The subject of “unofficial” wikis came up obliquely in comments by the Society President at the October 2024 quarterly Board meeting, as well as in subsequent discussion online, and I thought it might be useful to review some of the existing policies that were applicable and write out my recommendations for future policy-making in this area.
See also: Recommended Policy Approaches for “Unofficial” Online Resources and A Brief Survey of Society Wikis.
Note that, as with all of the material on this site, none of the below is an authoritative statement of policy — these are just my initial personal thoughts, written out in hopes that they might help those officers who are ultimately responsible for authoring policy in the future.
Context
- Wikis are online platforms that allows both officers and the populace to publish content; in this sense they are similar to a Facebook group, a mailing list, a web discussion forum, or a blogging platform — not exactly what most people think of as “social media,” but with lots of important parallels.
- In its October 2024 meeting, the Board upheld the policy interpretation of the Society Communications and Social Media Officer that conduct over email is subject to the same expectations as social media, on the basis that there should be a single consistent standard for online behavior. (Oct 2024 Board Meeting.)
Recommended Policy
- Wikis run by the Society should generally be subject to the same constraints as social media channels: they’re administered by officers, inappropriate content can be removed by moderators, and offensive conduct may be investigated and sanctioned by seneschals.
- As with other online services run by the Society, wikis may be administered by the webministry or by another office, depending on kingdom policy and practices.
- As with other online services run by the Society, wikis may be run on servers that are owned by the Society, or on servers leased from a hosting provider, or obtained via a SaaS service, or available as a free community offering, etc; as long as the terms of that arrangement are clear and reasonable, those technical differences are a matter of logistics and largely irrelevant to their governance.
- As with other online services run by the Society, when officers publish material on wikis they should avoid ambiguity as to whether they are acting as an officer or as an individual member of the populace.
- As with other online services run by the Society, when officers (acting as officers) publish material on wikis they should adhere to the requirements of the Release Forms Handbook and other Society policies.
- Each wiki should have clear public policies about who is allowed to create accounts, who can edit, and so forth.
- Each wiki should have clear public policies about conduct, copyright, license terms, and the like.
Relevant Existing Policies
Webministry Responsibilities
- The webministry is responsible for publishing the primary public-facing websites of the kingdoms and local groups. These are confusingly labeled “official websites” (or sometimes “recognized”) although a more precise name might be “group websites.” (Corpora VI.H., Webministers Handbook page 4.)
- However, this does not mean that the webministry is responsible for everything that happens on the web — for example if a kingdom marshalate maintains a list of authorized marshals that happens to be visible on the web, that need not necessarily involve the webministry.
- In many kingdoms, the webministry either plays an advisory role or has responsibility for other kinds of internet infrastructure; in other kingdoms, those roles might be filled by another office, or by individuals across multiple offices. (For example, in Lochac, IT infrastructure is handled by the Masonry office, which reports to the seneschal.) In either case, that internet infrastructure can include websites other than group websites, and it can include tools that host user-published content like mailing lists, web forums, and wikis. (Webministers Handbook page 5.)
Release Forms Are Not Required for Populace-Published Material
- Release forms are required for material published by officers acting on behalf of the Society; they are not required for material self-published by the populace via mailing lists, web forums, wikis, or social media sites or apps. This is implicit in the Release Forms Handbook’s discussion of officers collecting releases for material they publish while remaining silent on other material, but some people are unsure of the boundaries, and I hope that a future version of the handbook will make this more explicit. (Suggested text, submitted March 2023.)