Provide PyLadies Slack guideline (and automate this)

[Mariatta]

It would be great if we have a general guideline for new slack members.

We can have a bot that automatically welcomes new slack members and share them some useful info like:

• welcome, what is this space about
• introduce self at #introduction
• organizers should include which chapter they organize in profile
• jobs can be posted at #jobs
• events can be posted at #events
• find your local chapter channel
• etc

[Mariatta]

We can have the guidelines written as a doc somewhere, and just have the slackbot automaticlaly share link to the new member when they joined.

[mesrenyamedogbe]

I took sometime to design something we could use. Also, i could edit the content to suit our purpose.

[BethanyG]

One of the strategies that another team I am a member of (codebuddies) employs is to auto-subscribe users to specific channels when they join.

One of those is a 'landing pad' that gives them a specific welcome message like the excellent one @AbigailMesrenyameDogbe has posted.

Maybe we can do the same? Additionally, we can auto-subscribe new members to the channels mentioned in the welcome -- such as #conferences, #introductions, #general, #pyladies-support, and #africa, etc.

Codebuddies also posts a separate "Slack Etiquette" doc for users to look over in the same "landing pad" channel. While I think it would need re-working for our groups, I've posted it here as a potential starting place. (since this is now in the pull request below, and this is a too-long comment, I'm removing the excess verbiage.).

---

[BethanyG]

Two other thoughts:

1) This app https://greet.bot/plans has functionality for onboarding. it is pretty limited at the free level, but can be set to have a custom message. Plans are 12$/mo for higher customization.

2) We could build a slack bot of our own that interacts with new users. Glitch has a bunch of starter code from the Slack team around doing bots with CoC and interaction, etc. This is a link to Glitch's Slack Team Page: https://glitch.com/@slack. Down side is that all of the example code is JS/Node based - but there are bot frameworks in python as well.

[Mariatta]

Slack now has a custom workflow where it can greet new member who joined the channel so we can use that.

I would suggest instead of coming up with an image, we create it as a text file, either markdown or restructured text, then the bot should just provide a link to that text file. We can easily edit the text file whenever needed.

While the image is really great, I find it is less flexible when we need to make changes.

[Mariatta]

All the content that you all have come up with are great too.

[BethanyG]

Is that custom workflow for new users Slack a paid feature? I'm an an admin for several Slack teams that are unpaid, and I can't seem to find where to set that up..... but that would be perfect, if we can use it.

[Mariatta]

The workflow is available on Standard, Plus, and Enterprise plans. Pyladies is under the Standard (non profit) Plan. We already have a couple Slack workflows in place, for example

[BethanyG]

Perfect! I typed up @AbigailMesrenyameDogbe message as a Slack Post and shared it in the global organizing channel, so we can all work on it there. Once it is shared in a public channel, we can also link out to it here. 😄 I can also add it as a markdown doc in the repo...where would be a good place for that?

[Mariatta]

Thanks @BethanyG and @AbigailMesrenyameDogbe I think we can add it under /process directory of this repo: https://github.com/pyladies/global-organizing/tree/master/process

[BethanyG]

@Mariatta @AbigailMesrenyameDogbe -- These are now under https://github.com/pyladies/global-organizing/pull/44

---

@Mariatta suggested we work on some documentation for members joining our PyLadies global Slack who were unfamiliar with Slack as a tool -- and with our (sort of unspoken) rules and conventions as an online community. We want new members to feel welcome & comfortable in the space -- and clear on "where to go and what to do" within pyladies.slack.com.

---

slack_new_member_welcome.md contains first pass language for a Slack new member welcome message, written by @AbigailMesrenyameDogbe.

The current working plan is to have the message or a link to the message greet new Slack members when they join the PyLadies Slack team and are added to a #welcome or #starting_place channel. We would also point them to the Slack etiquette doc, or incorporate that doc into the overall welcome message.

Additional actions might include auto-subscribing them to a short list of channels we think would be useful/helpful.

Open questions/points for feedback:

1. Do we want to translate this welcome message?
2. What other actions or language should we be using to make this welcoming for our global community?
3. Do we want additional graphics or images in it - or no images at all?
4. What tone do we want to strike with this message? Is this a more "professional" group - or more casual? What types of interactions would we like to encourage? Which ones would we like to discourage?
5. Where would we like members to go for more information, or to get more involved?

---

slack_etiquette.md contains draft language borrowed (with permission) from codebuddies.org. Needs review & editing for use in PyLadies, since it was copied wholesale, and not everything is relevant to the PyLadies Slack.

Open questions/points for feedback:

1. Do we want this document at all, or are a few points in the welcome message sufficient for etiquette at this time?

2. Could some of these points be broken up into greeting messages for specific channels - so that, for instance, we say don't ask to ask in #help-me and the don't @ people elsewhere (or omit it entirely)?

3. What have we left out?

4. How does the language of this need to change to be more inclusive and better represent our community?

5. Should this be a stand-alone doc, or do we merge it with the slack_new_member_welcome?

[lorenanicole]

This work has been merged in per: https://github.com/pyladies/global-organizing/pull/44 and now closing the issue.