There are many different types of roles that add to the mixture of Simple Machines, and they all must work together for this organization to thrive. This section highlights the different roles you are likely to encounter, and how they fit into the overall picture of Simple Machines.

NPO Members

All members of the SMF team, once they are accepted by the NPO board of directors, are NPO members. In addition, the NPO has service teams, including the site, server, and marketing teams. In the future, other software development projects may join the NPO, and their members may become NPO members. In addition, some NPO members do not belong to any of the NPO's service or project teams.

All regular members of the NPO must pay annual dues, or, in lieu of dues, perform volunteer service for the NPO or its teams. All regular members may vote in the annual elections, and in any other polls the NPO may conduct.

If NPO members leave teams, cease performing volunteer service, and/or cease paying dues, they will be converted to emeritus status. These emeritus members may participate in discussions, but may not vote.

The NPO bylaws stipulate that the ratio of non-team members to team members of the NPO must not exceed 30%. If the ratio ever exceeds 30%, or if the addition of a non-team member would cause the ratio by 30%, no non-team members may be added until such time as adding a non-team member would not cause this ratio to exceed 30%.

NPO Board of Directors

The members of the NPO board of directors are elected to 2-year terms. Elections for approximately half of the seats are held every year, in June, by a vote of all voting members of the NPO. Once the board has been elected, they decide among themselves who will fulfill the roles of President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer. The Board of Directors is responsible for making sure that the NPO's bills are paid and other obligations are satisfied. The Board of Directors may, from time to time, appoint members to carry out some of the duties of the NPO.

Simple Machines LLC

From October 23rd 2006 until 2011, Simple Machines was a Limited Liability Company that registered in the state of Arizona[3]. During 2010 and 2011, the Simple Machines NPO took on the responsibilities of the LLC, and in 2011, the LLC merged with the NPO and was dissolved. The Simple Machines NPO took on all of the LLC's assets, liabilities, and business responsibilities. The Simple Machines LLC no longer exists.

Team Members

The people behind Simple Machines are a diverse group of individuals who, in their free time, put their efforts together to help make Simple Machines Forum what it is today. Many different uses of skills are expressed within several teams, including a design team, modification team, development team, documentation team, support team, and a language team. Each team member is a volunteer who has agreed to donate their time and efforts to help improve Simple Machines’ product and service offerings.

The team members are the people who help make this project a reality – and so we must be supportive with of all team members and help them grow as team members and as people. This project was founded by people and for people looking to development their skills as well as themselves. We will always strive to help and encourage others and to provide opportunity for growth, development and learning.

The structure of the team is an organized one, as described in on Page 12. Each team is responsible for a different area of the project’s success, and as such each position is a crucial one. Team members are always encouraged to stretch themselves and to try new things; as such, individuals often help out with other roles as part of their day-to-day activities, and changing teams is not an unusual occurrence[4]. Such rotations encourage new skills development, and provide variety.

SMF Friends a.k.a. Old Timers

- Past team member, or someone who had a lot of influencein the early years of the project. E.g. Zef Hemel.

Forum Users

The users of SMF are some of the most important people involved. They are our customers. Ultimately, we're trying to develop and support a package that will provide value to them. Please be respectful and patient. Sometimes they don't know what knowledge they are missing. Some are new, some are experienced. Some communicate coherently, while others don't. Some are easy to interact with, while others are not. We can choose to be polite to all of them.

And remember -- most of the Simple Machines team members began their involvement as forum users on simplemachines.org.

Charter Members

Charter Members are those members who have signed on to an annual subscription to receive a number of incentives including priority support, advanced access to betas and access to a closed section of our Community forums. These members are key contributors to our success, as they contribute to our financial health, and have demonstrated that they believe in our success enough to have contributed financially.

Additionally, Charter Members are our primary advocates outside of SMF circles, and thus providing them with exceptional support is important to our continued success. In terms of approaches, many of our charter members are competent installers and programmers, however the vast majority of them are website owners who understand that they don’t have the skills to built their site, and who appreciate our technical expertise and our experience with the software. They are a great source of support, and a great source of honest feedback.

Advertisers

Most advertisers on the SMF site are owners of hosting companies or software companies who advertise to web masters and website owners. If you come across an advertiser using our community, please be considerate and helpful – if we can help their business grow, then they will be able to afford more advertising in the future.

If you ever elect to use an advertiser’s products or services, please take the time to provide them with a testimonial and a comment to let them know that their contributions to SMF yielded them new business, and to help them understand we appreciate their patronage.

Competitors

- Don’t flame competitors
- Assume no privacy – anything you post, even in the team boards will eventually become public knowledge and our competitors will hear about them.

Bots/Crawlers

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[3] Don’t forget to mark that date in your calendar to wish everyone Happy Anniversary!

[4] Although trying new things is encouraged, please remember that helping a team member switch teams does involve administrative overhead and may lead to confusion on the boards. Switching teams frivolously is not recommended