I'd just prefer to keep the team small because most branches only have 1-2 active Ambassadors in the INT Discord (regardless of whether or not the official number is higher), and if we have too many people there from EN it makes conversations more difficult. Generally we get one vote per branch not per representative, so technically it would be fine for us to have as many Ambassadors as we need, but practically speaking I think it would cause confusion if we had too many people in the chat speaking on behalf of EN, a PR person wouldn't really contribute to that.

As I've said though, I'd be much happier to have that be a person (or two) on my team who can be fully informed as to the situation, rather than a separate team I have to run statements past.

It'd only end up needing a few relevant and very vetted people anyway, and the communique would be passed by multiple other non-PR-Team members anyway right? Like, realistically, it would.

This is a task for continuing on our active work to improve outward communications, not a "We need to make a subteam" thing, in my eyes. Like in a practical sense it'd come down to doing this anyway, something as major that we need Public Relations specific work wouldn't be restricted to just that team, admins and relevant captains and established team members for relevant teams (Disc, Tech, Ambassador, whatever) would have their hands in it for context and direction of the final post(s).

The staff who worked in this proposal, and the potential initial members of the team are:
Sinking_Otter
wackdog
BAD_DATA
tacticalnecromancy
AWhiteBoy
radian628
Yossipossi (Advisory)

It is true that bringing people into AHT to focus on communication and preventing threads being released with too little or too much detail can help solve this issue. But it would only be limited to AHT. If another team enters into a situation where they need assistance with communication, unless someone within the team or outside it steps up, and there is no guarantee that would happen, they’re on their own.

The PR Team would be able to step in and provide assistance in these situations, preventing communication from being forgotten or poorly handled, and advocating for users who may have concerns or feedback about the given situation.

advocacy for community members who feel like they are not heard

Is this not at least in part what CO is supposed to be to begin with?

I’m with Nico in that I dont think we need additional teams and bureaucracy to handle communication — ideally people joining teams specifically for the purpose of handling sensitive cases, or more broadly, those handling areas related to IO/CO should have the necessary skills and foresight to handle communication. Maybe both teams should aim to expand a touch, with the goal of having a few extra on-hand who are comfortable helping out in this area.

I’m confused why IO/CO don’t have roles for this to begin with if it’s an issue we’re butting against.

i really dont think we need a whole team of people who arent trained in pr doing pr.

all they do is word things for public consumption.

While this is part of the suggested ideas concerning the PR team, as stated above there are more intended responsibilities. Ideally, this would be like a liaison between staff and users both

We would want to prevent as much confusion as possible. Inter-team communications are certainly not in an ideal place but the PR team is part of rebuilding a solid foundation for better communications, not furthering it

Additionally, we are not dealing with staff quotas or things like salary budgets or the likes, so we do not see any real downside to making an official team. Formalising it would simply give structure to something that already needs to happen when these situations arise.

• no need for a nee team
• add one or two heavily vetted individuals to disc, aht, and ambassadors (the ambassador one in particular is going to be a nightmare the likes of which I do not envy)
• these new members have limited access to the blackbox on a case by case basis to help formulate statements
• they cannot vote on outcomes
• they cannot influence outcomes
• all they do is word things for public consumption.

My reasoning is two-fold; another team would add clutter and confusion and and whole other set of mouth and ears to the perpetual game of telephone that communications is, and second, I dont trust anyone except yossi to do it and they (forgive me if they /them is not what you are feeling right now yossi) are semi retired.

im hurt. offended. outraged, even.

expect to hear from my lawyers.

I don't think that an official team is necessary, because I don't think that they'd have even one work item per month on average. I think it'd be better to have this as a less formal group, possibly along the lines of what Jerden suggested.

Practically, I'm not sure how you'd recruit for the team, each situation that requires PR is going to be unique, and infrequent enough that it seems like it would be hard to know how best to communicate it. Also, to do their job properly they are going to have to be part of AHT, Disc, Ambassadors ect, at least temporarily, otherwise someone with that team needs to be briefing PR on the situation, and at that point it's unclear what the team can do besides editing and rephrasing.

The staff members involved in the situation will know it best, and while they're not necessarily going to be best equipped to communicate that, I worry that passing statements through a PR team could cause miscommunications and confusion, and also diffuse responsibility - I think there's something useful about the person responsible for the situation being the one to tell people about it. While they can definitely benefit from running things past other staff first, I don't think delegating this to another team will necessarily help.

I feel like the relevant teams or (as in the case of the Bright Works) projects within staff recruiting people who are OK with handling public communications would be better than having a separate team within CO.

In fact, I believe that being a member of one of these teams (which perform sensitive and unique functions related to site or social media maintenance) naturally also requires the skills required to communicate with the Community. Rather than potentially slow down various processes, or worse, alienate a Community that already accuses us of bogging ourselves down with unnecessary and self-serving bureaucracy, I believe that we Staffers simply need to learn from past experiences and the criticism we received to improve our communication.

Introduction

Communication is a fundamental element of any organisation, including the SCP Wiki. Failures in communication, such as those during the Bright Works Project and November 2025 incident, have resulted in a dissatisfied user base, increased staff workload, and a loss in trust resulting in users and staff leaving the Wiki.

These events have demonstrated a need for a staff team dedicated to handling complex, public-facing communication in all its forms. A Public Relations Team, or PR Team for short, is the answer. The PR Team would work to prevent further damage and begin closing the gap between staff and users, helping to create a more unified SCP Wiki. It would also help refine critical communication from staff, aiming to prevent situations like those mentioned above.

Team Duties

Given the nature of a Public Relations Team, and the increased workload that comes with this kind of work, the team must only be brought in to handle specific tasks. It cannot be treated as a one-stop solution for every form of communication from staff.

It is not possible to list every duty the PR Team may undertake. However, before the team is called in, one question must be asked:

Will this staff action (or inaction) result in noticeable community dissatisfaction?

If the answer is yes, the PR Team will be called in to assist.

Examples Of Public Relations Team Duties Include:

• Acting as a final review for Disciplinary and Anti-Harassment Team threads before they are posted. Importantly, the Team would only have access to documentation intended to be made public.
• Assisting with user complaints to ensure both the user or users and staff feel heard, with the aim of reaching a satisfactory resolution for both parties.
• Acting as front-line communicators during critical situations where members of the community are dissatisfied.
• Drafting of critical policy or statements before they are presented to users. Critical policies or statements are defined as being:

1. Are related to something that would be a major change or event on the site (such as structural changes).
2. Needs to be urgently created, implemented or released.
3. The community, staff or both are heavily invested in its outcome. There may also be segments of the community that are concerned or highly critical of the policy or statement.

Examples Of What The Public Relations Team Will Not Handle:

• Answering basic questions from users that can be handled by the relevant team.
• Assisting with inter-team communication.
• Reviewing Disciplinary and Anti-Harassment Team materials that are not intended to be posted publicly.
• Drafting of non-critical policy or statements such as event announcements. Non-critical policies or statements are defined as being:

1. Aren't related to something that would be a major change or event on the site (such as structural changes).
2. Don't need to be urgently created, implemented or released.
3. The community, staff or both may or may not be heavily invested in its outcome. There are no segments of the community that are concerned or highly critical of the policy or statement.

These examples are not an exhaustive list of what the PR Team will or will not handle. In every situation, discretion should be used by members of the team when deciding whether they should become involved.

Structure & Reasoning

The structure of the Public Relations Team would be nearly identical to that of existing staff teams. It would fall under Community Outreach, with Sub Team Captains leading the team and a group of staff members making up the bulk of its membership.

The Team will often be handling time sensitive situations, or multiple situations simultaneously. A singular captain could find themselves quickly overwhelmed, leading to a constant stream of new captains which would make it difficult for the team to operate effectively. There is also the risk of a lone captain being unavailable at a critical time due to other commitments, leaving the team without leadership when they need it the most. Having multiple captains helps to prevent these issue from occurring.

Discussion will go on for one week.