Last edited: 17.10.2021

A decision has been made

• Who made the decision: @Veroca R. Sala

• When the decision was made: 17.10.21

• Decision Summary:

  Defined the role of Talk Admin Moderator

  • Flag it when people are spamming the planning group or any other group, call attention to users if their behavior is alarming. 

  • Label threads

  Decided what is Unacceptable Behaviour on Talk

  • Any form of harassment or bullying.

  • Discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, race, religion, gender, disability, body appearance, age, or any other distinction.

  • verbal abuse, trolling

  • Threatening messages sent through Talk via private emails and reported to Talk Admin Moderators by the person affected. Moderators will be labeled and will be tagged in the description of the group in case someone wants to report online harassment.

  • Threatening comments to people in particular or to the community.

  • Sexual discrimination, unwelcome sexual attention.

  • Sharing photos, video, or sound recordings without the consent of the person(s) appearing in the image.

  • Delete threads created by others or by themselves understood as digital vandalism

This proposal is seeking for consent to approve the Talk Admin Moderators role and define what is Unacceptable Behavior within the online Talk space and what this would imply.

Proposer

@Veroca R. Sala

Proposer’s role:

I have been moderating Talk in the current year, not having so much structure to grab on. I have been part of the Orga team and part of the Board of the e.V.

The advice process

The people affected will be the community involved in Talk.

Information gathered before posting

• Talk moderation thread https://talk.kiezburn.org/d/L6KcyqOx/talk-moderation as a reference to what this role could mean. 

• Kiez Burn Code of conduct proposal (still in progress) online-offline

• my own experience moderating the platform.

People/roles most affected by this proposal

• all

People/roles with the most knowledge and experience relevant to this proposal:

• Not sure who is experienced on this topic.

The proposal

Background

In order to move forward with the proposal to organize the Talk site, (a thread that has been published in December 2020 and still hasn't gained much participation from the community,) there is a need to put in place Code of conduct on Talk to ease the role of Talk Moderators, a role that also lacks a more specific role description. As I understand the code of conduct is a rather larger proposal i seek to at least have a common understanding of what is it "unacceptable behavior" in this setting (online).

After almost a year from publishing the Talk site map proposal, I gathered with two community members interested in taking part in this. We came to the conclusion after our meeting last 8th of October 2021, that the proposal to reorganize Talk requires an approved description of the Role of moderators to move threads following the structure proposed, but also, keeping the site "In order" when inappropriate threads/unacceptable behavior appear, these to redefine in the body of this very proposal.

The proposal

1. Role description for Talk Admin Moderators (TAM) & Tasks

These are to keep the Talk site within the structure proposed in the Talk site Map.

TASKS:

• Flag it when people are spamming the planning group or any other group, call attention to users if their behavior is alarming. 

• Label threads:

-Educational: tutorials, instructions,

-Callouts: initiatives

-Announcements: meetings, deadlines, information

-Discussions: collaborative threads --> towards advice process (or not)

-Requests

-Conversations, - uncategorized.

-Learning for the future

•  Move threads to the corresponding group/subgroup if necessary. The person that opened the thread will be notified automatically by Talk, so there is no need to extend a new notification that the thread has been moved unless Moderators predict that action would rise opinions and controversies.

• TAM have the right to close threads (block interactions ) if these are against our Principles, or have nothing to do with Kiez Burn, or contain Unacceptable Behaviour. These three to be labeled as “Inappropriate Talk Threads” (ITT) 

• TAM  have the right to move threads to the “Moderators Admin group”  where to store ITT to keep a history of these, and in case there were some controversies to be resolved and maybe even moving the thread back to the open group.

• TAM have the right to Re-Open threads that have been closed.

• Move advice processes or proposals to the advice processes group

• update the event orga group description with links to all relevant subgroups/groups

• When certain discussions get off-topic, forking the comments that are beside the topic (or suggest it in the thread). You do this by selecting "move" on a particular comment.

• Provide links to relevant subgroups of the Kiez Burn Planning group to the website curators to update the content in the production website.

• Manage and distribute threads to archive according to the model proposed on the Talk site map thread (When approved)
  

1. Unacceptable Behaviour on Talk

These are some examples of unacceptable behavior applying to Talk:

• Any form of harassment or bullying.

• Discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, race, religion, gender, disability, body appearance, age, or any other distinction.

• verbal abuse, trolling

• Threatening messages sent through Talk via private emails and reported to Talk Admin Moderators by the person affected. Moderators will be labeled and will be tagged in the description of the group in case someone wants to report online harassment.

• Threatening comments to people in particular or to the community.

• Sexual discrimination, unwelcome sexual attention.

• Sharing photos, video, or sound recordings without the consent of the person(s) appearing in the image.

• Delete threads created by others or by themselves understood as digital vandalism

Any of this behavior will result in the intervention of Talk Admins Moderatos to either call attention to the user, block users, close threads (meaning, blocking interactions), or move ITT to a private group where the thread is no longer accessible other than the TAM, permanently or temporarily. 

Who would implement this proposal?

Talk Admin Moderators. I had the collaboration of @Purzel and @Kate when working on the new Talk Site map. Im not sure they will be keen to take on this role for the whole of next year, but they will be keen to sort out the threads that are already there and do all the labeling work, etc.

If the proposal is approved, we would be setting up the framework for new moderators who hopefully will create a more complete Talk code of conduct and netiquette. This proposal is only seeking consent to approve the concept of Unacceptable behavior on Talk AND Talk Admin Moderators role.

When would this proposal be implemented

we have time now! if this proposal brings too many controversies and the process gets too extended, we might not be able to implement it ourselves, but perhaps someone else.

What would be the cost (time, money, effort, etc.) of this proposal

not sure the time. No money is needed.

What are the advantages of this proposal (relative to the current situation and/or counter-proposals)

provide a guideline for moderators to operate on Talk. We dont have anything like that.

What are the disadvantages of this proposal (relative to the current situation and/or counter-proposals)

you tell me! open to hearing the disadvantages of having moderators and determining what we understand as unacceptable behavior.

Decision

Given the fact that I've seen little to 0 engagement in threads around this topic and because Purzel, Kate, and I have the willingness and time to move forward with the Talk Site map, on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of October, I set up a week from now deadline to be able to make use of those days to finally move on.

Deadline is: 16th of October ( unless we have a great number of unexpected opinions, then we could postpone the deadline)