STEP is a community-driven project. This means that the community at large is the mechanism by which STEP evolves. There are several "levels" of voluntary STEP-community membership:
The STEP forums serve as the vehicle for STEP release development. Any registered site members may post a new thread in the Mod Suggestions (MS) Forum (posting instructions are displayed on the forum). These threads serve as the "catch-all" for information and feedback relating to the mod. Mods being actively considered for STEP will be stickied within the MS Forum. If a given mod "passes", then its MS thread will be moved to the STEP Anthology Forum. Each mod within the Anthology also has a corresponding STEP Wiki Page. The wiki pages directly feed the official STEP Guide via our custom Semantic Mediawiki infrastructure.
Thus, in order for the STEP Guide to remain current, it is imperative that this generalized workflow be maintained by the community. Certain parts of the current workflow are restricted to Administrators; however, most of the workflow is exposed to community Members. It is this functionality that is presented here along with the linear breakdown of the update workflow. Given that STEP is currently on a biweekly release schedule, it is important that the community help drive the process, as a few part-time administrators cannot maintain the entire workflow and all of the quality assurance that goes along with it.
Once Mods are accepted and the corresponding mod pages created, Administrators or Editors are able to incorporate new mods into the current STEP Development Guide. Workflow-related activities combined with site & workflow maintenance, Guide upkeep, and Nexus upkeep require almost all of the Administrators' time, therefore, we ask that the community help out by supplying the needed information and contributing to site maintenance wherever possible.
Thanks!