[Policy] Tweeting/posting guidelines for appropriateness
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Description

We need guidelines to know what is appropriate and what not. While it is true that impactful messages may garner more visibility, we have to establish clear limits to avoid offending and alienating our userbase.

paulb created this task.Apr 28 2017, 11:52 AM

For example, from experience: jokes involving Trump are out :-/

Also critiquing other FLOSS projects or comparing them negatively to our own is not in good taste.

Although making fun or criticising big , predatory providers of proprietary software is fair game in my books, it is bit old unless they are in the news for something particularly egregious that hurts FLOSS. However, slagging off Microsoft and Apple is maybe better left to the FSFE.

Thoughts?

apol added a subscriber: apol.Apr 28 2017, 12:31 PM

I think the important thing is to make sure that the message is always positive and pro-active.

Some important values I think that we certainly want to spread are:

  • Pragmatism. Valuing actual work and contributions.
  • Friendliness. Whenever we have shared goals, play along with those who are.
  • Pride. Showing where KDE contributes in the bigger picture of the technology world.

Take into account that KDE works beyond GNU/Linux. For example, while we have the Plasma Phone, we also have several successful KDE Applications working on Android.

Aleix's points are excellent.

Braindump from me:

  • "Pick big fights with your enemies instead of small fights with your friends."
  • We have organisations and companies among our sponsors/patrons/advisory board/affiliates. They deserve special care.
  • We should reflect our community and values: global, multicultural, open minded, privacy-conscious, fighting for our users, political only in so far as it affects our work and values, a willingness to teach and help people grow.
  • Everyone has something to contribute to KDE and we should reflect that in our messaging - KDE is about more than writing code.
  • We value contribution over talk and our messaging should reflect that.

Inspiration can be drawn from KDE's code of conduct. I regularly point users to it, since I find it a useful resource of simple yet effective guidelines.

Great points all around. I think there are 2 other important aspects that we should discuss and include within this task:

1) deciding the appropriate language/tone of our social media posts
2) deciding how to respond to criticism and deal with potential conflict on social media

For 1), we could distinguish between our brand voice (the overall "vibe" or personality of our brand) and tone (specific way of communicating depending on context).
The tone will be different in social media posts and our official announcements, which is normal, but the voice should be consistent with the values that we want to promote, which is what you've all listed here.

When we look at the values listed here, in the KDE Manifesto and the CoC, we can see some overlaps, and deduce what our voice should look/sound like: friendly, open-minded, inclusive, helpful...
From this we can derive some general guidelines for the language we'll use: not too much technical jargon, not too cold and corporate, not too serious yet not immature or filled with memes...

  • While it's not possible to "force" everyone to write social media posts in the same way, we should strive to be consistent. This means that, if we agree to write in a semi-professional language, there shouldn't be social media posts full of slang.
  • We should also be careful with attempts at humor - it doesn't always translate well, and what's funny in one culture can be offensive in another. The KDE Community spans the entire globe, so we have to remember this.
  • We need to make sure to use our own terms properly - refer to Plasma Desktop and not "KDE" as the desktop environment etc.

Some examples of how we can further illustrate this:
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/brand-voice-chart-600x433.jpg
https://bufferblog-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/tone-of-voice-31.png

You can also look at other FOSS projects to see how they do it. Just looking at their Twitter accounts, you can tell that Firefox has a very casual approach, they use informal language, a lot of emoji, and try to be relatable by referring to popular culture (Star Wars, memes...). openSUSE are relying on their chameleon to create a connection with users, and they RT mentions of their brand. Ubuntu's tweets are full of CTAs, almost every single one has some invitation to action (join us, do you agree, learn about X, watch our Y...). RedHat keeps it pretty formal, but they rely on images a lot - almost all of their tweets have an image. They also use a lot of hashtags.

Once we have agreed on 1), it should be easier to decide how to deal with 2).
Not all criticism will be worth replying to (things like insults or obvious flamebait). Our responses should be consistent with our voice, and aim to provide some value instead of just serving as apologies.
I also think that social media in general, and especially Twitter, is not a particularly suitable place for troubleshooting hardware and software issues.
Maybe we should point the users to other, more appropriate places (forums, IRC?) when it becomes obvious that a problem is not easy to solve.

aacid added a subscriber: aacid.Apr 30 2017, 10:39 PM

Great points all around. I think there are 2 other important aspects that we should discuss and include within this task:

2) deciding how to respond to criticism and deal with potential conflict on social media

IMHO the best course of action is either "don't answer" for trolls or "point people somewhere else bugzilla/forums/maling lists" that expect "support over twitter"

James added a subscriber: James.May 2 2017, 8:19 PM
In T5974#91648, @aacid wrote:

IMHO the best course of action is either "don't answer" for trolls or "point people somewhere else bugzilla/forums/maling lists" that expect "support over twitter"

We might think about changing the "Resources" heading on the bottom of KDE.org to be "Resources and Help". Whether this happens or not, a link to the official forums could be added, so we could point users there. As the front face of KDE, Promo needs an easy answer on social media and in general discussions to connect users to solve problems. The forums seem a great place to do that. Combined with Userbase (which is already linked there), this would be a good place to steer people looking for help, and allow Promo to have a consistent response that a) does not distract from the main goal of promoting KDE, and b) provides a consistent point to guide users.

In regards to language and tone, as long as a particular communication fits within the CoC, I'm OK with it. We still want to allow an individual's personalities to be able to come out when possible and not seem robotic or sterile.

aacid added a comment.May 2 2017, 8:26 PM
In T5974#92144, @James wrote:

We might think about changing the "Resources" heading on the bottom of KDE.org to be "Resources and Help".

The good page to link is https://www.kde.org/support/ but that was unlinked from everywhere when kde.org rework because the rework wasn't very well executed sadly.

paulb added a comment.May 4 2017, 6:04 AM

IMHO the best course of action is either "don't answer" for trolls or "point people somewhere else bugzilla/forums/maling lists" that expect "support over twitter"

I would tend to agree with this, but use tact. It is clear that Twitter is not the best place for support, but it must not seem like you are blowing them off. You can partially answer the question or request clarification and then send them somewhere else. Like that the user will feel you are taking an active interest in their problem, which makes people feel good.

For example:

Them: I am having problems with Kdenlive. It keeps crashing when I try to load in a MOV file.
You: Hi What version are you using?
Them: Version XYZ

Alternatives:

You: That version is quite old. Maybe you should upgrade to version ABC.

OR

You: Ah! I would take that to the forum at http://efg.com. They are discussing that version there.

By asking the version question, you are proving that you are not just trying to get rid of them.

paulb triaged this task as Low priority.May 13 2017, 10:46 AM
skadinna renamed this task from Tweeting/posting guidelines for appropriateness to [Policy] Tweeting/posting guidelines for appropriateness.Jul 28 2017, 12:44 PM

A discussion about sharing security vulernabilities on the @kdecommunity Twitter account from the #kde-promo IRC/Telegram.

Lucas S, [12.02.18 14:25]
Out of curiosity, why security vulnerabilities are posted on our twitter? https://twitter.com/kdecommunity/status/961512167408308225?s=20

KDE IRC Relay Service, [12.02.18 14:27]
<tosky> uhm, why not? They are important communications that needs to reach more people (and luckily happening rarely)

Lucas S, [12.02.18 14:29]
yes, they should be posted but not on our social channels

Ivana Isadora D., [12.02.18 14:29]
But where else would you post them??

Ivana Isadora D., [12.02.18 14:29]
They get posted on the website

Lucas S, [12.02.18 14:29]
Somewhere hidden

Ivana Isadora D., [12.02.18 14:30]
I don't think that's a good idea...people need to know

Nate Graham, [12.02.18 14:30]
I agree, these aren't exactly, um, promotional materials 😉

Lucas S, [12.02.18 14:30]
On some public mailing list maybe?

Michael @TuxDigital.com, [12.02.18 14:31]
[In reply to Lucas S]
I agree entirely . . . promoting security issues is not very good marketing

Ivana Isadora D., [12.02.18 14:31]
They're not promotional materials, true, but announcing those things aligns with the spirit of transparency and FOSS, doesn't it? Wouldn't it look bad and suspicious if we started "hiding" those things?

Ivana Isadora D., [12.02.18 14:31]
To me it would, but hey, I'm not the one who posted that on social media anyway, so...

Nate Graham, [12.02.18 14:31]
there's a big difference between hiding and highlighting

Michael @TuxDigital.com, [12.02.18 14:31]
if people are interested in seeing them they can find them. They should be on the website but promoting them is very different

Nate Graham, [12.02.18 14:32]
no need to hide them, but these will tarnish the KDE brand in users' eyes, not strengthen it

Michael @TuxDigital.com, [12.02.18 14:32]
[In reply to Nate Graham]
exactly

Nate Graham, [12.02.18 14:32]
as such, they are really anti-promotional

Ilya Bizyaev, [12.02.18 14:32]
I agree that security issues need to be public, but... it's not something you expect to see on a community Twitter page 😬

Ivana Isadora D., [12.02.18 14:32]
Take the discussion to Phabricator then, there's a task about the social media policy

Ivana Isadora D., [12.02.18 14:32]
This should go there

Michael @TuxDigital.com, [12.02.18 14:33]
people expect security shared on twitter to be vital info that users need to know . . . so something like meltdown, spectre, krack, etc yes but just general fixes, nah. An alternative could be to have a KDESecurity account for exclusively that if you want.

My take on this:

  • this is not a promo-only topic, and should be discussed on kde-community@ list
  • this is about the scope of the @kdecommunity twitter account, and I find those security information relevant enough to be broadcasted widely.
aacid removed a subscriber: aacid.Feb 12 2018, 9:21 PM
James added a comment.Feb 15 2018, 4:19 PM

Michael @TuxDigital.com, [12.02.18 14:33]
people expect security shared on twitter to be vital info that users need to know . . . so something like meltdown, spectre, krack, etc yes but just general fixes, nah. An alternative could be to have a KDESecurity account for exclusively that if you want.

These types of 'status accounts' are common. A good open source example is Kolab. They have their normal Twitter accounts for news / promo / announcements, and additionally have a Kolab Operations account for announcements that fall outside of the normal stuff. Perhaps a good idea?

During the Promo sprint last weekend we created a list of social media guidelines that cover most of the points raised in this discussion.

The guidelines will be published on the wiki; until then, the task will remain in Review.

paulb closed this task as Resolved.Jun 1 2018, 11:59 AM