ICE List Wiki:Volunteer/Roles
ICE List volunteer roles. This page defines the tiers (levels) of volunteers and how an incident moves through them. It is the reference for the incident workflow; the queues and routing are built on top of these definitions.
How the pipeline works
Live queues: Incident pipeline dashboard.
Every incident carries a stage — the tier that currently owns it. A tier's queue is simply "all incidents at my stage"; a hand-off is one action: advance the stage to the next tier. Progress within Detailing is tracked by the triage marks (agents recorded, plates recorded, video secured, etc.).
Pipeline: Intake → OSINT → Detailing → Verification → Writing & publishing. Cross-cutting specialist teams (pulled in at any stage): Media Team, Agent Team.
The pipeline tiers
1. Intake — incident volunteers
- Group:
intake - Queue: incoming submissions / incident candidates
- Does: confirms the report is a real, in-scope incident; removes spam and duplicates; sets the basics (date, location, type).
- Hands off: advances the stage to OSINT.
- Trust: entry level — the first tier a new volunteer joins.
2. OSINT — evidence gathering
- Group:
osint - Queue: stage = OSINT
- Does: finds and preserves open-source evidence — bystander video, social posts, news; geolocates; identifies agents and vehicles from footage; archives material before it disappears. Flags media for the Media Team and agents for the Agent Team.
- Hands off: advances to Detailing.
3. Detailing — research & structuring
- Group:
detailing(ortrusted-volunteer) - Queue: stage = Detailing
- Does: turns the evidence into a structured page — fills the {Tl|Infobox incident}, links agents and vehicles, confirms location, lists sources, and ticks the triage marks as each item is completed.
- Hands off: advances to Verification once the triage checklist is complete.
4. Verification
- Group:
verification - Queue: stage = Verification
- Does: applies the ICE List two-source standard; confirms every claim against sources; sets the verification status.
- Hands off: advances to Writing.
5. Writing & publishing (oversight)
- Group:
incident-editor/ administrators - Queue: stage = Writing
- Does: writes the narrative/summary, does the final quality check, publishes, and features significant incidents.
- Hands off: Published.
Cross-cutting specialist teams
Media Team — media management
- Group:
media-team - Does: collects, uploads (stripping metadata/EXIF where needed), and embeds videos and photos into incident and agent pages using the media templates — see ICE List:Embedding media ({Tl|Video file}, {Tl|YouTube}, {Tl|Tweet}, {Tl|Instagram}, {Tl|Threads}). Maintains media on the pages and ticks the Video secured triage mark.
- Pulled in by: OSINT and Detailing whenever media needs handling.
Agent Team
- Group:
agent-team - Does: builds and maintains agent pages ("Last, First") and links them to incidents so {Tl|IncidentsForAgent} connects both ways. Ticks the Agents recorded triage mark.
- Pulled in by: OSINT and Detailing when an agent is identified.
Permissions (gated per tier)
Each tier is a MediaWiki group; only the owning group (or a higher tier) may advance an incident's stage, enforced by AbuseFilter. Creating the groups requires a one-time server-side configuration change (LocalSettings.php); until then the stage queues work by category and rely on convention.
How to join
'Application and vetting process to be defined.' New volunteers start at Intake and are promoted to higher tiers as they build a track record.