Similarly, the OTW will not make public comments about a disciplinary matter involving specific volunteers. In such cases, we believe the individuals' right to privacy overrides the right of the public to receive information about the matter, and we may remove such comments.
May an individual volunteer waive such privacy and allow discussion?
In many of these cases, the people involved on the OTW side are bound by confidentiality policies that they’ve signed, which it may not be possible for a user or volunteer to waive for their specific case. If you have questions about a specific case or policy relevant to yourself, please contact the OTW Board and/or Legal committee.
Thank you for answering, however I think it's pretty clear we aren't speaking about hypotheticals here. Last year, volunteers including myself and Kutti went public about some very bad treatment from the OTW, and part of that discussion was held in the AO3 newspost comments because attempts to handle problems privately within the OTW failed. I am concerned that this new policy will be used to stiffle such discussions in the future, which would endanger rather than protect volunteers.
I very strongly support the creation of a mod team and a mod policy for newsposts. Your team's been needed for a very long time. I also know that the OTW is creating a whistleblower policy and volunteer code of conduct which will hopefully prevent repeats of last year's issues. However, the OTW is starting from a position of low trust due to past bad behavior, hence the pushback you're getting to an otherwise reasonable policy. What safeguards will be put in place to prevent criticism of the OTW from being shut down?
(Personally, I would recommend countering misinformation by simply providing correct information -- the OTW has a history of stonewalling outsiders. I understand that's easier said than done, though.)
As said above to Topaz_Eyes, if there's not misinformation, then it won't be subject to removal due to this rule. If you want to post verbatim copies of communications you've received from the OTW, then doing so is allowed under this rule. It is highly unlikely to receive a public response from the OTW due to the various privacy policies we have, but your comment would not be hidden (unless it violates a different rule).
Where we would consider it misinformation is if someone began posting factually untrue information, such posting as making false statements about content in emails from the OTW, or if they began erroneously assigning blame to specific individuals (particularly unrelated third parties) in a way that could incite harassment against that person.
The news post moderation team is structured in a way to promote transparency. Copies of all comments are sent to multiple parties, so they are more available for later review than was previously the case. Comment moderation decisions are all visible to the core news post moderation team and committee liaisons, who form a broad cross-sectional sample of the OTW with volunteers who are not only from many different committees, but are also of a variety of seniority within the OTW itself. Due to the way we expect liaison work to occur — with liaisons joining and leaving as necessary to cover posts for their committees — the decisions made by the team will be open to a broad amount of scrutiny from a changing set of volunteers within the OTW.
We're aware that a lack of transparency by the OTW has indeed been a problem and has lost us trust from many users. We're committed to earning it back. Both transparency and privacy are important to us. The balance between the two can be a difficult tightrope to walk, and it's likely there will still be times when users are unhappy with our decisions, but we're committed to maintaining both.
My feedback for this is that maybe the OTW should reconsider how their privacy policies are written. If someone posted misinformation, and anyone else saw it before it was taken down, and the OTW refuses to address the claim because of the privacy policy, it could weaken trust even more. (ie. If someone made a false claim about what was said in an email, and someone saw it and backed up the post elsewhere and spread it around, only for the news moderation team to remove the comment, it's not going to look like you are combatting misinformation, it's going to look like you are silencing criticism.)
Im not saying make everything public, of course not. Im just saying there should be some kind of mechanism or policy built that would allow you to address certain things in certain specific cases if certain criteria are met, etc. Especially in cases where the involved party(s) are publicly stating that the information can be released.
Comment on OTW News Post Moderation Policy
azarias Sun 26 May 2024 07:12PM UTC
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OTW_News_Post_Moderation (Official) Sun 26 May 2024 09:05PM UTC
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azarias Sun 26 May 2024 09:30PM UTC
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OTW_News_Post_Moderation (Official) Sun 26 May 2024 10:23PM UTC
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azarias Sun 26 May 2024 10:25PM UTC
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Eli0t Thu 30 May 2024 06:28AM UTC
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