privacyguides.org/docs/about/handbook/guidelines.md

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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 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 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 beforehand.

   • Of course, the work they are sharing must follow our community guidelines. 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.

   • 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.