Re: [Inkscape-devel] rules and guidelines for new forum - first draft

> "Prerequisites for being a moderator"
  * Age requirements
  * Time availability
  It also mentions requiring previous experience as a forum moderator
  (on an external forum I suppose?)  I take it you expect there's going
  to be plenty enough people with past experience?

Well, there always has been enough people with past experience.  We're kind of 
in a new world, with the old forum members not wanting to participate.  It would 
be so very time intensive to teach someone who has never moderated before.  But 
it might become necessary.  It's a bridge we'll have to cross if we come to it.

I'm not sure how we could fact check an age requirement for moderators.  I see 
the requirement for experience as a much stronger indication of maturity than 
age.  But if there's some legal reason for it, we could mention age.  No problem 
mentioning the time.  It's mostly as much time as the volunteer has to offer, 
but I can come up with an estimate.

> "Moderator Duties and Responsibilities"
#3:  On mailing lists, I've found the phrase "Let's all keep discussions
civil" to work well and have the desired effect, and would suggest
including that phrasing here too.
In addition to Inactive Moderators, can you add some guidance on what
steps to do if a moderator is not behaving acceptably?  I'm imagining
this might either be a unanimous vote of the other moderators, or
perhaps if that won't work, some kind of escalation to a higher
authority, or something.  I'm imagining this will be exceedingly rare,
but having a process spelled out might help it be even more rare.  ;-)

Yes, "civil" sounds good.  I'll put it in.

Well, the CoC is specific about a complaint about a moderator.  ("If you believe 
you have been unfairly penalized by a moderator, you may contact Inkscape's 
board. Decisions of the board are final.")

Are you talking about other moderators taking some kind of action (well, 
demoting that moderator, I guess)?  Or maybe just a mutual mentoring of each 
other?  I envision moderators collaborating as much as possible - we even have a 
board only for moderators.  I would hope the collaboration would keep us mostly 
all on the same page.

It's so hard to think in terms of the worst case scenario, when as a whole, that 
has been very rare.  I agree that it's good to have it covered.  I just find it 
hard to write about it, when so many potential situations have never happened. 
And they have so many potential solutions.

> "Complaints"
I think some text may be worth adding here regarding, "What if I feel a
moderator is treating me unfairly?"  Escalating to the CoC is
appropriate for major issues, but for minor complaints about a moderator
it may be better if there is some guidance on how to address it within
the forum moderation team.
The Forum Etiquette section is great, and I wonder if it should be at
the top of the document, since that's probably what you want *everyone*
to read.  Unless your plan is to have this officially live here, but cut
and paste it into appropriate areas of the forum.

Hhmm....  Is this the same question as just above?  Oh I see, you just want it 
written into the complaint section too?

Yes, Martin wants the Etiquette section switched around too.  Will do!

Hhmm, would it work to copy/paste the relevant parts of the CoC into the Regular 
Members section and Complain section?  I'm not sure.  But I can think of a 
couple of clarifications I can add anyway.

> It'll make a great foundation to build on.

Aaww, and here I thought it was almost finished.  Or do you mean build on over 
the years?

As I said in my reply to Martin, I don't know where it's supposed to live.  I 
think it would work well to have a Forum Moderators team (on the website Teams 
page) and this document would be the Charter.  On the other hand, as a governing 
document (as it were), perhaps SFC should hold it?

Thanks for your input, Bryce!

brynn


-----Original Message----- 
From: Bryce Harrington
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2019 9:47 PM
To: brynn
Cc: Inkscape User Community ; Inkscape-Devel
Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] rules and guidelines for new forum - first draft

On Wed, Mar 13, 2019 at 11:07:14PM -0600, brynn wrote:
> Hi Friends,
>        As it turned out, only me and a couple of other people were
> interested in drafting the rules and guidelines for the new forum.  So we
> can get more eyes on it, and possibly more professional opinions about it,
> I'd like to ask the community to have a look at it.

Yay!  It's awesome seeing this task has come along so well.

>        I have no background in writing such documents, so it's purely a
> layperson's whack at it.  I feel quite confident about the contents, based
> on my years of experience in Inkscape forums.  But the format of the
> document, and possibly some of the language might need some technical
> advice.
>
>        So any an all comments and suggestions about the format or language
> are very welcome.
>
> https://gitlab.com/inkscape/vectors/content/blob/master/articles/Forum%20Rules%20and%20Guidelines/ForumRulesText.md
>
>        (I've left it locked to editing, so everyone sees the same doc, for
> this first review.  Then I'll unlock it afterwards.)

"Prerequisites for being a moderator"

  * Age requirements
  * Time availability

  It also mentions requiring previous experience as a forum moderator
  (on an external forum I suppose?)  I take it you expect there's going
  to be plenty enough people with past experience?

"Moderator Duties and Responsibilities"

#3:  On mailing lists, I've found the phrase "Let's all keep discussions
civil" to work well and have the desired effect, and would suggest
including that phrasing here too.

In addition to Inactive Moderators, can you add some guidance on what
steps to do if a moderator is not behaving acceptably?  I'm imagining
this might either be a unanimous vote of the other moderators, or
perhaps if that won't work, some kind of escalation to a higher
authority, or something.  I'm imagining this will be exceedingly rare,
but having a process spelled out might help it be even more rare.  ;-)

"Complaints"

I think some text may be worth adding here regarding, "What if I feel a
moderator is treating me unfairly?"  Escalating to the CoC is
appropriate for major issues, but for minor complaints about a moderator
it may be better if there is some guidance on how to address it within
the forum moderation team.

The Forum Etiquette section is great, and I wonder if it should be at
the top of the document, since that's probably what you want *everyone*
to read.  Unless your plan is to have this officially live here, but cut
and paste it into appropriate areas of the forum.

Thanks for working on this, it reads very easy and as a lot of common
sense.  It'll make a great foundation to build on.

Bryce

> Thank you very much,
> brynn
>
> PS - I'm also posting about this in the forums.
>
>
>
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