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Document protocols for documenting group communications #3

Open patcon opened 7 years ago

patcon commented 7 years ago

We (@DZNarayanan, @ebarry, @misscs and I) had a meeting yesterday (notes). One of many things we discussed was how we might create a protocol for encouraging transparent communication in group meetings, in a non-coercive manner that maximally respects the individual wishes of participants, and allows the most convenient possible opt-outs (and post-facto audit, self-censorship).

In our work session yesterday, a few tensions were floated as things that might benefit from further consideration. These are just rough thoughts, and not a real "protocol" :)

  1. Audio recording via smartphone is nice to start with, even when there might not be initial intention to discuss "important" things.
  2. We should allow a post-meeting process to exercising discretion and self-censorship, over a window before "public" release
  3. Transcript might suffice, and be easier for participants to audit
  4. Phone recording is often easy to forget about. This might be rememdied by an audio reminder cue or a more prominent device or visual cue that is not so easy to enter a conversation and not notice.
  5. We could perhaps accommodate situations where:
    1. Person knows in advance that they're about to say something they don't want on the record, and so they mark a cue for later cutting
    2. Person forgets about recording, but realizes that the last X minutes were sensitive, and so wants to back-mark a spot for later inspection by the speaker
  6. People should be able to edit the meeting artefact themselves -- it's not a thing that a "designated censor" role could be expected to do fairly.
  7. There is perhaps a role for privileged and candid conversations. A protocol that doesn't respect this would likely lead to formal or informal convos that are either wholesale on-the-record, or wholesale off-the-record. This would be a loss of dynamism (imho). It might be nice to be granular with our tools/process, so that folks can choose for themselves on/off the record in-flow of convo, or retrospectively, so that we can all operate naturally without sacrificing certain sorts of effective work at the alter of transparency. This will also hopefully include persons in conversation who might otherwise opt-out for fear of mis-speaking.

This is what I recall from our convo, but please feel free to chime in with any improvements or concerns! yay!

cc: @DZNarayanan (also interested in transparency protocol) @ebarry

Inspiration: PDIS's Principles for Handling Official Visits to Digital Minister, @audreyt

EDIT: clarified wording around (7)

patcon commented 7 years ago

More inspiration: https://pdis.nat.gov.tw/#/how-we-work/tracks?q=vtaiwan