Hi, Hello! This is Yaz / saintmedusa reporting in about what’s planned for our week. We’ve got big decisions on the horizon and desired changes to our governance floating all around us. In response to desires to transision away from Core as a decision making body and to gear up to making high-stakes descisions collectively about funding, this week kicks off a series of Town Halls. We’re gonna build skills and trust together as we move towards big decisions. See the Town Hall Series Outline for more information and necessary context!
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Important things to know about!
- A Town Hall is happening this Friday, October 15th during the time the Weekly Update normally takes place - 11am PST.
- Weekly Update will be happening asynchronously in this Roam Note.
- There will be another Facilitated Discussion happening this week! In the same spirit of the “What is Cred To You?” conversation that I facilitated September 21st, there will be another this Wednesday at 2:30 pst. Read more about it below.
- To be prepared for Town Hall, please checkout the Town Hall Series Outline for a little 101 on some of the consensus-building practices that were workshopped in Core ( as introduced by Thena and Ryeder).
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Proposed Code of Conduct (CoC)
- Here’s the proposed Code of Conduct we’ll be collectively ratifying during Friday’s Town Hall.
- This is a CoC specifically for entering and interacting on our Discord. More specific CoCs may be called for for different parts of sourceCred’s function. For example, Product/Dev Circle is talking about a Circle-specific CoC.
- Please leave comments, if you like! This link for content comments, this link for semantic/grammatical comments.
- DM me (saintmedusa, Yaz) on Discord if you need help with access.
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Why a CoC
- Communities need boundaries. Having boundaries for how we interact with each other is important for community retension, reducing burnout, protecting one another, and making our platforms safer spaces for a wider variety of people. When online spaces don’t have boundaries, historically, bad behavior can run rampant and force out the kinds of people we want at sourceCred.
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What a CoC is Not
- A Code of Conduct is not a Mission, Vision, Values statement. While a CoC is certainly a reflection of the values of a community, it is more specifically a statement of boundaries and an outline of response to boundary violations. Next week, we have a whole Town Hall process around Mission Vision and Values. Stay tuned!
- A CoC is not a statement on the intent of the person who crosses any of the outlined boundaries. People make mistakes, act out of ignorance, and act out of trauma or wounds. Ideally, the response to a CoC report always takes into account that on the other side of a username is a whole human.
- A CoC should not be a justification for people to play out narratives of punishment for the sake of feeling more powerful. Moderation teams in charge of responding to CoC reports must strive to be self-aware when taking on moderation responsibilities.
- A CoC is not a transformative justice process. It’s a set of protective measures.
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What’s Missing: CoC Report Response Policy
- A written CoC is the first step. Most of the journey is how we respond to Code of Conduct reports. What happens when the boundaries we’ve agreed on have been crossed? If you’re immediately overwhelmed even just starting to think about it, don’t panic! Much has been written on this subject already. This free eBook, How To Respond to Code of Conduct Reports, is a great resource to look over what wisdom has come out of other communities’ iterations and research when it comes to responding to CoC violations.
- Once we’ve got a version of the CoC we agree on, the next step will be to talk about moderation on our Discord server. Moderators will be the people who receive reports and respond and/or delegate response.
- Discord has some pretty advanced tooling for moderation, so the biggest things to tackle are defining the role of moderation and writing up some policy on how moderation responds to CoC reports.
- If we have time in this week’s Town Hall after ratifying a CoC, we can begin ideation around these subjects.
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Wednesday Pre-Discussion: Boundaries
- September 21st’s discussion on “What is Cred to You?” was a nice space to ideate, make meaning collectively, and get some perspective on some of the history of ideas that have floated around sourceCred’s different iterations. People were excited by the prospect of a regular discussion series. This is a continuation of that thread!
- Additionally, to prep us for more of a straight-forward decision making space that will be presented in Friday’s Town Hall, it will be nice to have a space to ideate without a specific outcome in mind. Ideally, if we have this time on Wednesday to discuss our ideas, thoughts, and concerns around boundaries, we may feel more collectively ready to make decisions on Friday.
- The concept of Boundaries is at the core of why a Code of Conduct is necessary. If you are completely new to the concept of inter-personal boundaries, checkout this article.
- A concept worth considering during our discussions about boundaries:
- (Source: How to Respond to Code of Conduct Reports link)
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Example/Source CoCs
