docs: Volunteer's handbook

docs/about/handbook/community.md

@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+---
+title: Community Basics
+---
+
+## Identifying "Bad Faith" Comments
+
+We should always strive to enter discussions in good faith. Likewise, we expect participants in our communities to engage in good faith as well. When reading comments in our community, comments which meet the following definition of "bad faith" should be removed:
+
+1. The poster fails to provide reasoning for their criticism, and is unwilling to engage in a meaningful discussion.
+2. The poster presents their criticism as factual, when it's really a matter of opinion.
+3. The poster presents their critisicm as factual, when it's actually false or misinformation.
+4. The poster is not looking for anything to be improved, they are simply spreading negativity.
+5. The poster is speculating, but presenting their conjectures as informed or factual.
+6. The poster engages in ad hominem attacks against us, community members, or other communities.
+
+You should **never** close topics or remove comments simply because you personally disagree with the topic or direction of the conversation.

docs/about/handbook/guidelines.md

@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+---
+title: Volunteer Guidelines
+---
+
+We are committed to ensuring that Privacy Guides is and always will be a welcoming destination for people from all walks of life to learn, discuss, and connect with one another.
+
+The Privacy Guides Community is first and foremost a place for learning. Volunteers and community members who give advice or join conversations in bad faith, purposefully misinform others, or otherwise engage in poor conduct according to these guidelines run the risk of being permanently removed from our community.
+
+## Basics
+
+1. Foster constructive discussions: You should **never** use your status as a trusted volunteer team member to shut down discussions or assert "superiority" over other community members in our spaces. Our role is to act as stewards of discussion and knowledge-sharing, not to impose our own ideals or opinions.
+
+2. Do not speak on behalf of Privacy Guides, or present your opinions as the opinions of Privacy Guides. The only opinions of Privacy Guides are those expressed on this website, which have been subject to our [review process](reviews.md) and community consensus. Postings by team members on our forum or other spaces are the opinions of that individual team member, and should always be expressed as such.
+
+3. Do not use your status (GitHub org membership, forum flair, etc.) or resources (email account, etc.) at Privacy Guides to request complimentary goods or services from companies. If you require any software/hardware/materials for a review, please inform the executive committee.
+
+4. Always identify yourself as an individual working with Privacy Guides. You could begin an email similarly to: "Hello, my name is [name] and I am a [writer/volunteer/journalist/contributor] with Privacy Guides."
+
+## Code of Ethics
+
+As a volunteer with Privacy Guides, you are expected to maintain ethics and professional conduct within our communities, during volunteer activities, and/or when representing this project. We expect our volunteers to act respectfully, honestly, and ethically while fulfilling their responsibilities, and in their interactions with our staff, fellow volunteers, and community members.
+
+### Writing & Engagement
+
+In all of your volunteer work, you must respect legitimate intellectual property rights, do not plagiarize work, and give credit to the originators of ideas.
+
+Don’t share the posts of others without permission.
+
+### Anti-Racism, Harassment, and Bullying
+
+Privacy Guides has a zero-tolerance policy for racism, discrimination, sexual harassment, and bullying of any kind.
+
+These behaviors include but are not limited to: statements meant to humiliate a person publicly or individually; the use of racial slurs or “jokes”; sexually explicit communication; any unwanted sexual attention; harassment due to a person’s race, color, gender, identity, religion, language, medical condition, age, culture, national origin, gender expression, disability, marital status, or sexual orientation.
+
+If you witness these behaviors, you are required to notify Jonah Aragon (Project Director) immediately. If you engage in any of these behaviors, you will receive prompt disciplinary action and/or termination without notice.
+
+### Confidentiality
+
+During the course of their duties, volunteers will likely have access to, deal with, or become aware of confidential information and circumstances surrounding those we work with or serve. This information must be kept strictly confidential. Any breach of confidentiality will result in disciplinary action up to and including the termination of volunteer services.
+
+## Resources for Contributors
+
+Privacy Guides can provide access to various resources on an **as needed** basis. These could include:
+
+1. Email accounts/forwarding/aliases
+2. Reimbursement for purchases
+3. SSH access to various machines
+4. Secure VPN tunnels
+5. Much more...
+
+Please [post a request](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/c/meta/team/12) internally for anything you need.
+
+## Other Communities
+
+Generally, we prefer to be "blind" to other privacy communities, rather than endorsing or criticizing others. As a rule of thumb, if a community isn't notable enough to have a Wikipedia page, we should not engage with them.
+
+These rules are **critical** to follow if you are trusted with a forum flair, mod/admin label, or email account.
+
+1. Do not share negative personal opinions of other communities, content creators, or companies in our official spaces. Avoid criticism of others in the privacy space in general, unless you are refuting a specific point being made, and are providing evidence to back up your correction. If you see these discussions occurring, gently try to steer the topic towards something more constructive.
+
+    - Occasionally, lesser-known creators attempt to discredit Privacy Guides to boost their own popularity. Responding to false "allegations" only serves to boost the visibility of people acting in bad faith. We would much prefer to boost the excellent efforts of everyone acting in good faith within our communities!
+    - It is our job to make sure Privacy Guides is the best and most trustworthy source of knowledge in the privacy space. It is **not** our job to bring attention to or discredit other creators in the privacy space.
+    - Avoiding "in-fighting" and "drama" allows us to focus our efforts on the actual privacy offenders: governments, large corporations, etc.
+
+2. Members of other privacy communities *are* allowed to promote their own work on Matrix. They may promote their own work on the forum, provided that they follow our [self-promotional guidelines](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/about-the-project-showcase-category/114) beforehand.
+
+    - Of course, the work they are sharing must follow our [community guidelines](community.md). If it's something that wouldn't be appropriate to post on our forum on its own, then a link to it isn't acceptable either.
+
+3. **Never** engage with [these entities](https://discuss.privacyguides.org/#).
+
+    - If you are a staff member, team member, volunteer, moderator, or otherwise are officially associated with these entities in any capacity, you are ineligible to make contributions to Privacy Guides. You may still participate in our communities in good faith.
+
+    - Unfortunately, some entities are responsible for inordinate amounts of abuse, harassment, and other negative behavior. Such is life on the internet! To avoid unnecessary drama, this list of blacklisted communities is only viewable by the current volunteer team.

docs/about/handbook/intro.md

@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+---
+title: Volunteer's Handbook
+---
+
+Thank you for choosing to spend your time contributing to Privacy Guides. Founded in 2021, our 501(c)(3) non-profit operates several staff-led but **volunteer- and community-powered** initiatives, including our educational resources and online communities. As a volunteer with Privacy Guides, you are contributing to improving the digital privacy & security of countless readers, and to ending the modern state of surveillance capitalism.
+
+As a trusted volunteer, you are taking on a great responsibility to act as stewards of the community and to work dilligently to improve our resources, communities, and projects.
+
+We strive for everybody within our community to hold themselves to the highest standards, but as a community member with a trusted role—whether as an approved reviewer, community moderator, writer, or some other role—we expect that you familiarize yourself with this handbook and act as role models for others.
+
+[:material-book: Read our Volunteer Guidelines](guidelines.md){ .md-button .md-button--primary }
+
+## Mission Statement
+
+**Our purpose**
+
+:   To improve digital privacy and security
+
+**Our mission**
+
+:   To provide educational resources which are easily accessible, and to foster constructive and helpful discussions within our online communities
+
+**Our culture**
+
+:   Cultivating an atmosphere of welcoming, knowledge, and excellence
+
+Our *values* include ensuring everyone feels welcomed, encouraged and heard; leading with kindness by choosing compassion over judgment and assuming good faith; continuously learning and improving ourselves; collaborating together to achieve our goals; and serving, solving problems, and celebrating together as a single team.
+
+<div class="grid" markdown>
+
+<div markdown>
+
+Privacy Guides is...
+
+:material-check-bold:{ .pg-green } Friendly
+
+:material-check-bold:{ .pg-green } Knowledgable
+
+:material-check-bold:{ .pg-green } Helpful
+
+</div>
+
+<div markdown>
+
+Privacy Guides is **not**...
+
+:material-close-thick:{ .pg-red } Judgemental
+
+:material-close-thick:{ .pg-red } Fearmongering
+
+:material-close-thick:{ .pg-red } Toxic
+
+</div>
+
+</div>

docs/about/handbook/reviews.md

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+---
+title: Git Reviews
+---
+
+All changes to *privacyguides.org* are required to be reviewed and approved by **2** trusted team members.
+
+## Basic Principles
+
+There are a number of basic rules which apply to all [pull requests](https://github.com/privacyguides/privacyguides.org/pulls) to *privacyguides.org*.
+
+### 1. Community Interest
+
+**When reviewing content you are acting as the voice of the community, not pushing forward your own agenda.** While ultimate approval will come down to you, always try to make your decision based on what is best for Privacy Guides and what is most aligned with community consensus.
+
+It is generally not appropriate to use a Request for Changes to block an opinion you disagree with, if the change being made has been discussed and agreed to by the community, and there are no factual errors.
+
+Likewise, it is generally not appropriate to Approve a PR which has no clear community consensus.
+
+### 2. Prior Discussion
+
+Pull requests which add new information to the website should always have an associated discussion on our [forum](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/c/site-development/7). The Pull Request description should link directly to that discussion. Pull Requests which have not been discussed within the community should be marked as `missing discussion` on GitHub and immediately closed. We can always re-open them later!
+
+Please be respectful when communicating with Pull Request authors who are in violation of this rule. Many are first-time contributors who will be unaware of how we work here, or are familiar with other privacy-related projects which have much less stringent review criteria than we do. We want to keep these people involved with our community!
+
+In some cases, Pull Requests are authored by the developer of the tool being suggested. Again, we want to keep these developers engaged and involved with the general privacy community, they can be the best people to direct feedback to after all. Please inform them of our [self-submission process](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/about-the-project-showcase-category/114), so they can be directly involved with the evaluation process.
+
+Pull Requests which merely correct information on the website or make other non-editorial changes generally do not require prior discussion. In these cases the Pull Request description should clearly describe both what the changes being made are, **and why** the changes are being made.
+
+### 3. Taking Ownership
+
+When you add a review to a Pull Request, you are taking (at least partial) ownership of that PR. This means that you are committing to follow the PR from its current state to either it being merged or closed.
+
+Please especially do not perform "drive by" requests for changes. You should follow all discussions in the PR regarding the changes you requested, and if the problems you identified have been resolved then you should change your review to an approval. Alternatively, if you still don't feel comfortable approving the PR then you may dismiss your review.
+
+If you no longer wish to be involved with the PR, please dismiss your existing review.

mkdocs.yml

@@ -445,6 +445,11 @@ nav:
       - "about/criteria.md"
       - "about/notices.md"
       - "about/privacy-policy.md"
+      - !ENV [NAV_HANDBOOK, "Handbook"]:
+          - "about/handbook/intro.md"
+          - "about/handbook/guidelines.md"
+          - "about/handbook/community.md"
+          - "about/handbook/reviews.md"
       - !ENV [NAV_COMMUNITY, "Community"]:
           - !ENV [NAV_ONLINE_SERVICES, "Online Services"]: "about/services.md"
           - !ENV [NAV_CODE_OF_CONDUCT, "Code of Conduct"]: "CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md"

run.sh

@@ -131,6 +131,7 @@ markdown_extensions:
       exclude:
         - index.md
         - tools.md
+        - about/handbook/*
     targets:
       exclude:
         - about/contributors.md