Laying Out the Welcome Mat for Online Communities

👋 I'm Ian Linkletter, I work at UBC in the Faculty of Education as a Learning Technology Specialist 👋

Follow along with my presentation:

https://bit.ly/IANETUG

Online Communities

not new, but...

easier than ever to create

Follow along with my presentation:

https://bit.ly/IANETUG

Does this look familiar?

(Slack + Mattermost)

Team

Chat

Everywhere

Public channels

Private channels

Direct messages

Multiple Teams

Emoji and reactmoji

File/image upload

Ian is typing...

@ mentions

Status indicators

Easy invites

that's a lot of features

I feel dizzy

People at our organizations are making A LOT of teams!

 

  • Courses
  • Community hubs (ETUG and OpenETC)
  • Teaching and research
  • Student cohorts
  • Learning communities
  • Clubs
  • Support groups
  • Alumni

 

How can we support them?

Existing community principles still apply

How do we support the communities forming all around us?

Three things to discuss

  • Inclusive outreach
  • Effective codes of conduct
  • Maintaining respectful environment

how to spread this knowledge

what we can learn from each other

Inclusive Outreach

Companies will try to do this for you, so do it better

Slack Discovery

No hard feelings...

Things to consider

Who is this community for?
What is this community for?
Who is missing?

On Inclusivity

Inclusivity doesn’t mean every conversation is for everybody.

 

 

Meet Indie

Based on open source Wheelie, Indie is a helpful Slackbot to moderate access to  private channels

Safe, inclusive spaces for:

Identity
Health / Wellbeing
Mental Health

From XOXO Festival Slack:

Why You Want a Code of Conduct

  • Sets expectations
  • Makes safety #1
  • Specific about what is OK and what to do if something isn’t
  • Empower community to take care of each other

This essay by Erin Kissane is excellent and contains many resources!

http://incisive.nu/2014/codes-of-conduct/

be sure to read it 👀

Embrace the specifics

A good code of conduct defines harassment
Safety over comfort

A living document co-created by community

it's good to spark conversations

about your code of conduct

A living document co-created by community

 

Great example: https://2018.xoxofest.com/conduct

This policy was based on resources provided by GeekFeminism.org, and borrows heavily from similar open source policies authored by JSConf AU and Django.

🔎 go check it out

Maintaining respectful environment

It’s nice to be nice!
Model behavior
Understand bullying
Intervene

 

Coordinate with your organization’s procedures/policy

We are all figuring this out

  1. Inclusive welcomes
  2. Effective codes of conduct
  3. Maintaining respectful environment
  4. How we can support each other

Our organizations need us to support

the growth of all these communities

Let's discuss:

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