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Staff Guidelines

Social Contract

This social contract is created, altered, and maintained by the team and should be reviewed regularly. It’s our by-laws. People need to be held accountable to these and anyone joining needs to accept the contract and understand that they will be called out for not following it.

Following social contract should be one of the considerations of “performance grading” for staff.

  • These behaviors and expectations extend to private messaging and discussions within privileged access channels
  • Remember there is a real human being on the other side of the screen.
  • Assume positive intent.
  • Be honest, transparent, and respectful.
  • Be fair, be kind, and be gracious.
  • Keep the mission of The Odin Project above your personal ambitions.
  • Consider your peers as the professionals they are. Your experience does not trump others.
  • Embrace the unique differences on the team and learn from each other to be a better staff member, and even beyond TOP.
  • Be aware of difficulties of typed communication where tone and voice are hard to interpret. Keep use of sarcasm, emojis, slang to a minimum during more serious discussions.
  • Healthy conflict where others opinions are heard is welcome, but we should avoid it turning into personal fighting, insulting or sarcasm.
  • Stay true to your promises. Communicate clearly when you can’t keep up or deliver what is promised. No shame in that.
  • Avoid focusing on an individual. Focus on a problem and how it can be solved as a team.
  • Don’t continuously complain about issues without proposing a solution.
  • Communicate prolonged absences as defined per role expectations.
  • Opinions change, people should respect that but also be ready to defend yourself when pressed on the topic, but it must all be done respectfully.
  • People have a right to their opinions, if the explanation of their opinion is not to your liking, you must still respect that outcome. Defer to voting if necessary

Communication

  • Communicate absences. For different reasons, related to work, studies, family, etc. there will be periods of time where a staff member can not commit to the demands of TOP and its community, either as much as one would like or as much as is needed. However, this should be the exception, not the rule.
  • Propose changes to function or form of The Odin Project
    • Curriculum Changes
    • Moderation strategy
    • Site functionality
    • Initiatives (e.g. Gamejams, TOPathons, Fireside chats)
    • Etc.
  • Communications should happen on a semi-regular cadence

Nominating a New Staff Member

Process

In a team-specific channel, make a post nominating a person to join the team with the reasons why you think this person would be a great fit. Create a thread for any relevant conversation. When you think the team is ready to vote, create a poll.

If the vote passes by a super majority (> 75%), the person that nominated the new person (or the person that will be extending the invitation to join the team) should make note of any concerns and encouraging comments shared in threads in the team-specific channel AND in #staff-interest-submissions to share with the new staff member.

As an example to share this type of information, "We are excited to invite you to be a member of the ___ team. You deserve to be a part of this team and everyone is onboard with it. Here is what the job entails. Here are the things that we like and think that you bring to the table. Here are some of our concerns that we want you to be aware of. Welcome to the team!"

Before giving the role to the new staff member, these threads should be deleted.

Using #staff-interest-submissions

Keep the discussion in #staff-interest-submissions threads focused on any personal experience with the person with specific examples showing their helpfulness in Discord or contributions on GitHub.

Everyone can be open and honest sharing any concerns, without fear of that person reading it 6+ months later when circumstances may have changed.

Team-Specific Conversation

The best place to have team-specific conversation could be #polls-maintainer or #moderation-proposals. But each team is welcome to make a new channel or designate a different channel for this purpose.

Procedure for reporting a concern with an Odin Staff Member.

Odin staff members include all members of the Core, Maintainer and Moderator teams. Concerns include but are not limited to infractions against the Social Contract, team expectations, and Discord rule infractions.

How to make a report

There are two options to make a report. You can choose the option that makes the most sense for the specific situation or the one that makes you the most comfortable.

  1. Send a Direct Message to at least 2 non-offending Core members
  2. Submit an anonymous or nonanonymous form that is visible to all Core members.

Regardless of where a report originates, each report will all be handled by non-offending Core members.

Follow-up for nonanonymous reports

  • The reporter should receive confirmation that the report has been received in a timely manner (within 24 hours).
  • If you do not receive this confirmation, it is acceptable and appropriate to either ask for a follow-up or send the report to another staff member.
  • The non-offending Core members may create a group DM with the reporter to ask clarifying questions or request evidence of the reported infraction.
  • The reporter will be given confirmation that their report has been addressed and appropriately escalated. This confirmation will not include extensive details of actions taken.