How can we be more transparent?

[Loki]

We want to provide a place for those to voice their concerns over on the Chatlands Forum for this particular topic. We want to be proactive with you, as discussing it solely on Wolfhome unfortunately will not have as much of an impact - or to receive the proper feedback from those who can give you the answers you seek. Having it discussed in the correct place with the right people involved may gain better traction and attention in the end. We do not want to discourage this discussion and would like to see something good come out of this, which is why we feel like redirecting you versus passing along these concerns will have a better outcome.

I have personally created a thread on the Chatlands forum for all of you to voice your opinions we are realizing very quickly that this is a HUGE deal for all of you to have transparency in demotions. Below you will find the thread, you will have to create an account for Chatlands forums there if you do not have one- but we hope this will get better traction there and get the answers you guys want and possibly even the transparency you wish for.

https://forum.chatlands.com/viewtopic.p ... p=629#p629

[Loki]

@shifterdarkwolf As much as we would LOVE to have our discussions public this would break the Code of Conduct. We do, however, update you guys with the changes we have made. We do have our discussions in our private section of the forum, but as I stated above we are unable to make them public.

@Petticoat I really like the idea of the bullet points for our meetings and I'll look into adding something similar!

[shifterdarkwolf]

@shifterdarkwolf As much as we would LOVE to have our discussions public this would break the Code of Conduct. We do, however, update you guys with the changes we have made. We do have our discussions in our private section of the forum, but as I stated above we are unable to make them public.

When too many common sense ideas that many of you would love to implement/discuss get blocked by the CoC, perhaps it is time to think about revising the CoC. Part of making meaningful change is removing barriers to facilitate said change. The CoC does not (and imo should not) be a monolith and it certainly shouldn't become a hinderance to making Wolfhome better for the community. I'm not suggesting making all inter-admin discussion public, that would be swinging the pendulum too far. But for topics that are relevant to the community as a whole, it is not difficult to see where a carve out can exist without jeopardizing the safety and confidence of the administration.

[Loki]

@shifterdarkwolf We are trying to bring more discussion to the public such as our recent "Trigger warning" topic which was an open discussion for all. I can definitely see where you are coming from- unfortunately, not all of our discussions can be made public, but for ones that affect the community like that we do ask for the communities thoughts and opinions. We can make more of an effort to bring forward what we discussed for public opinion, in the past, we have also brought forward what the community thought on issues such as couples and siblings being on the team. This would be an issue to bring forward to the Chatlands Forum if you are wanting to see further change there as we don't have the ability to make our forums public.

[shifterdarkwolf]

@shifterdarkwolf We are trying to bring more discussion to the public such as our recent "Trigger warning" topic which was an open discussion for all. I can definitely see where you are coming from- unfortunately, not all of our discussions can be made public, but for ones that affect the community like that we do ask for the communities thoughts and opinions. We can make more of an effort to bring forward what we discussed for public opinion, in the past, we have also brought forward what the community thought on issues such as couples and siblings being on the team. This would be an issue to bring forward to the Chatlands Forum if you are wanting to see further change there as we don't have the ability to make our forums public.

I think we are talking past each other a little here. I am not advocating for moving the admin forums to be publicly viewable. It is very important for you (the admin) to be able to have meaningful discussions with each other about all sorts of topics, not just ones involving transparency. However, SOME topics, especially those regarding issues that directly impact the user experience, like say, the administrations efforts to be more transparent, need to be discussed in a public forum, at least in some part, to lend legitimacy to the debate. I am not suggesting that the public thread be the only or final debate about it. But the userbase has to has to be party to some of the debate. Informed users are not going to accept 'drop your concerns in this box and go away while the big kids do or don't talk' as legitimate discussion. I'd suggest something along the lines of:

1: Suggestion thread - Hey, we are here!
2: Public thread dedicated to an individual concern - admins and users discuss the issue
3: Admin forum thread dedicated to the concern - this could exist concurrent to #2, obviously only admins have access to this and is a good place to discuss amongst each other the points being addressed in #2
4: Revised or updated public thread - Not required on all topics but if warranted, update the public facing thread with what is being/has been discussed on the admin thread and explain what decisions are being considered/rejected and why.
5: Public decision thread - Time for the announcement. Clearly explain the policy going forward and importantly, show your work. "shifterdarkwolf made a great point, so we implemented this fix. Alpen was concerned about this and we ran it by legal, unfortunately, we can't do this but we can do this instead." Showing the work shows us that you are listening to our concerns, actually debating them, and doing your best to address them. Note: I am not saying that you don't already do this, but by being obvious and calling these out, the users know that they are actually having their concerns be heard, rather than shouting into a void and getting back 'an answer' 3 months later.

[underdog]

Hey folks, I apologize for not responding promptly to this. I am still suffering from COVID and running a mild fever. Today is also Robin's birthday which means I will be unavailable for the day. I do want to discuss the implications of GDPR and how it impacts both Chatlands and Wolfhome. Since this affects all sites not just Wolfhome, I feel that such a conversation should be held in a separate thread so we don't derail this one, and the conversation should take place on the Chatlands Forum, as I think has already been suggested? I am not focusing very well right now so please forgive me if I missed something. There are some changes that do need to be made to how CL functions, but I think that people are misinterpreting GDPR and how it relates to Chatlands. For now please direct the conversation on this thread towards the original intent and give me a little while to gather my thoughts and perhaps recover a bit more from this illness. Thank you for your patience. I will post about this on the Chatlands Forum and I will also post a link to it here on this thread.

[Loki]

@shifterdarkwolf

If I’m understanding correctly it would not necessarily be “community-ran” but possibly a mix of both where the following would happen:

Suggestion thread: this is typically where the community as well as admins discuss
Admin thread: behind the scenes where admins discuss what it is the community wants
Final disclosure: if the rule or suggestion was implemented; if not then why

I apologize if that I misunderstood originally but hopefully I’m getting it right this time!

Edit:

Someone suggested bias being a more important rule, we currently are discussing it behind the scenes- I assume you guys would want a public topic pertaining to bias to discuss it with us and bounce ideas?

[shifterdarkwolf]

@shifterdarkwolf

If I’m understanding correctly it would not necessarily be “community-ran” but possibly a mix of both where the following would happen:

Suggestion thread: this is typically where the community as well as admins discuss
Admin thread: behind the scenes where admins discuss what it is the community wants
Final disclosure: if the rule or suggestion was implemented; if not then why

I apologize if that I misunderstood originally but hopefully I’m getting it right this time!

Edit:

Someone suggested bias being a more important rule, we currently are discussing it behind the scenes- I assume you guys would want a public topic pertaining to bias to discuss it with us and bounce ideas?

Close, but the way things are right now, there is no public forum to actually discuss it. This thread is specifically for suggestions and NOT discussion as we were informed here:

I'd like to again mention quickly that although we appreciate the insight on certain topics, that this thread in particular isn't where we will be discussing things in depth amongst each other, it is merely a place for suggestions for us to work on strictly for Wolfhome.

If this is a dedicated suggestion thread, so be it, but it doesn't serve the same function as an area to openly debate the issue at hand. We are being told to drop it and it will be discussed elsewhere. That 'elsewhere' is, as you said, behind the scenes and that is the problem. So the community still has no place in all of this. We can spit out topics that we'd like discussed but we are discouraged from providing our own insights regarding them, which benefits no one. There are issues that look a lot different to admins than to users and vice versa, if those viewpoints are not expressed and heard, it prevents understanding. Using demotions as an example, I imagine a very simplified version of how it is viewed by different sides goes like this:

Users see admins demoted and no reasoning is given. Users feel jilted because they have no idea what happened and it is never explained. They feel that something is being swept under the rug. Did this admin simply step down? Did they violate the CoC but not violate the rules of Wolfhome? Did they break the rules of Wolfhome that would get common users banned, but they were given some slack because they were an admin/had friends/whatever? We are never told and all we have to go on is speculation.

Admins see a privacy concern. If we say this admin did this and it turns out we were wrong, how is that fair to the admin we demoted? Now not only did they get unfairly demoted, but also had their name dragged through the mud. Maybe it is even so bad that said demoted admin brings legal action. That is why we don't publicly give reasoning.

These are both very good points that offer a reasoning for acting one way or another. But if the issue is never publicly discussed, we work on the assumption that everyone already knows why things are one way and not the other. That everyone already knows how each side feels about the topic. But this is not true. I am willing to bet that legal privacy issues has never crossed the mind of some users who are upset about this. And some admins probably think that some users are just nosey and feel entitled to know reasons to fill their rumor mill.

Both of these concerns are real and valid and if you are only discussing it with ONE side, you are creating an echo chamber. The concerns of the community have to be heard if you want a full picture and it has to be deeper than a bullet point if the end goal is to find acceptable ground for everyone. There IS a solution here, but it needs to be teased out and it is going to require some work and some compromise where no one gets everything they want, but each side gets enough of what they need to agree.

[Loki]

@shifterdarkwolf I completely understand where you are coming from. We are going to look into the idea of addressing concerns more publicly. We do have our suggestions forum as well as questions for the administration where we encourage you guys to open up discussions on certain rules to be put in place! I also want to mention that for Chatlands-related discussion we have the Chatlands Discord!

As of right now- we do want to stay focused on just the suggestion portion of how we can be more transparent. Once we get suggestions the administration will sift through what is doable and update how we handle things accordingly.

[underdog]

Hey everyone! I posted on the Chatlands forum about how the GDPR affects Chatlands as a whole. Here's a link to that post: https://forum.chatlands.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=294

[Loki]

Hey guys! I have updated our COC to reflect Bias you can find it on the Wolfhome Application topic or here!

Bias - Being an Administrator means you cannot be biased in situations where you're close to anyone. Whether dealing with a friend, partner, or family you must always handle them like you would any other user. We also ask that if someone you know sends in a Problem Ticket, that you are not involved with handling that Problem Ticket. Voting on Applications of friends/partners/family is also strictly prohibited and we ask that you abstain from voting. As for giving opinions on if the user in question should be handled a certain way or if they broke a rule, if you feel as though you are too close to this individual we also ask that you abstain from voting.

Negative bias is also a huge issue, if you feel as though you cannot be fair toward an individual whom you've had a bad experience with or feel negative toward we ask that you not handle this user or vote on action against them. You may not increase a user's ladder just because of how you feel toward them. When voting for users' admin applications, if you have a situation that was bad with the user who applied, please bring it forward for the alphas to discuss if it is worth the team to know about to not cloud judgment from the user who applied. If the alphas decide it is important enough for the team to know about said situation they will allow the admin who was affected by this individual to post their experience.

In an instance that you are the only alpha, and feel like there may be bias toward a problem ticket or an alpha-only situation we ask that you reach out to the Guardians to handle this matter. If it is able to be handled by the team then post it for discussion and remain out of the voting for it.