Moderating our Spaces

• Spaces:
  • Irc
  • email
  • blog
  • trac
  • Any other communication channels we host and where we interact with the community at large

Why are some mailing lists better than others? - some lists have a better "vibe" - some lists have fewer people than others

• Community council can mediate issues regarding moderation but would prefer to have a separate group of moderators

• There are guidelines for how to deal with blog comments

  • it can be hard to both write a blog post and then have to moderate the blog post, and answer comments

• moderation consumes both time and emotional energy BUT somebody has to do it, preferably more than one person

  • How can we have that better funded?
  • Previously we had "community manager" roles
    • however, we were just "consuming" mood levels and not interacting back with users

• PROPOSAL:

  • Teams could elect a person from the team to moderate a given list
  • This would rotate every 6 months

• We have issues with weekend coverage, How do other projects deal with this?

  • people are on there on the weekend because it's not their day job and they have enough people volunteering that this can be covered

• What can we do differently with email

  • Moderate ALL mailing lists

• Can we get rid of any noisy not-useful channels that have low signal to noise ration?

  • Which would those be?
    • network team blog comments may be a good candiate for this?
  • Maybe we have too many things that we have to control
  • Not all the mailing lists are equally important (?!?!)

• the broader communication channels are unfortunately the ones that are more prone to toxic posts/threads

• moderators can experience backlash

  • how can we protect our moderators?

• All moderators need to be on the same page

  • there needs to be some sort of process for appealing moderator decisions
  • presenting a united front vs. ability to "save face"/change your mind

• channel for moderators that have technical access to moderate spaces to coordinate, communicate and discuss moderation decisions

• blog and mailing lists are now moderated

  • trac and irc are still issues
    • we may have some labour-intensive solutions for irc

• What do other projects that are on irc do about this?

  • we are on the frontlines we need to lead the way with solutions

• better documentation on how the irc bot works

• Existing Mailing list moderation guidelines/heuristics should be a good starting point

  • we should publish these

• Create a mailing list for moderators?