How about a slight streamlining of the existing procedure?
Add a field to the account creation form: "Referral (Email address of the person referring you)"
Then we can write TechDocs/AccountCreation with less steps:
######################## == Account creation steps for volunteers ==
1. Register for an account You will receive an automatically generated password - hold on to it! 2. We will contact the person who referred you for details 3. We will inform you when your account is ready
=== Activating your account === Once your account is ready, you can activate it:
1. Log in with the password that you received 2. Choose a username and review your account settings 3. Change your password
Once you've set up a username, you can use our [[TechDocs/FellowshipServices| services]] and make changes to our wiki. As a starting point, check out [[TechDocs/Wiki]] ########################
I omitted the first two steps ( deciding where to contribute, get in touch with a coordinator) on purpose. I think that the likely situation when somebody wants to contribute as a non-paying volunteer is that he/she already knows someone of the FSFE that can vouch for the person.
Not necessarily. Can't we consider the wiki a special case? Why does the subscription to the wiki necessarily need to be validated by a coordinator, etc.?
While I do think that it's a good idea to have some validation (i.e. somebody vouching for the new volunteer), I think the existing steps are indeed overly complex and a potential barrier.
Cheers, Johannes