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:
Online Communities
not new, but...
easier than ever to create
Follow along with my presentation:
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!
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- Courses
- Community hubs (ETUG and OpenETC)
- Teaching and research
- Student cohorts
- Learning communities
- Clubs
- Support groups
- Alumni
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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.
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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!
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
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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 AUÂ and Django.
🔎 go check it out
Maintaining respectful environment
It’s nice to be nice!
Model behavior
Understand bullying
Intervene
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Coordinate with your organization’s procedures/policy
We are all figuring this out
- Inclusive welcomes
- Effective codes of conduct
- Maintaining respectful environment
- How we can support each other
Slides: https://slides.com/linkletter/
Our organizations need us to support
the growth of all these communities
Let's discuss: