Copy of Private Communications

Owned by Mihir Gupta
2023-10-16
4 min read

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

    • 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

  • 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.