits, to proofread articles before they are released for everyone to read and pick apart.
The third responsibility would be beta testing new functionality. In the past, I've always tested my own code. While I don't think I've been burned too badly by such a practice, this is not a good professional practice and it has caused problems at times. Again, it can be very hard to find willing testers on the fly, so I'd like to have people always available who, as their time permits, would be willing to test out new aspects of Hillrunner.com before they are released to everyone.
Who am I looking for? Well, the best fit for each responsibility would have different skills but I would never expect someone volunteering their time to fit each skill perfectly. I'm looking for a combination of people who will ensure as many skills as possible are well covered. For the moderation, I am looking for someone who visits the site regularly and would be willing to learn a few functions of the forums available to moderators. For the proofreading, I would ideally find someone who likes reading articles about running and can critically review my writings to ensure that they are well written and will be easy to read and understand by a large group of readers. For the testing, I'm looking for people who like to play around with new software or websites, people who would like to take what I create and give it a good workout, while recording any problems they encounter and reporting them back to me so I can fix them.
What would you get out of this? Unfortunately, Hillrunner.com is not a big budget website so I can't offer a whole lot, although there may be a few gifts along the way when the budget permits. Primarily, you'd get credit for being someone who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help build Hillrunner.com. You'd get to be the first to see new articles and functionality that will be added to Hillrunner.com. Most importantly, you'd get the pride and satisfaction of knowing that you're helping make Hillrunner.com a better site for everyone who takes advantage of what it has to offer. Possibly least importantly, as long as accounts are available, I'd like to offer every volunteer a Hillrunner.com e-mail address and a webmail interface, as well as the ability to use an e-mail client such as Outlook or Thunderbird.
Please let me know if you're interested. I have an article waiting for some proofreaders right now and I'd like to get at least one or two forum moderators set up as soon as possible. Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to offer a lending hand.
