Communications/EditorialPolicy

Editorial policy: Transition Network website

Transition Network Editorial Policy

Author Ed Mitchell
Status Version four - back to basics in 2013

This editorial policy is a work in progress for the management of the Transition Network website and related communications channels. You can read more about the communications process on the communications page. NB. Some of this page is out of date and in the process of being updated.

Criteria: high level

Target demographic for Transition Network Web Project

1.'Transitioners' - those involved in Transition initiatives and projects
2. People interested in Transition

Criteria for all content

1. *for* transitioners
2. Transition-relevant
3. Timely
4. Interesting
5. Not about self-promotion
6. Not ranting and raving (identified as repeated rants on the same subject)
7. Apolitical (ie not a platform for political or personal or 'anti' rants)
8. In [1]Plain English as far as possible

Criteria for ‘top stories’ and ‘newsletter’ on the TN site

1. *for* transitioners
2. Transition-relevant
3. Timely
4. Interesting
5. Of ‘major significance’
6. Not about self-promotion
7. Not ‘just generally green’

Criteria for site editors

1. Track record of editing and managing websites (from blogs upwards)
2. Agreement to behave professionally and respectfully when editing
3. Agreement to work within the criteria for all content (above) and moderation processes (below)
4. Agreement to work with an editors group and accept their decisions

Criteria for site bloggers

1. Good writers
2. Regular posters
3. Handle comments on their own blogs in a timely manner with grace
4. Exploring a specific Transition-related theme or issue
5. Adhere to the editorial and community guidelines
6. Not grinding their favourite axe (you know what we mean)
7. Giving space to different opinions and being open to discussion

Criteria for site facilitators

1. Open and friendly, balanced and reasonable
2. Handle issues on the site in a timely manner with grace
3. Be neutral in their actions and facilitate according to the Community guidelines (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/community-guidelines)
4. Not grinding their favourite axe (you know what we mean)
5. Giving space to different opinions and being open to discussion

Criteria for Community Microsite adminstrators

1. Open and friendly, balanced and reasonable
2. Technically capable of managing the microsites (adding, editing content, understanding basic web stuff)
3. Be neutral in their actions and facilitate according to the Community guidelines (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/community-guidelines)
4. Not grinding their favourite axe (you know what we mean)
5. Helping users of their microsites with problems those users may have (ie frontline support - not sending every problem to site admin!)

Criteria for Twitter and Facebook facilitators

1. Facebook and Twitter content has four main streams

1a. Transition Network site news/forums/blogs/projects promotion (using link to TN.org/...)
1b. Publishing stories brought to the attention of the editors that don't fit into /news or /blogs on the site
1c. Motivating and supporting the initiatives out there by Retweeting (Twitter) or Sharing (FB) their news
1d. Sharing thought provoking items that are more political than might go on the main site (e.g. from Pete's thought list)

Faciliators are, and do:

2. Familiar with Twitter, Facebook and Transition and from an initiative
3. Open and friendly, balanced and reasonable. Transparent about who they are and respond to replies accordingly (ie *not* Network staff)
4. If a new person is added to Twitter, at their introduction, re-set personal information on twitter about page to reflect who it is
5. Make tweets that meet the editorial criteria (above)
6. Stay on Mission: to inspire, encourage, connect, support and train the Transition movement
7. Not grinding their favourite axe (you know what we mean)
8. Not ranting and raving (identified as repeated rants on the same subject)
8. Apolitical (ie not a platform for political or personal or 'anti' rants)
10. Agree to share the tweeting responsibility - and look into 'tweet scheduling tools'
11. Check what others are tweeting before tweeting (to avoid replication) - so check the transitiontowns feed before tweeting
12. Use identifying handles at the end of your post when doing updates to identify who it is (e.g. "(Ed)", "(Rich)" "(Char)"
13. Avoid public spats and getting into dogmatic rows with 'trolls' (people who just want a fight) - ignore these

Supporting REconomy (Transition's local economy project) on Twitter:

To enable a wider range of interests and perspectives the REconomy twitter feed has been set up to retweet the @transitiontowns twitter account whenever we use the word REconomy, @reconomy or #reconomy in the tweet. Contact Shane Hughes if there is any problem with this in the future.

Relevant tweets for REconomy retweeting are those that focus on highlighting or supporting the exciting emergence of a new local economy. It tends to avoid posts about the negatives i.e. how crap the current economy is or about Climate Change as they want to stick to the positive vision and these issues are widely covered elsewhere anyway. That said, on the negative side, Peak Oil related tweets may be relevant as there's still an awareness gap about peak oil and it's likely impacts on the economy.

Criteria for Event Partners and their events

1. *for* transitioners
2. Transition-relevant
3. Timely
4. Interesting
5. Not about self-promotion
6. Not ranting and raving (identified as repeated rants on the same subject)
7. Apolitical (ie not a platform for political or personal or 'anti' rants)

Roles and Authority

Site administrators

1. Responsible for all editorial and moderation management and facilitation
2. The authority for managing the community rules
3. Set up community microsites
4. Responsible for user management

Site editors

1. Responsible for the quality and position of content on the site and realisation of the editorial criteria and community rules
2. Need to be registered and active users with completed public personal profiles, classified as 'site editor'
3. Responsible for co-creating and managing a long term ‘site editorial plan’
4. Free to add and edit their own news items and blog items
5. Free to edit others news items based on trust and within the editorial criteria and community rules
6. Not free to edit others blog items, but can 'flag as nonsense'
7. Free to promote items to ‘top story’ or 'voices'
8. Equal with other editors to discuss choice of items, or promotion of items – and work in a collaborative manner
9. Responsible for responding to comments to own news items (are auto-subscribed to comments to their registered email addresses)

Newsletter editors (also site editors)

1. Responsible for the quality and position of content in the newsletter and realisation of the editorial criteria
2. The authority on which items go into the newsletter and how it is written
3. Agree to produce a newsletter once per month
4. Need to be registered and active users with completed public personal profiles, classified as ‘newsletter editor'
5. Need to have access to the ‘newsletter@transitionnetwork.org’ email alias
6. Agrees to listen to requests to go into newsletter (from a wide range of requests)
7. Oversees web co-ordinator who handles the bounces from not working email addresses

Site bloggers

1. Responsible for the quality of their own blog items which they write on the TN site
2. Need to be registered and active users with completed public personal profiles, classified as 'internal voices'
3. Free to write whatever they want on their own blogs within the site's editorial criteria and community rules. NB: copy, links and references can be checked by editors if a complaint is raised.
4. Responsible for responding to comments to blog items (are auto-subscribed to comments to their email addresses)
5. If a site blogger strays from the community and editorial guidelines, site admins can escalate the issue with site editors. If it is agreed in the majority that said blogger has gone over the top, an editor/admin will approach the blogger to discuss the situation. The authority here is with the editor/admin who is expected to use their judgement and try to resolve the conflict calmly and responsibly. If a calm resolution is not reached (the blogger is likely to be incensed), rights to creat blog items will be removed from the blogger. NB: we will try to avoid this as much as possible, this is destructive conflict which leads nowhere useful, but it must be laid out in advance. The key reference points are the editorial and community guidelines.

Site facilitators

1. Responsible for keeping an eye on the content flowing through the site and representing the Community Guidelines (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/community-guidelines) 2. Responsible for keeping conversations on track if suitable but is not the dictator of the conversation 3. Should issues arise, responsible for trying to resolve issues with the relevant users, and if not, for escalating to site admin 4. Need to be registered and active users with completed public personal profiles 5. Can be set to 'forum admin' status by site admin

Voices - off-site blogers

1. Responsible for the quality of their own blog items which they write on their own blogs
2. Need to be registered users, with completed public personal profiles, classified as 'external voices'
3. Free to write whatever they want on their own blogs on their own editorial criteria
4. Give Transition Network the rights to re-publish their aggregated blog items on the website along with the original item link and author name
5. Do not have to respond to comments to aggregated blog items on the TN website (it is not possible to comment on aggregated blog items on the TN site)

Community Microsite administrators

1. Responsible for all content on their community microsites (pages, news, events, newsletter announcements)
2. Need to be registered users, classified as ‘group admins’ and be the authors of the microsite
3. Free to write whatever they want in their microsites, within the site's editorial criteria and community rules. NB: copy, links and references can be checked by editors if a complaint is raised.

Profile administrators

1. Responsible for all content on their profile pages
2. Need to be registered users
3. Free to write whatever they want in their profiles, within the site's editorial criteria and community rules. NB: copy, links and references can be checked by editors if a complaint is raised.

Event add-ers

1. Responsible for the quality of their own event items which they write on the TN site
2. Need to be registered and active users with completed public personal profiles, classified as ‘event add-er’ by admin

Site contributors

1. Responsible for their contributions to the site (comments, community news items and events from the community microsites) and how they fit within the community rules

Twitter facilitators

1. Responsible for their contributions on Twitter in accordance with the site content criteria and twitter facilitators criteria

Tools

1. News items
2. Blog items
3. Comments
4. Forum items
5. Event items
6. Newsletter system
7. Administration and moderation system
8. Community microsites and related items
9. Profiles – for initiatives, people, projects

Processes

1. Registering
2. Adding a news item to the site
3. Adding a blog item to the site
4. Adding an event to the site
5. Adding a profile page to the site (initiatives, projects, people)
6. Promoting a news item to 'front page news'
7. Promoting a blog item to 'voices'
8. Adding comments to items
9. Adding an item to the newsletter
10. Adding and sending a newsletter through the system
11. Setting up a community microsite
12. Adding pages to community microsites
13. Adding news to community microsites
14. Adding events to community microsites
15. Adding news to other websites which is then aggregated on our site

Moderation processes and responsibilities

Site administrators are currently responsible for facilitating all conflict onsite – from ‘flag as nonsense’ issues to editorial disagreements. We intend to support the development of facilitation group to support the site in the long term.

The site runs on a ‘post-moderation’ principle, whereby all content is accepted (apart from spam which is captured through the spam filters) and only edited/removed if a user has raised an issue (‘flag as nonsense’). Users can flag any item as nonsense if it is outside the community guidelines (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/community-guidelines).

This is the process if an item is flagged as nonsense, going all the way up the moderation ladder to worst case scenario:

1. User flags an item as nonsense
2. Item appears in the ‘moderate’ menu in admin (https://www.transitionnetwork.org/admin/content/abuse)
3. Site admin checks the enquiry
4. If the item is outside the guidelines, the moderator can delete or edit it
5. Moderator notifies the item author and complainant of the action
6. If the user making the problems continues to make nonsense, site admin can ban them for two weeks
7. If the user continues to make trouble, they can be banned

Editor level disagreements

Site (and guest) editors are asked to remain within the criteria (outlined above) as part of their involvement with TN.org. If an editor's choice of content or tone or moderation practice provokes issues which cannot be resolved between said editor and the site admin, the discussion will widen to the Transition Editors group for resolution.