Online Community Working Group

[nanorepublica]

This is my initial draft.

Would you be interested in joining this and helping improve our online community spaces?

[nanorepublica]

Ideas

• Online community onboarding calls
• Creating onboarding documentation for DSF members and new joiners to the community spaces
• Help review community spaces on the website.

[knyghty]

I just wanted to say: great initiative. I'm not sure I will have enough time to dedicate to joining the group, but on the off chance I end up on the board I'd be happy to be the board liaison for my term.

I also left specific comments. Anything I didn't comment on LGTM I think :)

[knyghty]

I'm a bit wary of delegating this. I think what we have done with the Discord has worked well so far and I'm not sure people would be happy with having mods "imposed" on them.

I'm not so sure about the forum. One issue is that I think only Andrew has full access, right?

[nanorepublica]

That's fair, I could have worded this better, but initial idea was to simply formalize what we already do with a tiny bit more regularity. ie having the WG prompt the mod teams to review any new moderators, ask if anyone wants to step down at regular periods (eg 6 months)

Definitely not going to be imposing anyone on any community

[thibaudcolas]

In this section, the delegation we want to focus on is what the board would normally ought to do, that this group could do instead. So perhaps this can be worded as:

Suggested change

	- Adding/removing moderators & other roles
	- Proposals to add/remove moderators & other roles

Or possibly taken to another section altogether. The other two points below aren’t really current board remits either.

[knyghty]

Just a note here that I and a few others (whoever was in the ops team a few years ago, but not up to date, so e.g. Florian still has powers but Baptiste not) can see all private channels. This is unlikely to be an issue unless you're talking about someone who can see it, but just to be aware.

[sarahboyce]

Think this is a great idea 👍
Added a few thoughts and suggestions

[sarahboyce]

I think these spaces have worked independently as a while being "non-official", so with that in mind...

I think this group (in coordination with the DSF) should be able to grant a space the "official" Django community status considering we might exist on new platforms in the future.
[In order to do that, I think there must be some set of guidelines in place (needs moderation for example)]

I also think it would be great if this group can help "retire" an online community that is no longer maintained or meets the guidelines

I think any community which has been approved by the working group should have a place linked on the website

[nanorepublica]

1000% this! Succession of platforms was one thing on my mind for this group with the recent drop off in the use of mailing lists.

[jacobian]

I don't see much delegated powers, either; this group seems more of a place for a community of practice than a group that needs to act on behalf of the board.

I s'pose at some point we could transition the budget for paying for Discourse to the group directly (and in theory Discord though I don't think we pay for anything there right?) -- that seems fine to me, but also it's such a minor thing it doesn't really matter where it lays imo.

[knyghty]

For Discord, I pay around ~$6 monthly to run a bot on Digital Ocean. It's arguable whether it's worth having or not as we have another (free) bot that does more stuff. But I would like to use it for more things, just, well, time :) - I'm happy to keep paying for it myself anyway.

One other thing we could consider is paying for boosts. These are like a yearly subscription more or less. If you buy nitro (kind of premium status) for your account you can boost a server. And then you can buy extra boosts. At the moment there are 12 people boosting the server, including me. This has varied and mostly increased over time. To keep the server at level 3, which has some benefits, we'd need 14. So there is perhaps a case to pay for some boosts. The most interesting thing we really gain from this is having a custom invite link, which I think would look something like https://discord.gg/django - which is a bit easier on the eyes than the current invite links we use (e.g. on the website). It's quite expensive at around (for me) €35 per year per boost. Worth it? Probably not, but good to keep in mind.

[tim-schilling]

Arguably it's moral to pay for the utilities we use if we have the ability to.

[nanorepublica]

Thanks for the feedback!

Any suggestions for who to prod nicely on the forum admin & moderator teams to input into this?

[sarahboyce]

Thanks for the feedback!

Any suggestions for who to prod nicely on the forum admin & moderator teams to input into this?

I think @andrewgodwin might be an admin and @KenWhitesell might be a moderator

[dryan]

I think this sounds like a great idea. As the (very newly elected) Chair of the Code of Conduct WG I wanted to say we are happy to help in any way we can.

[thibaudcolas]

Thank you @nanorepublica! This is looking close to ready for board review – what’s your plan to add more interested members?

Re the Django forum, admins and moderators are listed on the forum about page.

For board review, I would recommend aiming for the January or February board meetings, as we have new board members starting in mid-December.

[thibaudcolas]

In this section, the delegation we want to focus on is what the board would normally ought to do, that this group could do instead. So perhaps this can be worded as:

Suggested change

	- Adding/removing moderators & other roles
	- Proposals to add/remove moderators & other roles

Or possibly taken to another section altogether. The other two points below aren’t really current board remits either.

[thibaudcolas]

I think it’d be good to be clear whether this is intended for all members to have those privileges, or only some. It’ll be trickier to get people involved with this group if there has to be enough vetting to make sure people are trustworthy admins. So personally I’d recommend moving this as a "nice-to-have" for group members.

[thibaudcolas]

We have struggled a lot with other groups in selecting a Chair and Co-Chair, so just a heads’up this might go quite a bit faster if you just volunteer yourself for it. We’d be lucky to have you!

Re Board Liaison – we’ll have four new board members starting soon, who might be interested in this.

Re other members – please let folks know once you think you’re ready to start adding? We’ve sent a few people towards this proposal as part of the DSF board elections.

[pbratkowski]

I've been a bit busy of late, but now that I have caught up to a bunch of stuff...

Re Board Liaison – we’ll have four new board members starting soon, who might be interested in this.

I'm going to quote @knyghty who is hopefully still interested here:

I'm not sure I will have enough time to dedicate to joining the group, but on the off chance I end up on the board I'd be happy to be the board liaison for my term.

Tom, I hope you are still interested :)

Re other members – please let folks know once you think you’re ready to start adding? We’ve sent a few people towards this proposal as part of the DSF board elections.

As a fellow Discord moderator and DSF member, I would be more than happy to join this WG, if you'll have me.

We have struggled a lot with other groups in selecting a Chair and Co-Chair

+1 to Andy as chair. If possible, a co-chair from another community would probably be good (currently, I guess that means the forums; I am curious whether Reddit should also be involved).

[nanorepublica]

In terms of Reddit, that is definitely a possibility, however I would want to have a conversation with the Social Media WG as per this post as to whether Reddit is a social media site or a community platform. Essentially I would like to see a clear ownership of different online spaces so that communication doesn't get confused both internally and externally.

[knyghty]

So... I do think that Reddit would fall better under this WG than the social media WG. However I don't see it as a blocker of any kind, but maybe something that should be talked about cross-group after this one is formed.

[carltongibson]

Hi @nanorepublica, thanks for the ping on the Forum 👍

I'm not sure I have too much to say here.

I do think that having some/better communication on moderation would be good. It can feel a bit isolated when having to decide whether something needs action or not. Forum mods do already reach out to each other to discuss, but having a closer relationship with the CoC committee would be valuable I think. (It shouldn't feel like a super escalation to reach out for input.) I think that probably is better handled under the scope of the CoC WG though maybe, to keep things contained to a smaller number of more active WGs?

Help review community spaces on the website.

There's a big single item project that comes to mind reading this, to improve the website community sections, that I think are still linking to the old Google Group mailing lists (or were last time I checked). Similarly to the above, does that fall under the (proposed?) website WG, or can it just be handled as a ticket on GitHub? IDK, but it's not an ongoing kind of thing once done I suspect.

So, reading those two half-thoughts, I think I've missed some of what you're reaching for here. 🤔

[nanorepublica]

Hi @carltongibson thanks for the thoughts. I can understand where you are coming from and it might be that the forum needs less work overall from a moderation perspective. The intention here is provide process and nudges for succession planning so you could take a break from moderation if you wanted or nudges to invite others to be moderators.

There are also features/plugins (which is more for the admins) that we could be evaluating to improve the forum experience.

Finally regarding the website, I would expect the WG to help take point on the kind of issues you mentioned to get them done and focus on evolving those sections of the website as well.

[carltongibson]

Thanks for the reply @nanorepublica. Those points make sense, yes. 👍

[nessita]

Thank you @nanorepublica for working on this and for summing us. I think this is a great idea and I value that you invested time in building it.

I'm inclined to offer my support in any way that might be helpful, and I'm happy to contribute if there's a need for additional help. Let me know if you'd like me to join the working group or assist in any other capacity.

[nessita]

Could we not stick with Discord in the WG definitions? We could be less specific saying:

Suggested change

	Meetings: Quarterly video call meeting on Discord.
	Meetings: Quarterly meetings, preferably over video to improve the engagement, facilitate better communication, and ensure more meaningful discussions.

[nanorepublica]

How the mention of Discord any different from the mention of Slack or Google Groups in other WG definitions?

I'm happy to be corrected, but I see this repo as 'living' so if we do change how we do calls as a WG then this document can be updated to reflect that?

[knyghty]

At the moment the WGs (all? mostly?) have a space on Slack. I don't see this as strictly necessary as long as all WG members are happy to use the stated platform.

[thibaudcolas]

See our documentation on Changes to Working Groups and what qualifies as a "substantive" change that requires board approval, and what can be done without that. If in doubt just check with us :)

[nessita]

What's the difference between these two? Is there going to be a report about "problematic" users to be shared privately with the Board and/or the CoC?

[nanorepublica]

This addresses Thibaud's comment here where he mentions the requirement for a private report if sensitive topics are discussed. I could see "problematic" users being one of those sensitive topics.

[dryan]

This is similar to how the Code of Conduct WG reports as well. A public transparency report that has additional context privately provided to the board when appropriate.

[LilyFoote]

Yes, that's definitely better! I've suggested a few minor tweaks:

[benbacardi]

As one of the "helpers" on the Discord, I am happy to be involved and help with this WG. I don't have any specific comments about the contents of the PR itself :)

[knyghty]

I've let @nanorepublica know but the board plans to vote on this in our meeting next month.

I'll do a review of the PR soon after reading through the context, and I've asked other board members to do the same.

[knyghty]

The fact that most of my comments are just being extremely picky about grammar and style shows that I think that this is in really good shape.

My main concern is filling the open positions.

[knyghty]

I suggest these are also filled before voting.

I wouldn't consider the SC blocking at this moment.

[thibaudcolas]

If those are intended formal roles within the group, I think it’d be nice to document what the roles involve in this document. For "board liaison" for example, people’s expectations have differed on quite fundamental aspects. For example whether the named board liaison is a member of a group in their own right, or more of an "observer" that doesn’t necessarily vote or take part in group activities aside from interactions with the board.

[knyghty]

Good list of people. I would appreciate perhaps one more from the forum, and longer term, if Reddit "control" moves here, someone from there. I think neither should block this.

[thibaudcolas]

For what it’s worth, Reddit control is already with us, with myself and @czue being the two active admins/mods there. There are other mods but they’re all inactive currently. We arranged to step in as part of the social media WG (see mentions of moderation in that group charter).

[knyghty]

Yes, what I mean is that I think of Reddit more of a community space than a social media platform and I'm the long term I'd be favour of moving it to this group. Just my 2p

[thibaudcolas]

Looking very close! Just noting we’re missing a Co-Chair for the proposal to be voted on by the Board, and we’ll also want to see approvals of the proposal by people who are now listed to join as members upon approval.

[thibaudcolas]

Can confirm it’s mandatory for all groups to have a co-chair.

[thibaudcolas]

For what it’s worth, Reddit control is already with us, with myself and @czue being the two active admins/mods there. There are other mods but they’re all inactive currently. We arranged to step in as part of the social media WG (see mentions of moderation in that group charter).

[thibaudcolas]

If those are intended formal roles within the group, I think it’d be nice to document what the roles involve in this document. For "board liaison" for example, people’s expectations have differed on quite fundamental aspects. For example whether the named board liaison is a member of a group in their own right, or more of an "observer" that doesn’t necessarily vote or take part in group activities aside from interactions with the board.

[thibaudcolas]

Note for other groups we’ve had feedback it wasn’t clear how to self-nominate. The social media WG charter has this language instead:

A form will be made available in a public space.

[nanorepublica]

@thibaudcolas @knyghty I have made edits to your comments.

Some of the open questions are answers I think that would be best made once the WG is formed and we have had our first meeting. For example clarifying roles & liaison positions.

[knyghty]

@nanorepublica I will have another read through hopefully today. Of course the co-chair needs to be filled, but I'm happy to defer non-board liaison members until after your first meetings or not at all if you choose. I do think the CoC liaison would be a good idea though especially if you plan to discuss individual cases.

[knyghty]

Well, only a day late.

Other than the outstanding comments and the ones I've added I think we need these things:

First, rough approval from @pbratkowski, @nessita, @benbacardi

Second, I'd like a bit of clarification about the CoC liaison. I see there is now PR #30 adding an OC liaison to the CoC WG, and a proposal here to have a liaison the other way around, a CoC liason to the OC WG. I want to make sure that's intended. I do see the benefits, e.g.:

• a discussion in OC WG about a disruptive user, CoC liaison can check if the user is disruptive elsewhere and you can make a better decision
• a discussion in CoC WG about a user that should be banned, to check with OC liaison if they're on other platforms and need removing from those as well

But I just want to check this is intentional.

[nanorepublica]

@knyghty yes, it was intentional when I emailed the CoC group about a Liaison @dryan got back to me about having a reciprocative role, which I happily agreed to.