Contributors

The community that verifies the data. Contributors are the project's most important asset. They are not paid. They are not employees. They volunteer because the system respects them — earned reputation, real badges, public recognition, and the knowledge that they helped build something useful.

This document covers how contributors join, how they earn trust, how reputation works, and how the project recognizes them. The moderation system that processes their edits is in MODERATION.md. The app they use is in CONTRIBUTOR-APP.md.

Who contributors are

Five overlapping personas:

  • Frequent travelers. People who fly enough to notice when an airline's policy changes and have data to add about most of the airlines and airports they pass through.
  • Cabin crew and gate agents. People who work inside airlines and know which numbers reach humans, which fees actually get enforced, and what the internal policies look like. Often anonymous; their credentials can be verified to earn a badge.
  • Frequent flyers in loyalty programs. People who track elite-tier benefits, lounge access policies, and airline operational details that most travelers never see.
  • Aviation lawyers and consumer advocates. People with deep knowledge of passenger rights regulations, who contribute to scenario pages, template letters, and the rules engine's test cases.
  • Travel journalists and researchers. People who use the data professionally and contribute corrections when they encounter errors.

The project does not require contributors to identify themselves. Pseudonyms are welcome. Verified credentials are an opt-in badge, not a requirement.

Onboarding

A contributor signs up at contribute.flighthelp.net with email and a magic-link login. No password. No phone number. No social-login required.

Onboarding takes about three minutes:

  1. Choose a display name (profanity-filtered, can be pseudonymous).
  2. Optionally state home airport, languages spoken, and any flight credentials.
  3. Complete three tutorial tasks: verify one fact, add one fact, translate one sentence.

After onboarding, the contributor is at trust tier "New" and starts earning reputation through their first edits.

Trust tiers

Five tiers, each with progressively more autonomy and responsibility.

New (0–9 approved edits)

Every edit goes to the moderation queue. New contributors cannot vote on disputes. They can submit unlimited edits but must include sources on every one.

Promotion to Regular is automatic after 10 approved edits, provided the contributor's rejection rate is below 30%.

Regular (10–49 approved edits)

Low-risk fields (notes, photos, language translations of existing strings, success-rate votes) are auto-approved with light scanning. High-risk fields (compensation numbers, contact methods, fee amounts) still queue.

Regular contributors can flag content for moderation but cannot vote on disputes.

Promotion to Trusted requires 50+ approved edits and a rejection rate below 20%.

Trusted (50–499 approved edits)

All edits auto-approved with light scanning. Can vote on disputes (one vote per dispute). Can mark stale data. Can suggest moderation actions to moderators.

Trusted contributors are the backbone of the system: they outnumber moderators 30:1 and resolve the vast majority of conflicts before they reach moderator attention.

Promotion to Moderator requires 500+ approved edits, vouching by two existing moderators, a signed code of conduct, and a public discussion period during which other contributors can raise concerns.

Moderator (500+ approved edits, vouched, signed)

Reviews the moderation queue. Approves or rejects edits with reason codes. Resolves disputes that trusted contributors couldn't. Mentors new contributors. Maintains a moderation log that's auditable by core.

Moderators are recognized publicly. They are listed on the about page with display names and their region/specialty.

Promotion to Core happens through election by existing core members from the moderator pool. The criteria are not purely numeric; they include judgment in difficult cases, willingness to commit time, and demonstrated alignment with the principles.

Core (elected)

Governance votes. Can change schemas through the documented process. Can shape policy. Holds the final escalation for moderation appeals.

Core team is small — typically 5–9 people — and members rotate through 2-3 year terms with staggered expirations. No member is irreplaceable.

Reputation

Reputation is a weighted score, recomputed nightly. It exists to:

  • Determine trust tier
  • Show contributors their relative contribution
  • Surface top contributors on per-page contributor lists
  • Inform leaderboards

Reputation is not money. It does not buy:

  • Money or financial reward
  • Special voting weight beyond the trust tier
  • The ability to override moderation decisions
  • Anything material

This is deliberate. When reputation pays, farming starts. The OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia models both confirm this: reputation systems that confer status without conferring goods stay clean longer.

Reputation inputs

The exact weights are private (see REPOSITORIES.md for why), but the general structure is:

  • Approved edits: +1 to +5 depending on field importance and difficulty.
    • A notes-field correction: +1.
    • A new contact method with verified source: +3.
    • A successful baggage rule update with sizer photo: +4.
    • A new scenario page contribution: +5.
  • Verifications (confirming an existing fact): +0.5 each.
  • Photos accepted: +2 each.
  • Translations accepted: +1 per sentence.
  • Helpful moderation votes (vote agreed with consensus): +0.2 each.
  • Rejected edits: -2.
  • Disputed edits that lose: -3.
  • Code of conduct violations: variable penalty, up to demotion.

Time decay: recent activity is weighted higher. Reputation gained five years ago contributes about 30% of what it contributed when fresh. This is deliberate — the system rewards ongoing engagement, not historical accumulation.

Reputation visible

A contributor's reputation is visible on their profile (if public). Top contributors per-page are shown on the page footer. Leaderboards (global, regional, per-airline, per-airport) are public.

The exact formula is private to prevent gaming, but the inputs are documented. Contributors can predict the order-of-magnitude impact of their actions.

Badges

Roughly 80 badges at launch, expanding over time. Each badge has:

  • A name and description
  • An icon (monochrome SVG, designed to fit the editorial-utilitarian aesthetic)
  • Rarity classification (common / uncommon / rare / legendary)
  • Specific unlock criteria

Badge categories

Participation badges. First Edit, 10 Edits, 100 Edits, 1,000 Edits, 10,000 Edits. Common to rare.

Coverage badges. Verified at 10 / 50 / 100 / 200 airports. Flew 5 / 25 / 100 different airlines. Common to rare.

Skill badges. Translated a scenario into 3 languages. Fixed a broken scraper. Wrote a new scenario. Added a regime to the rules engine. Rare to legendary.

Domain badges. Verified credentials: Cabin Crew, Gate Agent, Pilot, Dispatcher, Aviation Lawyer, Frequent Flyer Status (per airline). Uncommon.

Story badges. Awarded for unusual contributions: Documented Major Disruption (verified during an event with 100+ flights affected), Survived a Ryanair Gate Check (with photo), Found a Hidden Policy (uncovered an undocumented airline rule that's confirmed by other contributors). Rare to legendary.

Anniversary badges. One Year, Five Years, Ten Years. Earned by date of registration plus continued activity. Uncommon to rare.

Earning vs. displaying

Badges are earned automatically when criteria are met. The contributor can choose which badges to display on their profile and in what order — there's no requirement to show them all. Contributors with many badges typically curate a small set.

Recognition

Beyond reputation and badges, the project recognizes contributors in several ways:

Per-page contributor list. Every airline and airport page footer lists the top contributors to that page. Click any name to see their profile.

Annual top 100. Each year, the top 100 contributors by reputation are listed on a permanent recognition page. The page is the longest-tenured part of the site.

Postcard program. The annual top 100 receive a physical postcard from the project, signed by the core team. The postcard is hand-stamped and unique. This costs almost nothing and means a great deal to recipients.

Top 10 video call. The annual top 10 contributors get an optional small-group video call with the core team. Used for informal feedback, gratitude, and the occasional new idea.

Contributor of the year. The single top contributor of the year receives a small physical artifact — typically a piece of luggage-tag art commissioned from a contributor artist. Different each year.

Names on permanent record. Contributors are credited in the public change log forever. Even contributors who later delete their accounts retain credit (attributed to a generic name) because the contributions belong to the public.

These cost almost nothing in absolute terms and signal genuine respect. The project does not hand out swag or branded merchandise — recognition is meant to feel personal, not corporate.

Conduct expectations

Contributors sign a brief Code of Conduct on registration. The full text is in flighthelp/governance/CODE-OF-CONDUCT.md. The core expectations:

  • Be honest. Don't submit data you didn't observe or can't source.
  • Be respectful. Disagreements happen; personal attacks don't.
  • No commercial conflicts. If you work for an airline, you cannot edit pages about that airline without disclosure.
  • No coordinated edits. Coordinating with others to push particular content is grounds for ban.
  • No impersonation. Don't claim credentials you don't have.

Violations are handled through graduated sanctions: warning, temporary edit restriction, temporary suspension, permanent ban. Bans are appealable to the core team.

What contributors get

Honestly, very little material. The deal is:

  • Public recognition for their work
  • Reputation and badges
  • A say in governance (through trust tier voting and core team representation)
  • Direct relationship with a project that respects them
  • The satisfaction of helping build something useful

This is not a lot in commercial terms, and the project does not pretend it is. The contributors who join and stay are the people for whom this is enough. The project's job is to make sure it remains enough — by being a good steward of the data they help build, by recognizing them visibly and consistently, and by never extracting value from their contributions for commercial gain.

When that contract is honored, the community grows. When it is broken, the community walks. Every operational decision is judged against whether it honors or breaks this contract.