1333181 - Add in etiquette and contributor guidelines

Status: REOPENED

(Infrastructure & Operations :: Blogs, task)

Description

[Andy McKay]

Just like any other forum for comment controlled by Mozilla, I think we should make it clear that comments at subject to the etiquette and contributor guidelines. Currently Bugzilla has a link to this when I enter a blog post.

There is nothing similar on the blogs. None of us want to censor what people say in bug comments but we want to let people know that they should exist in the same realm as other comments on bugzilla or mailing lists.

Would it possible to add a similar link to the guidelines on the posting form of the blog?

Comment 1

[Andy McKay]

(In reply to Andy McKay [:andym] from comment #0)
> Currently Bugzilla has a link to this when I enter a blog post.

Doh, should be "when I enter a bug".

Comment 2

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

I don't think we've ever established a commenting policy for blogs but it's not a bad idea. Much of the language in the bugzilla guidelines[1] is specific to submitting/commenting on bugs so I wouldn't want to just link there. The forum guidelines[2] are a closer fit but a lot of that also doesn't seem applicable to blog comments (stuff about cross-posting and formatting and such). Maybe we need some separate guidelines just for blogs? 

Some things to cover off the top of my head:

* No spam.
* No abuse, personal attacks, etc.
* No overtly offensive language (profanity, slurs, etc).
* Stay on topic.
* We're under no obligation to publish every comment.



[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
[2] https://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/etiquette/

Comment 3

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Red rover, red rover, I call Larissa over.

Larissa, we've gotthe Bugzilla example to work from, but do you have some moz-specific boilerplate that we could start from here, and could you tell us who we need turning the keys at the same time (you, Legal, other) to make this change?

Comment 4

[Larissa Shapiro]

Well, we are working now on finalizing the new community participation guidelines, and we could work from those. I don't have other social media guidelines but wonder if Michaela Smiley or Sierra Reed and team do? I'll share some CPG boilerplate soon. Tagging social media folks to see if they have specific thoughts.

Comment 5

[Larissa Shapiro]

Also please remind me... I'll have a community-review ready version of the CPG within a few days and it might be helpful here.

Comment 6

[Sierra Reed]

Hey everyone! So I have two suggestions:

Immediate Solution: We don't have anything specifically written so I ran this by Liz Hull for two thumbs up on some suggested copy. "Openness is in our DNA! Participation is at the core of Mozilla’s history and identity which provides a key advantage for Mozilla as an organization.  Our goal is to create a supportive, respectful, and productive community within the comment section. With this in mind, Mozilla will not publish any comments which contain spam, profanity, threats, or bullying of others."

Long-Term: I would suggest chatting with Jeff from the Foundation as he works with the Coral Project because he might have some better ideas. [e-mail]

Comment 7

[Andy McKay]

Just wanted thank everyone for working on this. Today we got comments on the blog promising violence against us. Having something like this to point to might help.

Comment 8

[Emma Humphries ☕️🎸🧞‍♀️✨ (she/they) [:emceeaich] (Pacific Time) use needinfo]

Bulk move to Websites::blogs component, per bug 1353528

Comment 9

[Joey Krejci [:joeyk]]

Closing out as WONTFIX 8 months later. Please file another bug if this is still an issue.

Comment 10

[Andy McKay]

Its still an issue, would it not be easier to just re-open this one?

Comment 11

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

I'd vote to re-open, and also find a more appropriate product/component to track. It's more of a community or governance matter and not something that falls under webops. This has fallen by the wayside for a while but we still need to address it. I'm just not sure what next steps are or who should be responsible.

Comment 12

[Andy McKay]

This is still happening on the blog and I'd like to see it resolved.

Comment 13

[Daniel Hartnell [:danielh]]

Hey Andy,

I agree with you. Let's keep this open and see the problem through to the end. I'm on the WebOps team and, as Craig mentioned, I don't think this issue will fall under my team's scope. I'm going to loop in my manager to help identify the team responsible and get this bug into that queue.

Shyam, can you help us track down the right people to help in this bug?

Comment 14

[Daniel Hartnell [:danielh]]

Andy,

Shyam has been traveling but I expect to have a chance to connect with him in the next day or two so we can update this bug. Thanks for your patience on this.

Comment 15

[Shyam Mani [:fox2mike]]

Since I don't have an answer of where exactly this should go, based on comment #11, I'm going to NI gerv and see if he has a suggestion for us. 

TIA, Gerv!

Comment 16

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

So the question which strikes me is: what do we hope to achieve?

Having CPGs for the Mozilla community and its venues (e.g. Bugzilla) makes sense in that we have an ongoing relationship with people, and so if they behave in unfriendly ways, we can take action which has consequences, such as exclusion.

Blog comments, on the other hand, can be posted by anyone. Do you think anyone who was planning to post a violence-threatening comment would say "Oh, hang on, I would have posted this, but now I see they've got community rules, I'd better abide by them"? I doubt it. And we aren't really attempting to build a community around "commenters on Mozilla blog posts".

So linking to some CPGs etc. would only have the benefit of putting people on notice that their comment might be deleted if it's offensive. And, TBH, we can just do that anyway. So I'd say, if the problem is "offensive comments", the fix is not "link to some CPGs", it's "make sure enough people are in a position to moderate comments in a timely fashion".

Gerv

Comment 17

[Daniel Hartnell [:danielh]]

I'm going to add a NI flag for Andy after Gerv's comment.

Comment 18

[Andy McKay]

The people who comment on blogs are often the same people who post in Bugzilla and email threads. The community overlaps and we can point to some people and say "you said this on this blog post". Perhaps there are more anonymous people, but in the add-ons team we communicate to our community through many channels, one of them is the blog.

I don't think the "Comments Subject to Etiquette and Contributor Guidelines" link in Bugzilla stops people posting threatening comments in Bugzilla either. But it shows that we are clear in our expectations for commentors and are supporting the staff at Mozilla who post on blogs, just as we are throughout the rest of our community interactions. Bear in mind that when I write a blog post I get an email of every comment, regardless of it being reviewed.

I would be more than happy to see that there more people to moderate comments in a timely fashion.

Comment 19

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Reasonable points. So, there are two views - the person deciding what to do now needs to decide :-)

Gerv

Comment 20

[Andy McKay]

Attachment: Screenshot-2017-11-27 Extensions in Firefox 58.png

When I post a blog post comment, I get a form like this. I think a good first step might be to put a link in that form that says "Comments subject to etiquette and contributor guidelines"... and points over to a page outlining what those are. 

I only wrote that text because its what the bugzilla "create new attachment" form says... as I write this comment :)

I'm also going to take a wild guess that this can be consistent across all blogs. For example https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/forums/etiquette/ applies to all forums.

Comment 21

[Daniel Hartnell [:danielh]]

Hey Craig,

Would it be possible to implement Andy's recommendation in the previous comment?

Comment 22

[Craig Cook (:craigcook)]

Sure, I can add a link above the comment form, at least for blogs using one of the Mozilla themes. Blogs using third-party themes won't get it.

I thought we were proposing to draft a new set of guidelines specifically for blog comments but if we can just piggy-back on the existing forum guidelines that works for me.