I would like to propose to improve our social media presence with a Mastodon account. Mastodon is part of the so-called “Fediverse”, a federated social media platform, which is also open source. A lot of open source projects are naturally present there, and OpenRefine is mentioned quite frequently.
I would like this account to have a more humane touch than the Twitter account. It would be sharing things about the life of the project (development progress, related events, partnerships…), and not so much about automated content (for instance the mentions of OpenRefine in publications - I don’t think they are super interesting for the community).
We could share the credentials between multiple team members. Perhaps it would be nice if we would sign our “toots” with our personal Mastodon account, to give more visibility to team members and add a bit of accountability?
Pinging people active on this platform I am aware of: @abbe98@ostephens@b2m@Sandra - would you be interested in having such an account? Would you like to participate in its curation? Any preference for an instance? Maybe https://fosstodon.org would be fitting?
I would be happy to contribute. I could imagine sharing things like screencasts of current work(like keyboard navigation atm), relevant Wikipedia Weekly(ping @Ainali)/development streams, as well as more generic stuff like quality good first issues, forum posts that could need some extra interaction, documentation updates worth noting, etc.
My only worry here is that of “who determines the moderation policy and who enforces said moderation policy” on any particular instance that might look congenial to a project like OpenRefine. (Fair warning, social media is amazingly great when filled with amazingly great folks… and then, not so great when some level of freedom is juxtaposed between groups causing some to be marginalized. Not good for any OSS project for sure!) And we have seen in the past what happens when folks are quick to assume things of others before asking or getting to know a person. (cough! CS&S hacks Thad)
I’m not quite sure how Mastodon instances actually “moderate” based on rules or moderators but do notice that when there is juxta positioning it seems groups spin up their own instance and then frameup their own policies and Fediverse connection preferences, whereby marginalizing some communities unfairly. (not a GAP supporter, just stating what has caused a few issues with other communities trying out Mastodon instances and navigating rules/policies for their instances.)
Just my take on a very great idea, but with real implications for our own policies. Henceforth…
We should review any instance policies and also ensure they align with our own conduct policies or code of ethics (still in limbo from what I recall @Martin ?)
I personally especially admire these two and think they are important for any FOSS project as debates sometimes touch on these. So I like them since they bring civility while also not constraining civil discussion that might get heated by saying be open and listen first and don't criticize tone:
Do not engage in name calling, ad hominem attacks, or any other uncivil behaviour; criticize ideas, never people.
Do not tone police. Toots may violate the standards of civility we set on Fosstodon, but you should not criticize users for their tone. Report them or feel free to block them. In neither case should you criticize their tone.
But I have no idea what this actually means? Can someone explain gently to me? :
Do not “shitpost” - while humorous posts are allowed, and actually encouraged, there is no place for “shitposting” on Fosstodon.
UDPATE: it means
a deliberately provocative or off-topic comment posted on social media, typically in order to upset others or distract from the main conversation
which is perfectly acceptable and admirable, although I would have used that description instead of a confusing slang term definition.
I have the feeling that this instance is on the rather strong end of the policing spectrum and I am not sure I would want to have my personal account there (for instance, requiring posts to be in English would not work for me), but for an official project account those terms feel appropriate to me. If need be, we could have other accounts held in other languages.
I have applied for an account on fosstodon, let’s see if they accept us.
And sorry about the people I forgot in the list of known OpenRefiners on Mastodon (even among people I actually follow there ^^ - I actually like reading your toots too!! )
Thanks for the initiative @antonin_d - I think it’s great, though I don’t think i can volunteer to be co-curator of the account, as already struggling with organisatorial duties on Wikibase group accounts. However, i can definitely boost content, and if I have the inspiration to join later in more active role will message here
I support diversifying away from the dumpster fire that is Twitter, but I don’t see the need to couple the decision about communication channels with one about communication styles. It seems like whatever communication style is chosen can/should be used on all channels. I assume that the current use of automation on Twitter is driven by the desire to maintain a presence without having to invest a lot of human effort. Of course a high touch approach provides for a richer experience, but it does require a bigger investment. I also think it’s worth using automation to cross post to all supported channels.
@tfmorris I agree the choice of platform(s) is fairly independent from what we choose to post. But because I don’t use Twitter myself I do not have strong feelings about how the Twitter account should be run. On Mastodon I feel like I understand the culture a bit better and can judge what sort of content would be appropriate there.
If we want to make similar twists to the Twitter account, I would find that great. I do not know if cross-posting from Mastodon to Twitter is doable/desirable nowadays, but if that works for folks who use Twitter, why not! I would not want to set it up the other way around because in Mastodon it is quite frowned upon (posting messages containing Twitter handles that cannot be resolved by the system is not great UX).
Anyway I have set up an account here:
I’ll share the password with @abbe98 for now, if anyone else wants to participate in the curation let us know.
Linkedin - mostly dormant account that still managed to attract 100 followers. Admins are @Ainali@Sandra@Chris_Erdmann and myself. As I was doing the review, I enable smarterqueue to post the same content from twitter to the LinkedIn group.
Boost visibility for community contribution regarding training, tutorial, and publication.
Reach out to an audience not following the google discussion group at the time.
Post information that may not be relevant enough for the discussion list (I don’t want to share every new video tutorial on the forum or previous discussion group).
Support a user (very rarely, and I am unsure if this should be done via official or personal accounts).
For the record, each tweet has between 5 to 20 clicks on its attached link.
Managing multiple channels
I think it is a great idea to delegate the curation of each platform’s content to a designated list of members.
Regarding cross-posting, I would recommend the usage of a tool like buffer (it seems they are the only one supporting Mastodon) or smarterqueue (which doesn’t support Mastodon), where
One message can be posted on different social media, with on “native” independent post on each platform (so no reference between mastodon and twitter for example).
Messages can be scheduled and queue in advance (so there is not a flood of messages when the curator find 10 interesting things to share in the same hour).
Any volunteers
I created this public pool (other users will know what you voted for) to identify who may be interested in managing a specific channel (or multiple channels via a buffer).
Twitter
Youtube playlist
Mastodon
Linkedin
Buffer (to crosspost on twitter, mastodon, LinkedIn)
Other - please add a comment in the conversation
0voters
Creating a policy
If we start delegating access to social media to several volunteers, I would prefer we set up a “code of posting” so we document somewhere what is authorized and not when managing the profile since posts will be coming from the OpenRefine identity. I will open a PR on OpenRefine/OpenRefine.
My experience with Fediverse accounts has been mixed. It draws very specific communities; most people I professionally and personally interact with are still on Twitter and I engage in a lot more fruitful interaction there. Mastodon is for many folks still quite complex; and I’ve indeed encountered some levels of gatekeeping in various (at first sight OK-looking) instances. Distributed is not necessarily more welcoming.
I think OpenRefine users will currently generally mostly benefit from more lively interaction on Twitter.
I interact with and help GLAMs and Wikimedians on a daily basis in the Wikimedia-focused Telegram group, and that already keeps me quite busy. I have no capacity to help in other places.
Thanks @Sandra. I am not interested in curating the Twitter account myself but I hope this move can at least help us reconsider what to post there.
@Martin I think the use of Buffer or other automated tools probably contributes to giving the Twitter account a fairly cold and impersonal vibe.
Looking at the past tweets, here are my intuitive thoughts (again, not spending time on Twitter myself and therefore not being familiar with the culture there - so this might be off):
Tweets about publications: I would avoid them unless the tweet really says something about why this use of OpenRefine is of interest. Of course that’s more work, one needs to really skim through the publication and figure out what they do with OpenRefine. Tracking all publications mentioning OpenRefine is interesting for the project team, but as a user I don’t think I would want to be notified of all academic publications which mention a tool I like. From the distance it really looks like you have some automated set up that just dumps search results in the Twitter feed and I am doubt followers really want to see that. It also feels dangerous in the sense that some academic publications citing OpenRefine are of really low quality, and I find it a bit embarrassing that we are promoting those. Potentially, it would be useful to have some sort of separate bot account for OpenRefine-related publications which people could subscribe to if they wish (I would personally be interested if I used Twitter - but I am not the target audience of the official Twitter account!)
Automatically tweeting StackOverflow questions also feels a dangerous for that reason. StackOverflow is not always a great fit for OpenRefine questions so we are likely promoting quite some low quality content that will get downvoted / closed / deleted quite quickly. For instance, this tweet which just says “I can’t install refine #stackoverflowhttps://bit.ly/3VaPJSV” is probably not something we want on the official Twitter account, I would say.
For videos or training events, you are also following the same pattern of “English Video” or “Spanish Training” followed by a copy-pasted title of the resource. That also gives this vibe of just dumping content into people’s timelines. Also, I think it should rather be “Video in English” / “Training in Spanish” (as you know, not every resource in French comes from France ). I would overall be more selective and write something more customized to the resource you are promoting.
So overall, I’d aim for more quality and less quantity. I know that it’s not how you get followers on Twitter (and that’s one reason I don’t use this platform myself), but I would still like to spare some brain time of our user community by being a bit more selective.
With recent development on X, I feel it may be finally time to abandon that platform and deactivate the account. Should we raise that decision in its own thread or just continue here?
Hi @Ainali , this tone "with recent development on X" suggests that there is some problem with the OpenRefine account on X, or a community view of the account on X. Can you elaborate please?
OpenRefine has and always will allow viewpoints from all users, consumers, organizations, businesses, and communities. It would be remise for OpenRefine not to have official accounts on the major social platforms where such audiences congregate.
OpenRefine has and always will remain unpolitical, unbiased, and focused on its mission and in doing so, using any and all platforms where our largest and smallest user communities thrive.
However, if you have particular points of discussion on how OpenRefine and our X account are treated on that platform or any particular platform, then that should be brought up here.
It's development of X that is troublesome. This was not a comment of how our account has been handled.
In the spirit of staying unpolitical and unbiased, we need to deactivate the account as staying on it in itself have become a political statement akin to starting an account on Truth social.
as staying on it in itself have become a political statement akin to starting an account on Truth social.
This statement is worrysome, because it atones that there is some inherent negativity upon Truth social or other platforms like X. In reality, that bias is a personal choice for each individual, and I would never dictate to others how they should feel or think. Which is why we in OpenRefine have tried to stay agnostic of such bias and kept our focus on our mission, and kept our communications where they can provide the most reach & impact, regardless of any bias.
To that end, we'd never want to cut the cord on a userbase of over 600M. Conversely, we should definitely embrace our outreach upon other platforms while maintaining integrity of our mission and messaging. @Martin has historically, generously helped maintain our social presence (I never liked doing it, and never did David after Google/OpenRefine). I'm sure the community can evolve into helping with the outreach on other platforms, while maintaining our existing channels.
Not quite, that they would be negative is perhaps more your assumptions about me shining through. All I am saying is that these platforms now are political tools for a specific ideology and if we don't want to be seen as supporters of it to stay unpolitical (regardless of what politics that is) staying is no longer an option. We can stay and keep contact with the user base, but that should then be done with the knowledge of how it reflects on this community and which ethics we are willing to bend to achieve our goals.
Should we use the new Mission Vision and Values to evaluate how we decide if we want to be present on certain social media platforms? The Respectful of Diverse Backgrounds & Expertise and Approachable could help guide the decision.
)
). I would overall be more selective and write something more customized to the resource you are promoting.