(account deleted) 08 Apr 2021 18:25
Town Halls Proposal
The purpose of the proposed Town Halls is to open a more transparent and direct route of communication between the staff team and the user base of the wiki in regards to policy and site content. The user base is the wiki, and we need to ensure that we are listening to them and taking the user experience into account when considering various staff actions.
The Solution
We host town hall meetings open to the community where they can come and make complaints, request explanation, or make suggestions to staff on various topics (including policy). These meetings would take place either every two months/quarterly or as necessary should special circumstances arise. The process would look as follows:
1) We open a forum thread the week prior to a town hall meeting to gather topics for discussion and not specific questions or complaints. Any users would also be free to PM a staff member (I am willing to delegate myself and take the bullet) of a topic they wish to have discussed if they do not want to post it publicly.
2) The above-mentioned forum thread is used by staff to compile a list of topics to be covered during the town hall meeting and plan a schedule for the order they are discussed in. Staff will discuss each topic to be brought up to make sure everyone is up to date on the information, understands the situation, and has the knowledge to answer questions/complaints/suggestions.
3) During the actual town hall meeting, collected topics are introduced to allow for questions, comments, and suggestions to be made by any non-staff users who are present, similar to how Orientations QnA periods are held. While the floor is open to the community, they will be able to directly address staff members in an open space (I am envisioning this taking place in either #workshop or a new dedicated channel).
While this provides the ability for real-time response by staff, it will also inevitably lead to questions, complaints, or suggestions that require larger and more involved discussion amongst the staff team before an answer can be given or an action can be taken.
In the above situation, the following procedure would take place:
1) During the town hall meetings, a staff member will note down all topics that fit this criteria for further discussion.
2) Staff are put on a timespan of ~2 weeks to have these more in-depth discussions and come to a conclusion, action, or decision that even more discussion is needed.
3) The important details and points of these conversations are noted down for release to the user base.
4) At the end of the ~2 week timespan, a forum announcement is made containing the notes from these discussions.
The idea here is to not only tell the user base that we're listening to what they say, but actually show them that we're listening to what they say and that we're also not ignoring it.
I believe that this will improve the relations between the site staff and the user base at large, as well as provide staff a better insight into the wishes and sentiments of the community.
Please leave thoughts, comments, suggestions, et cetera below.
This discussion is open to all levels of staff, including JS.
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