User:Rita Graca/trimester6
NETWORKS OF CARE
Introduction
This project will guide us into the possibilities of Codes of Conduct, user guidelines, and other informal documents to manage online hate. Community rules are not only written files but labour intensive routines that imply human effort and affection. This project shares the experience of users and custodians, it comments on existing documents and celebrates the networks of care generated together.
My work focuses on three actions: networking, archiving and linking.
Structure
Networking
The intention behind Networking is to reach out to different people involved with community guidelines and understand their motivations. I'm interviewing and documenting the work of moderators, writers of Codes of Conduct, facilitators, community members and networks' administrators.
In some cases, I recorded the meetings, in others, the conversations happened through email, social media, video chat, ... The extremely different formats promote diversity in the collection, and at the same time, demand extra attention to each case. The work in progress involves translating content, transcribing it, adding subtitles, editing video, working with sound, and others.
Each page inside Networking shows a different approach to moderation in online communities, highlighting the purpose of Codes of Conduct. The pages are associated with information about format, language and context.
Archiving
In Archiving, I'm gathering Codes of Conduct and annotating them, creating a collection that is possible to browse, dissect and analyse.
In this part, the wiki software became particularly useful. I'm taking advantage of extensions, such as Semantic Mediawiki, to annotate the documents with specific properties. In the process of reading and interpreting the guidelines, I noticed some patterns. It is palpable how writing and managing Codes of Conduct usually means borrowing content from other groups, looking for inspiration elsewhere, and being aware of the concerns of different communities. I, mostly, recognised these sections:
- Intentions — This section sets the goals for the Code of Conducts, manages expectations for the document, explains who is the community.
- Expected behaviour — This section describes the actions welcomed in the community.
- Unacceptable behaviour — This section expresses the behaviours not tolerated in the community. Ignoring these guidelines may result in action from the community.
- Behaviour to avoid — This section lists the actions users should refrain to do, attitudes that weaken the community. It focuses on behaviours some people may think are acceptable.
- Enforcement — This section explains the consequences for the users who break the Code of Conducts. It also clarifies how reports should be done and how the community will act upon the information given. It sets responsibilities when incidents happen.
- Support — This section holds contacts of the people who are responsible for the Code of Conducts. They may respond to reports, inform the community of changes in the documents, be moderators.
- Links — This sections has other links for support, further explanation of some topics, it points to related content elsewhere.
I'm now annotating and selecting parts of the texts that fit into these sections. I intend to make the structure visible and the content within the structure. The act of sharing templates and knowledge might be useful, but it's in the diversity of values, rules, practices of management, enforcement and support that one can find the reasoning for all this labour of care.
Linking
My project is not isolated from all the others that informed my path, so I'm also linking films, podcasts, texts, images and books that relate with my work and point different ways forward.
Frequently, the people I interviewed or the documents I archived shared other inspiring work. Following the concept of a network, it only made sense to continuously link these resources.
Also in this category, I'm adding smaller projects and presentations that I worked on while developing the Networks of Care, which allowed me to experiment concepts and ideas for the main project.