Moderators may nominate anyone for inclusion on the Tech Committee, subject to the following conditions:
- Nominees must already be Junction moderators.
- To be considered for a position on the Tech Committee one must be a longstanding and trusted member of the community. Whatever their other merits, we can't trust you until we know you.
- Nobody may be a member of the Tech Committee and the Arbitration Committee at the same time. In order for a member of either committee to join the other, they must first step down from their existing post.
- Nominees should have demonstrable experience working with Minecraft, Bukkit plugin development, and preferably Python, as well as an understanding of common security practices. *nix experience is good too. Nominating moderators should provide examples of prior work where applicable.
In any vote held by the Tech Committee, a minimum running time of 120 hours is imposed to ensure any active members have the chance to vote. For the purposes of terms such as "unanimous" and "majority", members who do not vote at all during this time are not considered.
The existing Committee will vote on nominated members at least once every two calendar months. A simple majority is required to elect someone to the Tech Committee. Members are encouraged to vote for anyone they feel meets the requirements above and will make a worthwhile contribution to the Committee. It is not expected or required that new members are taken on with every vote.
For a Tech Committee member to be given direct access to the server, the following conditions must be met:
- A 2/3 majority vote in their favour by the entire Tech Committee, not including the member in question, and
- No existing member with SSH access objects to adding the new member. The nomination will be open for 120 hours to allow time for comment.
Any member of the Tech Committee may be removed by a 2/3 majority vote. In the case of members with direct responsibility for the server or any other crucial project, they may choose to remain until a suitable replacement is found, depending on the circumstances of their removal.
Committee members will be given ingame access to tech commands for the purpose of resolving issues that cannot be handled using the mod tools (e.g. changing gamemodes). Additionally, a subset of the Tech Committee has access to the Junction server itself. This access should be used to:
- Maintain and improve the state of the Minecraft servers.
- Implement decisions made by the community and/or the other committees, where applicable.
- Whenever possible, prevent or mitigate attacks against the server.
For technical reasons, the separation offered by Tier2 is unlikely to be sufficient to keep Tech Committee members' player activities entirely separate from their duties as a member of tech staff. Committee members are strongly encouraged to use an alternate account if they wish to play competitively; at the very least, care should be taken to avoid leaving assistance mode while any special items or abilities are in effect, or making use of potentially sensitive information learned while "on duty".
The Tech Committee is not permitted to make gameplay changes except to implement the policies laid down by the relevant server committee, with the exception that members should take action in situations that threaten the servers in some way. Where possible, action should not be taken that affect gameplay for the entire playerbase. Changes to gameplay needed to protect the server must be up for discussion first.
Members of the Tech Committee will inform the other committees on what is and isn't feasible in terms of plugin development and server resources. Although gameplay decisions are outside the scope of the Tech Committee, ultimately policy changes need to be practically possible in order to be implemented.