Meta-discussion of the DH Slack: moderating it, structuring it, community policies, other admin stuff

2015-10-28

literature_geek
10:35:16 AM

The signup page for the DH Slack currently links to the Geek Feminism Wiki’s Code of Conduct template (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy ) and has the following text:

“Digital Humanities Developers on Slack is dedicated to a harassment-free experience for everyone. In particular, note that we’re open to use for anyone interested both in some combination of “digital” and “humanities” (whatever those mean to you), and some activity such as coding/design/making/building/sysadministery/development at any level of experience, including being completely new to the activity.

Please see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy for the Geek Feminism wiki’s example code of conduct (created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers), on which use of this Slack space should be modeled (substitute “Slack space” for “conference”). Please report any problems or suggestions to Amanda Visconti via @literature_geek on Twitter, aviscont@purdue.edu, or on Slack (either by direct messaging Amanda Visconti, or writing in the #meta channel if your comment isn’t meant to be private).”

I’m happy to alter this text or add a community conduct code specific to the DH Slack if there’s interest in writing one.


literature_geek
10:36:09 AM

Also interested in thoughts about moderation for the DH Slack. We haven’t had any spam/troll problems yet, but anyone can sign up, so it’d be nice to think about how we’d handle any problems/bad faith use.


literature_geek
10:37:17 AM

I’m currently thinking we’d switch form automatic to manual invitation approval if there starts to be a spam issue (maybe with some way of letting the community share the effort of okaying new invites?).


literature_geek
10:38:42 AM

I’ve randomly given the “admin” role to some DH Slack users who I know are not robots, so that others are able to moderate besides me. Happy for any suggestions on better ways of distributing this role.


mdlincoln
12:26:52 PM

@literature_geek: I think that sounds perfectly well thought-out, given the current scale of the community


literature_geek
12:53:20 PM

@mdlincoln: Cool! Glad to hear it


2015-10-29

paregorios
01:07:54 PM

“Your team is approaching the integration limit.”


literature_geek
02:37:11 PM

@paregorios: Thanks, hadn’t noticed that! I’m hoping we can get non-profit status soon and that may come with more allowed integrations. (I got rid of one bot integration that I wasn’t using so that someone can at least use that slot)


paregorios
02:45:50 PM

I’ve set up a few, so I’ll take a look and prune as well.


paregorios
02:46:49 PM

it’s not clear to me what constitutes an “integration” on that count; they seem to use the term loosely across the spectrum from a single connection between another app and slack to the class of such connections between another app and slack


2015-10-30

2015-10-31

2015-11-02

patrickmj
10:52:32 AM

<!channel>: is it worth considering the relationship between this slack and DHAnswers? Seems like very much same audiences and purposes, and cross-pollination and info sharing might be in order?


literature_geek
11:57:11 AM

@patrickmj: That’s a good idea! I’d like to see some sort of wiki page where we can paste FAQs (e.g. what various funding and association acronyms mean), which I could see pulling from both the Slack and DH Q&A. (I started a DH Q &A channel aimed at asking general questions, relatedly—I’ll see if we can pull in the DH Q & A feed for a start)


2015-11-03

2015-11-04

2015-11-05

2015-11-06

timfinnegan
10:19:53 AM

i can’t find a kb command for scrolling thru the messages within a channel?


2015-11-10


literature_geek
11:37:33 AM

Following up on @mdlincoln’s good suggestion we discuss this thread here. The Programming Historian (http://programminghistorian.org) is a site where volunteers create historian-friendly tutorials for doing various things with code. The tutorials are aimed at humanities tasks like distant reading, but are applicable beyond the humanities (e.g. tutorials on data management, API work) and are written to be friendly to people without coding backgrounds. The thread in question arose from the Programming Historian wanting to encourage more women to author on their site, and it’s a good read!


literature_geek
11:40:51 AM

Ways this might apply to the DH Slack: how can we encourage people to a) join and b) participate (including c) creating channels)? Posting a brief lesson on how to use Slack seems like a good idea: what is Slack, why might you want to use it, what’s the etiquette, do I belong here (answer=yes). Specific things like how to create/join channels, set channel topics, use giphy, add a reaction, quote an earlier message, use direct messages. Direct message use is especially important so people new to the Slack and/or needing to discuss something private (e.g. harassment) are clear on how to do so.


literature_geek
11:45:33 AM

I started a DH Slack repo (https://github.com/amandavisconti/DHslack), which for one thing has an easier to remember URL than the Slack sign-up form or its http://goo.gl version. (I should just use tiny.url or whatever to make a custom URL and stop worrying about preservation…) I can start a “How to DH Slack” page on that repo’s wiki, and/or create a GitHub Pages page… but I know things related to GitHub can be confusing/offputting if you’re not used to it. Better ideas?


literature_geek
11:48:13 AM

(Relatedly, getting the Slack picked up by ACH, ADHO, or another body could help with getting people involved, and it could also provide funding for a paid account with better search/history. I’ll work on that—I guess we’ll want to discuss what it means for an org to sponsor a Slack, though, and how this changes how we need to moderate etc.)


literature_geek
11:55:58 AM

I haven’t opened a GitHub wiki to public writing before—good or bad idea? https://github.com/amandavisconti/DHslack/wiki


literature_geek
12:01:17 PM

Hm, I should probably move that to a DH Slack GitHub account instead of my account


literature_geek
12:04:38 PM

literature_geek
12:11:31 PM

Also forked a code of conduct to the DHSlackTeam account. Let me know if I don’t have things set correctly for people to join the organization/add things/edit the wiki


2015-11-11

timfinnegan
02:43:13 PM

@literature_geek: i just figured out that typing “@li” pops up a menu of names– do you not see messages if they’re not addressed to you? (my style preference is minimal punctuation/markup)


literature_geek
05:02:54 PM

Everyone can see all the messages in a channel they’ve joined, but unless they’ve changed their settings to alert them each time someone enters a new message, they’ll only get a notification (eg I get a popup and a beep sound when on my laptop) when you write @theirusername. So if you’re conversing directly with someone or want to make sure they know to read your message (eg if they haven’t been logged into Slack for a while, the default I think is you get an email when someone mentions your @username)


literature_geek
05:03:34 PM

Oops, see I meant to make that @timfinnegan but not sure how to edit on phone


literature_geek
05:04:12 PM

Unlike Twitter, where you only see tweets beginning @username if you follow that person


2015-11-13

2015-11-16

literature_geek
08:59:49 AM

Wondering about other ways we could use the DH Slack in addition to awesome chat and conference backchanneling. Any ideas?


literature_geek
09:22:36 AM

Was thinking we might have hang-ins focused on people wanting to learn some specific DH skill, e.g. “On this date from 5-9pm EST, [these people] will be available on the DH Slack [and/or Google Hangouts, Twitter, etc.] to answer questions you run into while using the Programming Historian’s regex tutorial.” We could look into having these affiliated with something (the DH Q&A site? DHCommons?), keeping an archive of the chats and/or FAQs tied to the link of the tutorial people were doing, and some way of hosting a list of past volunteers to give them credit.