Develop Social Media Access Policy
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

  • Brainstorm and discuss conditions a contributor has to fulfil before they can directly access social media
  • Brainstorm and discuss actions that can get a contributor banned from access to social media
  • Compile into list
  • Polish and publish in Wiki
paulb created this task.Aug 21 2018, 11:50 PM
paulb triaged this task as Normal priority.
abetts added a subscriber: abetts.Aug 22 2018, 3:49 AM

I had an idea, not imposing, only proposing:

  • Have a 6 moth or yearly review of activity for those users with access to the social media handles
  • Determine is said user is actively participating of the team
  • Determine to renew access to social media

This can help with allowing more Promo active members be able to help with social media and at the same time determining which contributors should keep their access.

Another idea

  • Change passwords for social media every 6 months or yearly

This is just good practice overall.

I had an idea, not imposing, only proposing:

  • Have a 6 moth or yearly review of activity for those users with access to the social media handles

Yes. Also use social media account administration tools if they are available (think Facebook's user admin thing or Twitters tweetdeck). They make handing our and rescinding privileges easier.

  • Determine is said user is actively participating of the team

Agreed. We have to also decide what "actively participating" means. Does it mean participating in every bi-weekly meeting or just, say, half? Helping complete a task a month? What?

  • Determine to renew access to social media

    This can help with allowing more Promo active members be able to help with social media and at the same time determining which contributors should keep their access.

    Another idea
  • Change passwords for social media every 6 months or yearly

And make sure all participants with access have squeaky-clean track record. A public smear on one of our official accounts could be terrible. Despite parallelisms being drawn with sysadmin policies, Promo is different in that you can't restore your reputation from a backup.

This is just good practice overall.

Are we completely against limiting the total number of people who can have access to a social media account, or is this a suggestion worth discussing?

Are we completely against limiting the total number of people who can have access to a social media account, or is this a suggestion worth discussing?

I am not. As I see it, having a potentially unlimited number of users access social media could devolve into chaos. I would like to hear arguments that may disprove this, though.

Are we completely against limiting the total number of people who can have access to a social media account, or is this a suggestion worth discussing?

I'm not completely against but it goes against how every other KDE team works (except e.V. which is exceptional as it has legal accountability). Generally in computing a zero, one, infinity rule exists and the same could be said to apply to community teams, arbirary limits just make it more closed than necessary.

I'm not completely against but it goes against how every other KDE team works (except e.V. which is exceptional as it has legal accountability). Generally in computing a zero, one, infinity rule exists and the same could be said to apply to community teams, arbirary limits just make it more closed than necessary.

Those are good points, thank you. Sorry, I'm not familiar with how all other KDE teams work, but do you know if any community member can get the rights to, for example, merge code into the master branch? Or is this something reserved for project leaders only?

We might not have legal accountability, but as Paul highlighted previously, KDE's reputation is an important factor here.

I put the points I spoke about in the meeting in a document. Feel free to edit and fill in the gaps.

https://notes.kde.org/p/promo-account-policy

KDE developer accounts give direct git access to all code in every KDE project, you can get one on being referred by a couple of existing holders who will have checked you can do competant work and follow the social rules. Same goes for web access or release team access which are just as critical. It's what enables community to grow and people to feel welcomed and want to contribute.

paulb added a comment.EditedAug 22 2018, 4:09 PM

I am not sure this is the same as having access to a megaphone that lets you talk instantaneously to 100,000s of followers, including sponsors past, present and future, and several media outlets and government institutions.

What would be the equivalent in your example of, say, posting a porn image to Twitter, or a Facebook post disparaging a sponsor, or insulting a group of users, all posted from the official KDE accounts?

Companies keep a really tight reign on their accounts for a reason. As mentioned above, repairing your reputation is not the same as restoring a backup. The former is much more trickier.

Maybe the solution is to have an extremely stringent vetting process before giving people access.

I write isoimagewriter which runs as root on computers, I could easily add code to take a photo from the user's camera and upload it to a revenge porn website and reap in the money. release-team members can do the same to tars we put on download.kde.org. web team members could put a photo with a bunch of naked KDE developers on kde.org, even commenting on phabricator I could link to this classic https://www.flickr.com/photos/jriddell/11502661506/sizes/l
Getting access to KDE accounts is a privilage, but the social setup of community review means it doesn't happen

your example is a bit of stretch and requires much more work and technical know-how than just pressing "Tweet". Because that is my main concern: it is so easy to put an organisation's reputation in jeopardy with one click.

Note I am not arguing for anything arbitrary or unfair, but for a very strict vetting process before assigning direct access privileges to contributors, because of the particularities of social media publishing.

Maybe we should start laying out what the criteria would be and like that we are sure to find common ground. Otherwise we are discussing hypotheticals.

Sorry to derail the discussion, but I have another question: would it make sense to include something like "post approval rules" in this policy?

Meaning, define some rules for how a person with social media access should approach the whole Promo team with an idea to post something. For example, specify how many other team members need to approve the post, or how long to wait for feedback before going forward and posting something. Or is this just nitpicking and unnecessarily complicating everything? ๐Ÿ˜…

I'm only asking because I don't think we have it defined anywhere, but on the other hand, maybe it doesn't need to be so strictly defined. So I'd love to hear your thoughts.

paulb added a comment.EditedAug 24 2018, 4:34 PM

It may be slightly off topic, but we could work on expanding this in another task. Something like "Establishing rules for social media posting".

Although part of the policy for accessing social media must include: "Strictly follow rules for posting as described here."

Tangentially related: kde-promo mailing list administration. That doesn't give any posting power, at best it gives the power to filter out posts by non-members to that list (e.g. you can stop spam, and very very rarely stop actual mail from non-subscribers). Right now Lydia and I do that (small) bit of administration, but it should be added to the "things promo keeps track of".

Sorry to derail the discussion, but I have another question: would it make sense to include something like "post approval rules" in this policy?

Sure go ahead. Although it might also overlap with https://community.kde.org/Promo/Guidance/DosDonts#Social_Media

Two weeks after discussing this at the meeting nobody has made any suggestions for the remaining details

paulb added a comment.Sep 3 2018, 12:53 PM

Yes... Several things came in the way, mainly Educode and the report. It looks like we have a bit of a breather now and we have another meeting this pm. Let's push forward and get it done.

paulb added a comment.EditedSep 3 2018, 5:15 PM

Adapted and expanded from the notes:

The KDE promo account holders have responsibility for posting prompt, accurate, helpful and relevant content to KDE Dot News and various social media platforms. It's a self-regulating group which welcomes KDE community members. As with other restricted accounts such as Git or web or release team, access is controlled to ensure quality. Here's how we let people in:

  1. You must be familiar and able to communicate with the many teams in KDE
  2. You must want to play an active part in promoting KDE and its software
  3. You have a track record of X months [HOW MANY?] contributing to KDE promo. Come and hang out in our channel and help craft our stories. This means: A) You must attend at least 1/2 the bi-weekly meetings (that is about 1 hour a month -- not hard at all) B) You must take on and resolve to completion at least 1 promo task a year
  4. You must have shown an ability to follow good practice and follow our rules
  5. You must have shown an ability to create high quality writing or review others work to a high standard
  6. You must scrupulously follow and have followed in the past KDE's CoC
  7. Must not disparage, offend, intend to offend, or badmouth any group, company, organisation, or individual within or without KDE from KDE's official accounts
  8. If you have had access to KDE's social media accounts before, you must have a clean slate with regard to the above to be eligible
  9. You must be able to work effectively with the rest of the promo team. This includes ALWAYS submitting your posts for revision and taking on board suggestions before posting
  10. Who has access will be reviewed every 6 months to ensure holders are still active
  11. If you post inappropriate content your access will be removed. No second chances. No appeals.
  12. Account holders are listed at https://community.kde.org/Promo/People/social_media

Sysadmin has admin access to all accounts to ensure access can continue even when people move on.

  1. B. You must take on and resolve to completion at least 1 promo task a year

A potential problem with this is that not all tasks are equally complex or broad in scope. Someone may take on a task of analyzing social media data that could take weeks to complete, while someone else can write a blog post in a day or two that counts as a standalone task. I'm just worried that situations like this could arise, and that they could (rightfully?) be perceived as unfair.

adridg added a comment.Sep 4 2018, 9:43 AM

For *3B*, that's an attempt to quantify "you must be active in promo". Maybe it quantifies "you must be active in promo and do more than just push the button on social media accounts". I think *10* provides a mechanism to handle inactivity. Where exactly is the unfairness? Someone who takes on only high-effort tasks does more work to qualify for *3B*, but they could also do a low-effort one once, if the high-effort ones are all failing.

'You must take on and resolve to completion at least 1 promo task a year' seems a bit blunt, making a twitter post is trivial but running a stall somewhere is lots of work. I think just 'be actively contributing to promo tasks' would do.

' reviewed every 6 months' seems a good timeframe but then drop the 1 year from the above so they can match.

' track record of X months' 3 months maybe fair?

@adridg You're right; perhaps "unfairness" is not exactly the word I was looking for. What I'm getting at is - shouldn't we try to define both the quantifying and the qualifying parts in the policy?

Meaning, you must do X things in Y time BUT ALSO those X things have to be at a certain level of complexity.

I don't expect we'll have people coming in every day saying "hey, I wrote one blog post this year about Plasma, can I get access to Twitter", but it seems like a good idea to have a "safety measure" in the policy against such edge cases. On the other hand, I realize that adding so many restrictions could be perceived as if we're trying to gatekeep access and prevent people from contributing, which is not ideal either.

paulb added a comment.Sep 4 2018, 10:18 AM

'You must take on and resolve to completion at least 1 promo task a year' seems a bit blunt, making a twitter post is trivial but running a stall somewhere is lots of work. I think just 'be actively contributing to promo tasks' would do.

Not to bikeshed too much, but the problem is that the wording "contribute to promo tasks" is a bit ambiguous, and taking responsibility for workboard tasks will help solve several problems:

1.- It gives us a way of objectively defining "contributing to promo"
2.- It will help to clear backlog
3.- It will help curb the fly-by "ideas", those suggestions made by people who suggest something, but never actually working on the idea. By working this into this rather important milestone of a policy, I was hoping to press home how much more important executing to completion is, than just dropping an idea on the group is.

Those are my three reasons for suggesting the change. I also get @skadinna 'sobjection, but, even if we do tweak it, I would like to keep it in some shape or form.

' reviewed every 6 months' seems a good timeframe but then drop the 1 year from the above so they can match.

The year thing from 3B?

' track record of X months' 3 months maybe fair?

3 months isn't long at all. Maybe stick with the 6 months yardstick throughout?

3 months isn't long at all. Maybe stick with the 6 months yardstick throughout?

yeah that works

paulb added a comment.Sep 4 2018, 10:33 AM

What I am trying to say is that here is where the real work gets done and a lot of people don't come here because... I don't know... It is intimidating? If it is only @skadinna and myself, things tend to get stuck as there are not enough hours in a day to get through all the stuff on the workboard. So one of the most important ways of contributing to Promo right now is coming to the workboard and helping get tasks unstuck. I don't know how you want to express that, but this would be a true way of measuring commitment to the group.

abetts added a comment.Sep 4 2018, 2:35 PM

Can I ask when this report will be available?

paulb added a comment.EditedSep 7 2018, 12:41 PM

FINAL DRAFT

The KDE promo account holders have responsibility for posting prompt, accurate, helpful and relevant content to KDE Dot News and various social media platforms. It's a self-regulating group which welcomes KDE community members. As with other restricted accounts such as Git or web or release team, access is controlled to ensure quality. Here's how we let people in:

  1. You must be familiar and able to communicate with the many teams in KDE
  2. You must want to play an active part in promoting KDE and its software
  3. You have a track record of 6 months contributing to KDE promo. Come and hang out in our channel and help craft our stories. This means:
    1. You must attend at least 1/2 the bi-weekly meetings (about 1 hour a month)
    2. You must take on and resolve to completion at least 1 promo task every 6 months
  4. You must have shown an ability to follow good practice and follow our rules
  5. You must have shown an ability to create high quality writing or review others work to a high standard
  6. You must scrupulously follow and have followed in the past KDE's CoC
  7. Must not disparage, offend, intend to offend, or badmouth any group, company, organisation, or individual within or without KDE from KDE's official accounts
  8. If you have had access to KDE's social media accounts before, you must have a clean slate with regard to the above to be eligible
  9. You must be able to work effectively with the rest of the promo team. This includes ALWAYS submitting your posts for revision and taking on board suggestions before posting
  10. Who has access will be reviewed every 6 months to ensure holders are still active
  11. If you post inappropriate content* your access will be removed. No second chances. No appeals.
  12. Account holders are listed at https://community.kde.org/Promo/People/social_media

Sysadmin has admin access to all accounts to ensure access can continue even when people move on.

\* Inappropriate content is:

  • Off topic
  • Derogatory or discriminatory to a group
  • Passive aggressive
  • Insulting to a company, organisation. or person (do not confuse with c ritical)
  • Seeking personal gain
  • and so on

Sorry to derail the discussion, but I have another question: would it make sense to include something like "post approval rules" in this policy?

Meaning, define some rules for how a person with social media access should approach the whole Promo team with an idea to post something. For example, specify how many other team members need to approve the post, or how long to wait for feedback before going forward and posting something. Or is this just nitpicking and unnecessarily complicating everything? ๐Ÿ˜…

I'm only asking because I don't think we have it defined anywhere, but on the other hand, maybe it doesn't need to be so strictly defined. So I'd love to hear your thoughts.

This is actually a good idea.

What is the current process of posting something on a KDE account? I.e, how do you collaborate with other people who have access before posting something? is there some scheduling involved (perhaps on a pad) to decide the order, time, content?

A rather simple process would be:

  • The person with access wishing to post something pings the rest of people with access
  • They get some majority approval
  • They decide on the time and content
  • The post is scheduled and posted when due

My impression is that this is already done by @paulb and @skadinna so far, at least I've seen it happen in the Promo channels, so why not make it the standard process for all that have access?

skadinna closed this task as Resolved.Oct 10 2018, 3:34 PM