🤓Code of Conduct
These are the community guidelines for all the members of Open Constitution to avoid war and nurture peace and harmony in the community.
The Code of Conduct is a set of guidelines that outline expected behaviour and communication standards for members of the Open Constitution community. It promotes respectful and inclusive interactions among community members and provides guidelines for proper communication in various public forums and channels.
Members of fiscal hosts, volunteers and community members, and members from the Open Constitution partner program contributing to open source research & development, organise themselves on different public forums over the Internet.
Open Constitution recognises the following platforms for open communication and public-facing communication records by community members.
HELP TEXT: The code of Conduct applies to several spaces of the Open Constitution Network, Contributions Delivery Subnet, and Digital Public Services Subnet.
Finscale Subnet additionally follows agreements between the consumer and the Muellners Foundation.
Public and private channels, Huddles on the Foundation's Slack Memberspace
Discord Server
Mailing Lists of Open Constitution projects
Open Constitution Governance Platform
Atlassian Cloud Workspace for Open Constitution
Open Podcast or CouncilPost
Google Cloud Workspace of Muellners Foundation
Gitbook Workspace
Github Workspace and project public repositories
Open Podcast streamed to Social Media Platforms of the Muellners Foundation such as a LinkedIn live event, LinkedIn-based open newsletter, YouTube live stream, Twitter feed of the Foundation, and Telegram-based public channel.
Second Exchange
Citizen resources are listed here:
Note: Linkedin and Telegram are official broadcasting platforms, currently managed by several admins-spokesperson(s) of the Foundation, from the electorally appointed Council and Committees.
Let's understand how the open community members collaborate here:
According to the statutes of the Muellners Foundation, all memberships are voluntary and invite only. An existing community member can invite another member to Muellners Foundation’s open-source community.
A new member may also join the Open Constitution memberspaces using the open public invitation - JOIN COMMUNITY, on the website. The invitation is generally second authenticated by a human member of the community.
Open Constitution Network's voluntary organisation is an invite-only community. Read about different types of members within the Muellners Foundation here.
Note: Employees of any independent contractor(s), which is outside the purview of the Open Constitution Partner Program is not defined as a member of the Muellners Foundation. The Independent Board exercises the right to appoint vendor relationships independently, based on counsel provided by the Open Council. The Executive Committee of the Open Council should bring these relationships either on public-facing records or to the community members' notice.
To avoid conflict of interests, an Open Council member or a Core Working Committee member wears the hat of an individual contributor, when he/she/they communicate on the Foundation's public forums.
Any member appointed to a constitutional body of the Foundation, is an individual contributor, as far as the scope of public discussions and project-related discussions, in the Foundation's public forums.
Note: Members who join the open community as part of the Open Constitution partner program, also abide by these guidelines, in addition to community guidelines(listed here)
A member affiliated with an Open Constitution partner is an independent subscribed member of the Foundation's open-source community.
Notice: Amendments to these Guidelines:
The Media Council is the custodian of these guidelines and is responsible for introducing new proposals based on the recommendations from the members and following a general consensus in the community. While these are not ultimate, please ensure that you are voluntarily following these guidelines and flag anything in communication which are against these guidelines. We are a safe and inclusive open community, and therefore continuous feedback on these guidelines is welcome. How to propose changes? Upon building a community consensus on the change, any change request to these guidelines is peer-reviewed by another member and added with a finalized language by the Media Council. Clue: In case, a member does not have Foundation email and subsequent Gitbook access, they are welcome to join with their personal email(with which they have subscribed to Foundation's membership). Members can also request for a Foundation's Google Workspace from the Media Committee members.
Read more on Open Access levels.
For details, read How to Change?
These are the Community Guidelines:
1. Be dispassionate in the choice of words, in a community discussion over a topic. Your interest or bias can be communicated without strong passionate words.
Apply the same to the views of your peers, which you oppose or disagree with. Respect fellow human beings and talk to them as if you would like to be talked to yourself.
Using slang or adjectives for fellow community members is generally not seen well in the global, multi-cultural environment of the Foundation. Whenever using an adjective for your peers, always make sure to add the exact reference for the use of the adjective.
2. Avoid name-calling of community members, national leaders, groups of people or any specific individual.
3. Distinct Conversation Threads: Do not stray away from the subject of the conversation thread.
Feel free to flag if you sense that your peer’s message deviates from the thread with a discussion on a completely non-associated topic.
For your own responses which may be off-topic, please mention that you are deviating from the main topic.
4. Assert yourself responsibly: Tag people correctly and responsibly. Wait for the people to see, react or respond to your messages.
Please do not force any member to respond in a 1:1 conversation on a public channel. However, feel free to take messages from public conversations to private, if it does not concern other members in the community.
Whenever making an assertion about any other member of the Foundation, always make sure to add the context of the communication.
Whenever communicating a visibly opposite opinion on a subject, members should always assert themselves parliamentarily. It is generally recommended to avoid discussing interpersonal relationships of two members, in a community discussion.
5. 🏳️🌈Gender Pronouns: Use the gender pronouns for other members appropriately. Use he/she/they when in doubt. If still not sure, use the name of the person/username/profile name/email ID you see on the communication channel to address and tag the person in messages. The best way is to get to know the member that you are engaging in communication with.
6. Members shall acknowledge messages, in which they are tagged by the Moderator of the public channel, specifically about adherence to the Code of Conduct.
7. For announcing updates, either share the older messages inline or announce updates openly in the relevant public channel. New members should ask the Moderator of the channel in a DM, whether they can post the Update in a specific channel.
8. For topics that are listed as sensitive, be exponentially dispassionate and exponentially empathetic. Think well before placing your words and posting messages on these subjects. These topics could include sexuality, violence, international issues, human crises, animal and environmental issues, family matters, disability, psychological issues and several other areas. Read the list of Sensitivity here.
9. Substantiate your qualitative information with quantitative information or qualifying data wherever necessary and wherever you can.
10. Members shall try their best to refrain from sharing speculative news, information, stories and any other content of such nature.
In cases where such content is shared, members are obligated to clearly mention the speculative nature of what they have shared.
Speculative content may include unconfirmed uncertain or inconclusive global stock market-related information, worldwide political, religious and leadership-related information, information related to any organization private or public, related to large corporations, whistleblowers, insider information, natural calamity, any developing news stories.
If a member willingly shares opinion articles on current affairs, members shall also attribute the information to the source, they found it without fail.
Note on Credible Sources: The Foundation’s Media Committee shall also notice speculative sources from various communication instances and try to alert members to consume information from these sources. The Foundation shall maintain a Live document with a list of such sources. The Foundation shall also benefit from knowing the supporting entities behind these sources, including fact-checking mechanisms and shall also include those entities on the running document for the general awareness of members.
11. For designated channels within Slack, communicate topics that are relevant to the channel name, topic and description.
12. Keep the tone light-hearted and friendly for we are trying to build one of the largest open communities. This can not be done with a serious or overly formal tone.
Members should generally avoid heated arguments with their peers and almost always strive for optimistic communication.
13. Retention Policy: Depending on regional crises, message retention policy may be arbitrarily evaluated and decided by Open Council members to protect the community member’s privacy. A community member shall be able to request for a backup of their message as needed. (Right to retain private data). This can be done as follows:
13.1 Individual members can view their access logs at https://muellnersorg.slack.com/account/logs
14. Public Facing Responsibility: A community member shall not share messages from private channels of Slack, Discord, Foundation’s mailing list (if they have muellnersorg IDP or are part of a legal body affiliated with the Open Constitution E tenancy program) or from any other direct communication channels to the public outside the community spaces of the Foundation without an electronic mail consent, received from the Media Committee. Sharing messages between these channels may be encouraged if the situation necessitates it.
15. Data Protection: For queries regarding data compliance, one shall first refer to Data Protection - Community Resources (muellners.info) and then contact the Media Committee on its mailing list. If the query is not addressed, members may reach the Foundation’s Executive Committee by using the email info@muellners.org.
16. Voluntary Participation: A member may refuse to answer personal questions in both public and private conversations at their discretion. Members are advised to not probe and make others feel uncomfortable.
17. Approach to Escalation:
Step 1: Community Ambassadors/Moderators: In a scenario, where a member has noticed a violation of these guidelines, they shall bring it to the notice of the public channel’s moderator with the message: Notice and a serial number of the Code. E.g. Notice 11 with a tag to the moderator of the public channel or private channels. For reporting violations in a Direct Message, it is recommended to write to the Media Committee, rather than confronting your peer with the Notice of violation.
Step 2: Media Council: In case the moderator of the channel is unable to respond appropriately to the member’s satisfaction, the member is encouraged to contact the Media Council on its mailing list.
Step 3: Observation Council: If the Media CWC is unable to address the violation to the member’s satisfaction, member(s) may reach the Foundation’s Observation Council which plays a role in dispute resolution between members.
18. Barring Members: Members who walk over the guidelines habitually shall be barred from all forums of the community. This decision shall rest in the hands of Media Council members.
A three-time warning shall be issued to members who are found to ignore any guideline(s) evidently and/or expressing intent to overthrow any guideline(s).
Media Council members shall first reduce the Open access levels to a “Guest” Account, during the period that they review the case. It is at their discretion to temporarily or permanently(lifetime) bar the individual.
Any barred member can approach the Observation Council for an appeal to rejoin the community.
19. Members are encouraged to have active and thriving conversations in the community channels. This will lead to identifying synergies, new use cases to solve, new ideas for research and many other positive outcomes. Your initiation may not be rewarded monetarily but may lead to a bigger impact when the community least expects it. Messages are a way to experience serendipity in our day-to-day lives as individuals and as a community. Hence, always communicate with thought and enjoyment in both public and private conversations. Be open, empathetic, and respectful with positive behaviour. We are a human intelligence gathering. Foundation's public forums are not made for activism, such as Internet rants or expressing deep anguish on a public subject.
20. Right to Forget: A member of the community may want to voluntarily exit the community for any reason whatsoever. Such members shall have the right to unsubscribe from the community and request deletion of their profiles and any associated data. All channels where other organizations interact with the foundation are not covered by Right to Forget.
21. Additional Remote Conferencing Norms:
21.1 Foundation members may collaborate on video conferencing tools, (recognised as official Google Workspace Platform/Slack/Discord of Muellners Foundation. Read the list above.). During these video conferencing workshops, it is generally at the discretion of the member, whether they wish to publish public-facing audio, video or both feeds.
Members from visibly marginalised communities or members who are differently abled, join Foundation's workspaces, and these conference calls. The practice of free will in choosing the medium of communication(whether spoken or not) is therefore advocated by the Foundation's Code.
21.2 General Interruptions if the remote session has a documented agenda: Certain video conference sessions organised by the Foundation, may have a fixed agenda. It is generally recommended to be on time for these sessions. Your peers are voluntarily organised here, therefore their time is as important as yours.
During the remote conferences, organised by Foundation members, interruptions are not well seen. Members join these workshops, coming from different time zones, with different internet connectivity & computing infrastructure. Interrupting another member while he/she/they are speaking, will almost always result in derailing of a workshop's agenda.
Maintain decorum: It is generally recommended to keep yourself mute, & wait for your turn to speak, using conferencing system tools such as Raising your hand.
21.3 Open Sessions: When workshops are organised with an open and free agenda, it is a general suggestion to let your peers present their complete thoughts before speaking.
22. Additional DIRECT COMMUNICATION(DM) Norms:
Message retention and deletion policy is by default set at 1 day for all Direct messages. It is at the discretion of two members, who are communicating with each other, to set the Retention & deletion policy with each other's consent.
More relevant pages: a. Read about how the community ambassadors manage the safety and privacy of members w.r.t subscribed membership activity. Read Moderation Policy
b. Please read about How not to spam the Foundation's public forums.
c. Read more on Self and Peer Review.
Custodian: Media Council
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