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How to encourage positive online communication in your open source community

How to encourage positive online communication in your open source community ultimike Thu, 03/30/2023 - 03:00 Threaded online conversations are a relatively new form of communication that can improve knowledge transfer and availability, but they can also stray from the original intent. Online technical conversations in open source communities using Slack or one of the several open source alternatives experience these benefits and drawbacks. Say a community member posts a question or shares an idea to start a conversation. As in any conversation, sometimes things can get off track. While not all diversions from the prompt are unhelpful, there are times when a comment can be unproductive—and sometimes even hurtful. The Drupal community is like most other open source communities, in that we have many online conversations happening at any given time, in a variety of places. Sometimes, when a community member flags an online comment as hurtful, the Drupal Community Working Group (CWG) is asked to step in and mediate the situation. The CWG is responsible for maintaining the health of the community. Often, the solution is as simple as reminding the author of the comment of the Code of Conduct. In 2020, the CWG began looking into how they could crowdsource this activity in a way that would be predictable and non-confrontational. The group decided to author several nudges: prewritten, formatted responses that community members could copy and paste into an online conversation to get conversations back on track. The Drupal community currently has five different nudges depending on the situation. It is up to community members to select one from this list: Inclusive language, gendered terms Inclusive language, ableist terms Gatekeeping knowledge Cultural differences Escalating emotions For example, the inclusive language, ableist terms nudge contains this message: This discussion appears to include the use of ableist language in a comment. Ableist language can be harmful to our community because it can devalue challenges experienced by people with disabilities. For more information, please refer to Drupal’s Values and Principles about treating each other with dignity and respect. This comment is provided as a service (currently being tested) of the Drupal Community Health Team as part of a project to encourage all participants to engage in positive discourse. For more information, please visit https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_cwg/issues/3129687 Our favorite resources about open source Git cheat sheet Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet Open source alternatives Free online course: RHEL technical overview Check out more cheat sheets Currently, using one of the nudges is a manual copy-paste process, but the group is discussing the possibility of providing tools for easier use. We provide both formatted (for forum and issue queues) and unformatted (Slack) versions of each nudge. The CWG is also working on adding a sixth nudge for unhelpful or inauthentic comments. This nudge is aimed at discouraging users who add comments to a thread solely to gain a contribution credit on the issue. Over the past two years that nudges have been available, the CWG has not fielded any complaints related to their use. While the number of conflicts between community members escalated to the CWG has declined during this period, it is difficult to attribute this solely to nudges. Other efforts have been made to improve community health (not to mention outside factors). Nevertheless, the CWG feels that nudges have been a net positive to the community and continues to access, improve, and encourage their use. In a blog post to the community announcing their general availability, the CWG wrote: To continue to grow a healthy community, we all must work under the assumption that no one intentionally uses language to hurt others. Even so, despite our best efforts we sometimes still use words or phrases that are discouraging, harmful, or offensive to others. We are all human beings who make mistakes, but as members of a shared community, it's our responsibility to lift each other up and encourage the best in each other. Prewritten nudges for various situations are useful prompts for members of any community to keep conversations productive and encouraging—and do so in a friendly way! The Drupal community uses nudges to keep conversations productive and inclusive. Drupal Community management Diversity and inclusion What to read next This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. 203 points Ipswich, UK Ruth has been a keen advocate of Open Source for over 18 years. As a contributor to the Joomla! and Mautic community, she volunteered on the Joomla! Community Leadership Team for over three years, and currently works as Project Lead for Mautic, the world's first open source marketing automation platform, at Acquia. Ruth is a keen runner, and lives with a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome which means that she sometimes needs to use a wheelchair or walking aids. | Follow RCheesley Open Minded Author Linux Community Manager Geek Joomla Contributor Club 937 points San Francisco Bay Area AmyJune is an experienced community manager, mentor, public speaker, and inclusion advocate. While her roots are in Drupal, she also contributes regularly to the Linux and Accessibility communities. With a dual focus on both open-source community development and inclusivity, she is uniquely positioned to help individuals become more comfortable and confident as they contribute to their communities. AmyJune lives adjacent to the San Francisco Bay Area in the rural agricultural hub of San Benito County. Having two grown children who survived their teenage years, and being the youngest of 5 sisters, AmyJune is either very lucky to have made it this far in life or is very talented at talking herself out of deadly situations. Outside of her mission in the open source community space, she has a deep love for mycology, geocaching, and air-cooled Volkswagens. | Follow volkswagenchick | Connect volkswagenchick User Attributes Team Open Source Evangelist Author Contributor Club 2 Comments Register or Login to post a comment. Neeraj Kumar | March 29, 2023 Register or Login to like Interesting read, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea of using prewritten nudges. While it's important to maintain a positive atmosphere, I worry that these nudges might come across as insincere or impersonal. Encouraging genuine, thoughtful discussions might be a more effective approach to fostering a healthy community. Just my two cents! Michael Anello | April 3, 2023 Register or Login to like I understand exactly what you're saying, but in a large community, not all conversations can be monitored (or should be!) by individuals skilled in writing "genuine, thoughtful" comments in times of high emotions. The nudges are pre-written with neutral language and are very clearly marked as such. I agree with you that when possible, "genuine, thoughtful" replies should be used, but this is not always possible. Additionally, if a conversation is getting heated, a community member may not want to insert themselves into the conversation. In these cases, they can ask a neutral, third-party to post the nudge. Nudges are not meant to replace "genuine, thoughtful" comments, only to provide an additional tool for community members to utilize. -mike In reply to Interesting read, but I'm… by neerajskydiver

在线讨论是一种新的沟通形式,有利有弊。Drupal社区使用Slack等工具进行在线技术讨论,但有时会偏离主题。社区工作组介入调解,撰写了几个提示以帮助对话回到正轨。目前使用这些提示需要手动复制粘贴,但可能提供更便捷的工具。过去两年来,CWG没有收到与使用提示相关的投诉。为了发展健康的社区,我们需要共同努力,避免使用伤害他人的语言。

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