Skip to Content

Organisational Model

Last modified by Robert Schaub on 2025/12/17 18:07

Organisational Model

1. Purpose

The Organisational Model describes how FactHarbor structures responsibilities, domains, and interfaces between them. It provides a framework that works for a very small organisation today and can scale to a larger community and possible federation.

2. Domains, Not Departments

FactHarbor works with domains rather than hard organisational departments.

A domain is a cluster of responsibilities and workflows. In early phases the same person may act in multiple domains; later, responsibilities can be distributed across several people and teams.

Core domains:

  • Research & Development domain – Technical architecture, data model, core algorithms, and quality of modelling and reasoning.
  • Organisation domain – Governance, documentation, contributor processes, licensing interpretation, organisational rules, and XWiki structure.
  • Public Relations & Care & Marketing domain – Communication, clarity of messaging, user education, community support, and campaigns that respect neutrality principles.
  • Operations domain – Infrastructure, hosting, deployment, monitoring, backups, access management, and operational security.

3. Domain Interaction Map

Domain Interaction Map

flowchart LR
 classDef tech fill:#e3f2fd,stroke:#1565c0,stroke-width:2px;
 classDef org fill:#fce4ec,stroke:#c2185b,stroke-width:2px;
 classDef ops fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#2e7d32,stroke-width:2px;
 classDef pr fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#ef6c00,stroke-width:2px;
 RD[R&D Domain]:::tech
 Org[Organisation Domain]:::org
 PR[PR, Care & Marketing]:::pr
 Ops[Operations Domain]:::ops
 RD <-->|Specs & Quality| Org
 Org <-->|Governance & Rules| PR
 Org <-->|Policies & Access| Ops
 PR <-->|Tools & Channels| Ops
 RD -.->|Tech Requirements| Ops

4. Interfaces Between Domains

The Organisational Model defines clear interfaces:

  • Research & Development and Organisation collaborate on documentation, modelling principles, and how reasoning is exposed to users.
  • Organisation and PR & Care & Marketing collaborate on user-facing explanations and onboarding material.
  • Organisation and Operations collaborate on access rules, backup and disaster-recovery procedures, and operational constraints.
  • PR & Care & Marketing and Operations collaborate on communication-related tools, channels, and moderation infrastructure.

5. Small Organisation Assumption

In the early phases, FactHarbor is a small organisation. One person may hold multiple roles such as Executive Lead, Organisation Lead, and temporary R&D or PR responsibilities.

The model explicitly allows this while still keeping different responsibilities conceptually separate, so that they can later be split across several people without rewriting the core model.

6. Growth and Federation

As participation grows, domains may be split into more specialised roles or teams.
The Organisational Model should remain stable enough that:

  • new teams can be added under existing domains
  • responsibilities can be delegated without changing basic principles
  • federated instances can align with the same high-level structure.