In any large digitial community with a diverse group of humans, communication can break down. Whether it's unintential miscommunication or intentional boundary pushing, Administrators are occasionally requested to delete a message someone wrote in the public channels.
- Admins may delete messages that violate the Code of Conduct.
- In non-trolling cases, the authors of those messages will be notified and may be given a chance to modify the message themselves.
A troll is a member who starts flame wars or intentionally upsets other members by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the intent of provoking members into displaying emotional responses and normalizing tangential discussion, either for the troll's amusement or a specific gain.
The determination of whether a message is trolling is often a subjective assessment by administrators, but there is a specific situation where RLS has a zero-tolerance policy where:
- A message which is perceived and/or reported as trolling,
- Is posted by a non-contributing member with little to no other engagement elsewhere in the Slack, and,
- Is posted via a deliberately fake account.
Content posted in this fashion results in a no-warning expulsion of the offending account from RLS. Trolling which does not meet this high bar is managed via the usual content review process.
Admins may come across or be notified of content on RLS that violates the Code of Conduct. In some situations, this may lead to an Administrator deleting the message (or messages) that violate the CoC. Messages that are most likely to be deleted are commercial solicitations, disrespectful messages to other members, or links to disturbing or distressing content without appropriate measures to warn of or hide the content (including image uploads and unfurls).
Ideally, another RLS member notices this content and contacts the original poster, who then modifies or deletes the message so that it is no longer problematic. In this case, no further Administrator action is required. If Administrator action is desired, due to lack of response or any other reason, an Administrator will notify the original poster of the violation and the need to reword or remove the problematic message. The Administrator will also specify a time after which Administrator action will be taken to delete the content if it is not addressed. This time may be as little as a few minutes, or as much as 24 hours.
The determination of how much time is allowed is up to the acting Administrator, but the following context will be used to help determine the time before Administrator action:
- How blatant the violation is
- How likely it is to be seen by others (higher-volume channels get less time)
- How likely it is to trigger negative reactions in others
Additional consequences beyond the removal of content are up to the acting Administrator, per the same incident process found in the Incident Process
Direct messages between one or more members are private. Administators have no access to these messages and have no ability to delete them, but the above rules apply to this content. Violations should be addressed with Administators via the Incident Process.
The current roster of Administrators is maintained in the primary Code of Conduct document.