Private Communications
- Daniel Puratich
Spirit of the Policy
In Discord normal conversations should always be public so anyone is comfortable getting involved has the insight they desire. This is a cultural thing so please leads and directors lead by example! More information regarding culture in Culture .
Often times people will make things that should be public private because they don't feel confident in what they can do or don't want to be judged by the rest of the team for not knowing. We want the team to feel as comfortable as possible and mitigate this as much as possible. See our desired approach to mistakes and gaps in knowledge in On Mistakes and Team Charter (2021-2024) . If you’re a director or lead and find yourself doing this please check yourself and then speak with leads with further concerns. We want general members to be able to see what leads planning is happening! We don’t want people to feel siloed out! We want to make things available to people who care!
The policy is not meant to degrade privacy.
Private Communications Use Case
Private communications (DMs (Glossary ), leads channels, & director channels) should only be used when information must be withheld for one of the following reasons:
passwords
of course WARG passwords must remain private in accordance with Data Handling
distribution of passwords can be done via private channels if everyone in said channel should be privy to that password
the only common case in which passwords can be distributed via DMs is the bay code as documented in Bay Code
individual privacy
Personal information or personal issues shouldn’t be public to avoid violating an individual’s privacy
This includes conversations regarding evaluation of an individual’s performance and status with respect to Skillset Levelling Rubric .
Discussing if someone is qualified for a task or role should be in a channel in which they and their peers cannot see in accordance with Promotion Process
any discussion of negative social incidents regarding an individual as document in Reporting Negative Social Incidents should be handled in private leads channels.
in accordance with this policy anyone can attend leads meetings
with the exception that we may ask people to leave temporarily when any of these concerns arise
Privacy includes giving feedback in some cases
i.e. when giving feedback to someone you may want to do it in private for their privacy
this should be done with care, sometimes its good to have a second person who they’re comfortable with around to hear the conversation
An example would be, Planning who to give to tasks falls under privacy bc we have to discuss individuals abilities
An edge case would be a member notifying others that they’re taking a break
if theyre giving a lead a reason etc thats private then yes.
otherwise like if theyre working with a team and their team needs to know then like it makes sense to share with that team?
Planning
Content which is easily misinterpreted by those not involved in it’s creation can and in many cases should remain private.
This is up to subteam lead discretion.
this policy has a few edge cases including:
Scheduling any meeting
this could be public even if the meeting does not require anyone else’s attendance
this is done to keep things transparent
this includes asking someone to fill out a lettucemeet
Even if it’s only intended for one person
anyone’s availability is not considered private information
There is a concern that people may feel unvalued if they see that they are being scheduled out of a meeting
It is somewhat obvious that project managers and subteam leads availability will be prioritized over members.
This is a point of contention between the leadership team as of 10/4/2024 leads meeting so is left to subteam lead judgement
NDA
if individuals in warg have NDAs with other companies, that needs to be protected and therefore private communications must be used
Not Warg Related
if you are communicating something that is not at all related to warg to a fellow WARGian please take that outside of the warg server or to dms of course
if it’s related to something others may be interested in then we have fun channels (i.e. random-and-shitposts ) for that and those kind of interactions can be used to improve culture
Examples of Public Communications
Just a list of general things that should be public:
Comedic posts
comedy and memes should go in the correct channels
do not post memes in leads, there’s no reason the entire team can’t see that!
Assigning Tasks to members
if you’re assigning an individual a task, that should be public
Querying Interest
If you're asking an individual member if they're interested in something, that should be public
General external WARG communications
Co-op performance reviews fall under individual privacy and though they may be in our email should not be public.
Most of WARG’s external communications that do not fall under individual privacy should be considered public and are only private because we do not want members to be able to send emails without review.
If any member as defined in Member Definition requests to see emails within reason that do not violate an individuals privacy then they should be able to see them.
Discord Channels
New Channels
If you feel there should be a channel with a select few individuals that does not exist, please request it. If you’re a subteam lead feel free to create it yourself.
Existing Channels
The purpose of a few channels is listed below
#xx-leads-private
is for things that leads only want to share with directors.
Only that subteam has their leads and directors have this channel.
#xx-leads
For general leads stuff coordination please use this channel
Copy Pastas
These are messages you can copy paste under certain circumstances. These copy pasta’s help with enforcing this policy and link back to this
When someone DMs you something that should be public
Since this is WARG related would you feel comfortable shifting this (resending your message to) to a WARG server channel ? Of course for things that are personal (like we're not comfortable discussing publicly in the WARG server) or non-WARG related then my DMs are open. In general though we'd like to promote a culture of public communication for transparency when reasonable in accordance with https://uwarg-docs.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AD/pages/2303033499/Private+Communications .
When a lead posts something in a private discord channel that should be public
Could you please repost this in a public channel in accordance with https://uwarg-docs.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AD/pages/2303033499/Private+Communications as I don’t think it should be private to just leads.