Talk Rational Community Philosophy

[Octavia]

In an attempt to reduce stickies and keep everything in the same place, we're going to use this thread to keep track of the community we'd like to build here at Talk Rational. Posts will be added as we get policies and guidelines mapped out.

If you have questions or suggestions of things we can add, please feel free to start a thread in the Town Hall for community input. :)

ADMIN NOTE:

These guidelines are in part superceded by the TR Charter (http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=8130). We're in the process of updating the thread. Assume that in cases where this thread is in disagreement with the charter, that the charter prevails.

Thanks,

Raven
TR Admin

[Octavia]

1. Members should not do anything that places anyone here at undue risk of criminal or civil legal action.*

2. Members should not violate the privacy of other members, or attempt to cause trouble in anyone's personal life beyond this discussion board. This includes posting their email address without permission - no-one likes spam-bots!

3. Members should not threaten or otherwise unduly harass any other member.

4. Anyone who fucks around with the hardware, software, security, or administration of this board (or any member of this board) will be at least banned, and prosecuted if applicable.

5. Members should not violate confidentiality by sharing any restricted content with anyone who isn't authorized to view it.

6. Members should at least try to follow the instructions given by moderators in threads and in PMs, and not willfully create messes that the moderators will have to clean up.

7. Members should not use multiple accounts without letting the staff know. Sockpuppets created to avoid following the rules are not allowed.

8. Members should not attempt to hinder the free and open exchange of ideas on TalkRational, nor should they attempt to disrupt the community.

9. No spam and no advertisements. Self-promotion should be cleared with the staff first.

*Note that copyright violations place the site at legal risk. If a member is unsure of whether or not material falls within fair use limits, a staff member should be contacted prior to posting.

[Octavia]

1. Moderators (as well as Admins) are here to serve as a resource to members, and to assure that Talk Rational! remains a place where people want to be. Tyranny in any form is not welcome.

2. Moderators are also members, which means that all the member rules and rights apply to them.

3. Mods should act professionally and should not allow their personal feelings to seep through their mod hats. Mods should lead by example.

4. Moderators should not deliberately misuse administrative features.

5. Moderators should be proactive as the hosts of Talk Rational! forums. That includes promoting discussions by splitting off interesting tangents, starting new discussions when things slow down, and participating in threads.

6. Moderators should try their best to be responsive to the needs of the members.

7. Moderators should strive to be fair and impartial. When participating in discussions in their forum, moderators should be aware that moderating actions performed in those discussions could be construed as a lack of impartiality, and should recuse themselves as seems appropriate.

8. Moderators should monitor the actions of other moderators and admins to ensure that they adhere to the member guidelines as well as the moderator guidelines listed herein.

9. Edits, splits, merges, and deletions should be clearly marked as such, and links to other relevant threads should be included whenever possible.

10. Moderators are expected to monitor Active Reports, and to respond (if only by signifying agreement) to posts there.

11. Recognizing that written rules cannot cover all possible questionable situations and that the rules are more like firm guidelines rather than mechanical filters, in questionable situations moderators will exercise judgement to moderate in a manner consistent with the spirit of the rules and the goals of Talk Rational, subject to the review procedures that are available.

[Octavia]

Whistle-blowing is publicly disclosing information from the staff forum in order to bring the attention of TR posters to an issue the whistle-blower feels is of direct and immediate importance. TR recognises that whistle-blowing can be an ethical action done to relieve an ethical dilemma. Moreover, TR is committed to making mods, admins, and ombudsmen accountable to forum members. Pursuant to maintaining this commitment, TR encourages responsible whistle-blowing as a check against staff corruption.

It is contrary to the philosophy of TR to penalise staff for whistle-blowing. That being said, whistle-blowers should minimise potential damage to TR by recognising that:

They do not have authority to leak personal information (such as staff contact details) and that this should be stripped from the original material before posting.
In order to minimise false interpretations, they should where-ever possible quote directly rather than paraphrase.
They should make a good faith effort to have their concerns addressed by other staff members and the ombudsman (if one is active at the moment) before taking it to the posters.

[Octavia]

The Role of the Ombudsman

The role of Ombudsman at Talk Rational! is to provide assistance in resolving disputes between staff and posters or among staff in circumstances where normal conflict resolution has not worked.

The Ombudsman is concerned with the process by which staff decisions are made about matters in the Staff Phorum and in Active Reports. The Ombudsman has access to both forums at need, but does not participate in discussions -- the Ombudsman is not part of "staff" and has access only in an observer role except as noted below.

The focus of the Ombudsman is on process. That is: the Ombudsman's task is to identify whether or not staff have followed procedures consistent with the Moderator Guidelines. In cases where such procedures have not been followed, the Ombudsman's task is also to assess whether the deviation from procedures was in the best interest of the community, staff, and the founding principles of the board. The Ombudsman does not re-make staff decisions or second guess the substance of decisions.

The Ombudsman is not an advocate for one or the other side in a dispute. The Ombudsman gathers information, encourages discussion, and in an instance where necessary, initiates public discussion of a contentious issue.

The Ombudsman's first duty is to review the appropriate materials in the Staff Phorum, to which he or she is given read-only access. Then, if the Ombudsman deems it appropriate, in a sub-forum open to staff, the Ombudsman, and the complainant, the Ombudsman initiates a discussion of the procedural issues associated with the event. Staff, Ombudsman, and the complainant participate in that discussion.

If the Ombudsman is not satisfied that the complaint is appropriately resolved in that private forum, then a thread in Town Hall may be initiated to discuss the matter. Again, only staff, the Ombudsman, and the complainant post in that thread, though a tightly moderated peanut gallery thread may be started.

Selection Procedure

The position of Ombudsman is a temporary one, with an Ombudsman chosen for each instance requiring mediation. The Ombudsman for a given complaint/instance is selected in a multi-stage process.

First, the affected member posts a request for an Ombudsman to mediate a matter in Town Hall. Other members of TR post in that thread only to register agreement; if within 48 hours 2.5% of the current active membership or 20 members, whichever is larger, concur with the request, then the process proceeds to nominating candidates.

Second, candidates are offered. Anyone except the complainant and current staff may be nominated, and self-nominations are appropriate. The Administrators by a majority vote may veto any nominations. Nominations are open for 48 hours.

Third, the Ombudsman is elected in the following manner. The names of the candidates are listed in a multi-choice poll. We emphasise that people should vote for all candidates they approve of rather than just voting for their favourite candidate. Voting is open for 48 hours. The candidate with the most votes is the Ombudsman for that instance, and remains until the situation is resolved.

[ravenscape]

Suspension/Ban Procedure

If you become so disruptive that staff feel that you may warrant a suspension, the following procedure takes place:

You will be contacted with either a specific or more general request about your posts, and a short period (between 0 and 36 hours) in which to comply, or to indicate that you will comply, with the request. If you have not done so by the expiry of this period (whether or not you have been online to receive the request), you will be suspended for a short time-limited period (e.g. 1-7 days). On your return, if you feel the action was unjust, you may make a complaint as usual in either the In Confidence forum or in the Town Hall. If you are not satisfied with the response you receive, you may suggest that an ombudsman is selected to look into the matter. If a minimum number of members (e.g. 20) agree that an investigation is warranted, an ombudsman will be elected by non-staff from a number of nominated candidates. Staff will have the right to veto candidates.

A quorum of one admin and four mods is necessary for any suspension to be given. If, in emergencies, the quorum is not reached (for example, no admin is on the board at the time) it is possible to proceed anyway with a staff quorum either ratifying or reversing the suspension as soon as possible.

If you become so repeatedly disruptive that staff feel that you may warrant a permanent ban, the following procedure takes place:

You will be contacted and asked whether you want the discussion to take place privately or publicly. This gives you the opportunity to offer up any mitigating circumstances in the environment in which you feel most comfortable. The identity of the complainant, where there is one, will not be revealed to you for their privacy.

If you choose the public option, we will start a thread in the Town Hall. Posting ability in that thread will be restricted to staff and yourself. The thread will be closely moderated, and the staff posts and votes public.

If you choose the private option, the discussion and subsequent vote will take place privately, in the In Confidence sub-forum where they will only be visible and post-able to staff and yourself (and also the ombudsman, if one is requested by you).

If you choose to have the discussion privately you are able to switch it back to public at any point, upon request. If you want it to stay private that's your choice and any non-involved but interested parties will have to live with not knowing all the details. Likewise, if you initially opt for public discussion and then want to make it private, this is also allowable upon request. The choice of privacy will be an all-or-nothing-rule, so if you choose to release any extracts from the discussion where the discussion is private, we will release the whole discussion up to that point.

If banned, you will initially be suspended for a period of 48 hours in which you may save and make PMs and conduct any final business. If you abuse this suspension period, it will be cut short.

If you post spam, porn, or malicious links, or are a sock-puppet of a previously banned user, then you will be banned immediately, without going through the above process.


Edit: the above was updated after procedure was amended here (http://www.talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=3836).

[Octavia]

The Founding Principles of TalkRational!

Who are the TalkRats?

This forum was created to serve a community, so it is important to share the defining vision of that community. The community that the founders of this forum envisioned is inclusive of all respectful and thoughtful voices, thriving on a culture that is secular, freethinking, tolerant, outreaching, self-organizing, harmless, inviting, charming, intelligent, progressive, caring, interesting, and fun.

Rational discussion is valued. Respect and dignity are valued, as is the discipline of keeping conversations on track, addressing the subject at hand.

However, it is to be recognized that sometimes discussions can become somewhat robust, and that sometimes a witty or informative aside may be interjected into a discussion, without detracting from a discussion as a whole.

The role of the staff in keeping discussions within reasonable bounds and on-track is discussed below.

People from the non secular community should be made welcome to participate, but they should expect religious and other supernatural views to be subject to close scrutiny.

Statement of Purpose

TR is founded with the mission of service to a growing community of TalkRats. The purpose of TR is to provide a forum where members of the community may have rational discussions on a wide range of topics, without the over interference of abuse and insults, proselytizing, trolling, goading, and other self-serving tactics that do not serve the community as a whole.

The Role of Staff

The staff carry the responsibility for the health of TR, and though they should respectfully consider any suggestions and complaints from the membership as a whole, ultimate responsibility lies with them.

Moderators are hosts to the members, and metaphorically speaking, the gardeners of discussion; the sign of successful moderation is a self-moderating forum that has been guided into its state through care and attention.

Moderators host their assigned subfora, and participate in forum-wide decision making, serving also as representatives of community members committed to the purpose of the forum. Moderation tasks will be guided by the principles of moving rather than editing, reminding rather than infracting, and hosting rather than policing.

Moderators will exercise judgment concerning when robustness of expression reaches the point of excessive insult, and whether comments interjected into discussions constitute derails sufficient to demand splitting posts. If the use of such judgment sometimes leads to minor inconsistencies of approach, this is viewed as preferable to a pharisaical adherence to guidelines.

Administrators coordinate and facilitate forum-wide services, serving as technical and managerial resources to members and staff alike, including resolving difficult and controversial issues; the sign of successful administration is a forum that serves the purpose defined above. It is the job of administrators to help moderators do their jobs, to maintain the health of the community and the forum, and to otherwise ensure that the forum is managed in a way that serves the founding purposes.

In fulfilling these roles, TR staff are understood to be accountable to the community as a whole, and will always prefer community goals and forum purposes over self interest. To ensure that accountability is real, the procedures and guidelines of TR are designed around this principle, though as mentioned above subjective judgment guided by the purpose of TR will always trump legalistic adherence to written policies. Criticism that is motivated by a commitment to the founding vision of this forum will always be respected, listened to with serious consideration, and responded to with grace.

TR staff will be guided by respect for the community as a whole, and for the individual as a representative of the community. TR staff will value the voices of all community members committed to fulfilling the purpose of the forum, regardless of educational background, popularity, or social status. Community-oriented subfora will be valued as highly as academically-oriented subfora.

TR will be a safe and inviting place where the TR community can converse and socialize. All administrative decisions will be guided by this underlying principle.

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FORUM STRUCTURE

Members

Members are the most important part of the community (without them there is no community). However; as the largest group by far, the members are the least able to make decisions since the amount of discussion and disagreement rises exponentially with the size of the group. In addition to this, since there is no bar to membership, any decisions made by the members as a whole may be subject to mob-rule and special-interest bloc-voting. Therefore, the members employ staff to make decisions on their behalf.

Since the staff are working on behalf of the members, the members retain the ability to recall any staff member whose actions do not appear to be benefiting the community from their position by a majority vote <Details to be decided>.

The members as individuals are also responsible for providing feedback to the staff. This is particularly important in three areas: Alerting moderators to things that need doing; Alerting staff to moderator actions that seem to go against the guidelines or to be unfair; and providing consultative input towards ongoing policy decisions.

Moderators

Moderators are responsible for looking after the fora on a day-to-day level. Specifically, most moderators will be assigned to a particular forum (or sometimes more than one) and act as "gardeners" in their forum, tending to threads that may need derails splitting off and making sure that arguments don't get too heated.

Although moderators are assigned to a particular forum and only have a mandate for that forum, they retain the technical ability to moderate anywhere on the board and to give emergency temporary suspensions to spammers.

Moderators are also responsible, along with the admins, for proposing and voting on policy decisions. Such decisions should be discussed and made in public, so that members at large can follow the process and provide feedback on it.

Moderators are recruited from the members at large by a staff vote, although the appointment of a moderator can be vetoed by the admins if a candidate is not considered suitable.

While moderators are expected to handle low-level disruption to their fora by talking to members and splitting or locking threads, they are expected to refer higher level disruption of the community and the board to the administrators.

A moderator may be removed from their position by a majority vote <Details to be decided> of either the members at large or the staff.

Administrators

Administrators do not involve themselves in day-to-day moderation of fora (unless temporarily covering the absence of a moderator). The exception to this is the Town Hall, which is specifically moderated by the administrators.

The main responsibility of administrators is dealing with high level disruption of the board. Normally this will involve talking to the members involved and persuading them to act in a less disruptive manner. However, if such talks are not productive then administrators are responsible for escalating the matter to either temporary or permanent exclusions from part or all of the board in the form of suspensions, bans and pestings. Any such escalation should be done by majority administrator vote according to the standard banning/suspension procedure. To aid the administrators in this, they are given a mandate to check IP addresses and registration email addresses in order to discover such actions as multiple-account trolling and circumvention of bans.

A secondary responsibility of administrators is to handle complaints or grievances that members may have about the actions of moderators, and administrators have the ability to overrule the decisions of moderators based on these complaints.

Administrators are chosen from the existing pool of moderators by a majority vote of members <Details to be decided>, with the existing administrators being given veto power over such a vote, and can be recalled from their staff position by either a majority member vote or a majority staff vote.

The structure has been based on the following logistical tasks being the main requirements:

1) Forming policy. (I.e. actually deciding what our policies are.) In my opinion, this should be done by staff only, but in public view. We have already seen that even amongst staff there can be a wide variety of opinion and lengthy discussion. With the whole board involved in discussions and voting we would effectively paralyse ourselves.

2) Implementing policy. (I.e. actually doing day-to-day moderation of threads.) This seems an obvious job for the Moderators to me, with help from the general membership who can report things that need doing.

3) Overseeing policy implementation. (I.e. making sure that the policies are implemented fairly.) This responsibility should be mostly that of the members at large (who can report moderator actions that they are unhappy with) and - to a lesser extent - the Admins, although I wouldn't expect the Admins to be constantly looking over the shoulders of the Mods.

4) Dealing with disruptive elements. (Ranging from talking to people who have a grievance and settling it through to banning the serially or egregiously disruptive.) This should be the purview of the Admins.

5) Deciding who is on staff. (And who isn't.) I think this should be shared. I know from experience that finding staff - particularly staff with knowledge of a particular forum's issues - can be hard, so I would put the recruitment of staff in the hands of the existing staff. Recalling staff, however, should primarily be in the direct hands of the members at large - and this should be the one place where the discretion of staff to override procedure should not be allowed except in extremis. I would expect that staff themselves could also recall one of their number, but this should be in addition to rather than instead of recall by the members.

6) Ensuring that the above is followed. (Not second-guessing decisions, but ensuring that they were taken properly.) This is the role of an ombudsman, elected temporarily when the need arises.

[ravenscape]

In-Thread Complaints

Since complaining about moderator action in-thread is basically a derail, it seems inappropriate to do it in thread. We don't want to censor peoples' complaints however, so we have voted that complainants will be given 2 choices

(1) the complaint (and subsequent replies) can be moved to The Compost Heap. Here, there may not be any further decisive moderator action taken.

or if the complainant wants to make the complaint more formal

(2) the complaint can be moved to the Town Hall, where it can be addressed properly.

It would be nice though if people would refrain from complaining about mod action in-thread.

[ravenscape]

Practical Duties List

Admins
Admins are responsible for the overall health of TR. Their specific duties include:

Approving new registrants
Banning spammers and sockpuppets on sight
Moderating the Town Hall
Overseeing the reported posts in In Confidence, making sure that the forum mods respond to them and moving them to completed when complete
Mentoring new mods until they're up to speed
Keeping TH and voting record stickies updated
Overseeing suspension and ban processes on non-spammer/socks
Making sure that the overall goals of TR are represented in policy discussions
Adding or editing new fora as needed

System admins

Update board software as required
Fixing technical problems as they occur
Seeking out and implementing useful hacks

Moderators
Moderators are responsible for the overall health of their assigned forum/fora. Their specific duties include:

Deleting double posts and spam in their forums
Working with the members in their forums to manage derails and head off flame wars
Bringing forum problems to the attention of the wider community when needed
Responding to relevant reported posts in In Confidence
Assembling forum resources (e.g. useful stickies)
Making sure that the interests of their forum are represented in policy discussions

Moderators@Large

As above but can ban spammers and socks as needed

[Octavia]

Interim recall process

Any member can start a recall if they think a particular staff member is not serving the needs of the community.

Recall threads must be started in the TH. The person who starts the thread is responsible for specifically stating why they think the staff member should be recalled. Specific actions/posts must be cited, and links given to these actions/posts. Any recall thread started without this justification will be closed on sight.

If the thread is for recalling a mod, the first admin to see it must post a temporary sticky in the mod's forum/fora, to remind the posters who are most affected that they need to vote. This sticky will be removed at the end of the voting period.

The recall thread will be open for one week only, and the poll must be private. All members are welcome to post in the thread. Simple majority of those voting rules: 51% is needed for the staff member to be recalled.

If the result is that the staff member should not be recalled, no second recall motion based upon the same justification will be allowed. Any repeated recalls will be closed. However, members are free to propose a recall of the same member for different grounds. Previous justifications may be included if they are indicative of a wider problem, but members should avoid repeating recall threads with no new complaints.

Recall threads may also be started during a stand-down period to prevent a stood-down staff member from returning to duty when that period is over.

This is not a personal issue - people who vote for the recall are not necessarily passing judgement on the overall character of the staff member, or saying that they are not a likeable person. They are simply saying that they find them ineffective in their particular role.

[ravenscape]

Any use of a quote within a signature may be:

1)-Removed upon complaint by the member quoted

2)-Removed at staff discretion (assuming consensus has been gathered in controversial situations)

3)-Allowed otherwise

Per this vote: http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=3757 (http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=3757)

[ravenscape]

ADMIN NOTE:

These guidelines are in part superceded by the TR Charter (http://talkrational.org/showthread.php?t=8130). We're in the process of updating the thread. Assume that in cases where this thread is in disagreement with the charter, that the charter prevails.

Thanks,

Raven
TR Admin

(note also added to the OP)