SoylentNews Site Policy

SoylentNews Policy - DRAFT

Notes - Usage of 'he, his' etc. Any usage of the words he or his must be assumed to apply equally to members of either sex i.e. can be replaced with 'she, her' as appropriate.

Introduction

Welcome!

We incorporated SoylentNews PBC on July 4th 2014. It's run by the Board of Directors comprised of a few of our staff that handle all the legal and business items. The rest of the operation is completely in the hands of the community of volunteers and staff (of which you are now a part). Along with the benefits of an email address, no subscription fees to our main site soylentnews.org - see below (-janrinok)], comes the responsibility to uphold what this organization stands for.

SoylentNews Mission

We will be the best site for independent, not-for-profit journalism on the internet, where ideas can be presented and free discussion can take place without external needs overshadowing the community.

Except as required by law, no one will be banned or have their comments deleted due to stating a fact or opinion, no matter how unpopular or repugnant it is. We will not ban or silence a user for merely stating an opinion.

The right of our community to criticize, make suggestions, and help us improve our site will be respected. No staff or team leader will ever be above criticism.

We recognize that mistakes will be made, as we are all human. It is both the right and privilege of others to correct us when needed.

If serious errors are made, we promise to revert them and fix the problems.

Non-Discrimination Statement

SoylentNews shall not discriminate by gender, ability, religion, creed, race or belief; all are welcome to join the site and contribute either as members of the community or by serving as staff.

Staff

Lots of the work being done on SoylentNews is done by informal volunteers (story-submissions, suggestions, artwork, bug-hunting, etc.). Since you've been granted privileges on one or more of our systems, you are now considered part of the staff. In order to keep this project moving in the direction outlined in our [manifesto/vision], this document has been created to guide our actions.

Organization

The Board

The Board of Directors has the legal, financial and governance responsibility for the Corporation. With a goal of conducting meetings that are effective and efficient, meetings are run according to the guidelines stated in Board Meetings - Rules of Order.

Meetings

Most board meetings are open to anyone to attend, and usually conducted on IRC. Though all are welcome and we encourage opinions and discussion, only board members can vote; furthermore, at the discretion of the board, meetings may be moderated (using IRC voice modes).

All board meetings and staff meetings should be announced with at least one (1) week advanced notice. Though it is sometimes pertinent for the board to make decisions in a non-public forum with less notice, every effort will be made to hold public meetings and announce meetings in advance to the following:

the staff mailing list
the "sitenews" box on the soylentnews.org main page
appended to the "topic" on on any staff IRC channels including #staff.

Management Group

The day-to-day management of the site is conducted below Board level by the Management Group.

The staff comprises of various Teams, each with a specific function or range of functions. Each Team is led by a Team Leader (TL) and, together, the TLs are known as the Management Group (MG). The MG has shared responsibility for the routine operation of the site and for providing guidance through each Team Leader to all staff to ensure that they are contributing in a coordinated manner to the maintenance, support, and production of a high quality site.

Current TLs, and therefore the members of the MG, are shown in the wiki on page WhosWho

Due to the volunteer nature of this project, and the global, always-on effort that SoylentNews entails, sometimes TLs may not be available to make decisions or offer guidance. If every effort has been made to contact a TL and they are unavailable, staff members should check with other staff, and refer to this document and other policies of SoylentNews (privacy policy, team documentation), and use their best judgement to uphold the principles outlined therein.

Team Leaders

TLs are in charge of guiding their teams. Some responsibilities rest comfortably within a single team, but other responsibilities e.g. security, combating SPAM, rogue comments in discussions etc, require the cooperation and coordination of 2 or more teams. TLs are responsible for deciding how the cooperation and coordination will take place, but the actual execution can be carried out by team members i.e. this responsibility does not place an undue additional burden upon TLs but permits the task to be carried out between appropriate members of the staff.

Team Policy Documents

Each Team has its own Policy Document to provide guidance for the day-to-day running of that team. The team documents can be found here:

Editorial Team: Editorial Policy
IRC Team: IRC Policy
Development Team: Perl Coding Guidelines

Privacy, Copyright, Disclaimers, Terms of Use, and DMCA

The following sections are a DRAFT and are expected to be revised/amended. The Following section should be split into a separate page mrcoolbp (talk) 02:38, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

TODO: Probably need different ones for each service (soylentnews.org, irc.sylnt.us, wiki.soylentnews.org, etc). May be worth checking out policies of other popular sites (like FreeNode for IRC, that *other* site for soylentnews.org, wikipedia for wiki.soylentnews.org, etc)

The SoylentNews site is currently based in the United States. As such, it is important to state the policy of SoylentNews with respect to certain laws in effect there as well as internationally.

Privacy Policy

It is the policy of SoylentNews, in as much as is reasonably possible, to retain the least amount of personally identifiable information about the community's members. Certain items are necessary in the conduction of the site's operation. These include, but are not necessarily restricted to: e-mail address and IP address [what else?]. Reasonable and customary steps are taken to protect that information.

Copyright Notice

There are several places on the site where user-supplied content is published.

Submitted Stories

Anyone may submit a story for consideration by the editors for publication on the site. Editors attempt, within the site's guidelines *[need link]* to provide a consistent reading experience for the community. This may entail reformatting, rewriting, spelling corrections, and the like. The revised submission may then be published on the site for the community to read and to comment on. Subsequent to publishing to the site, additional edits may be made so as to correct mistakes (e.g. typos) and/or to add additional information, etc.

The original submitter retains copyright to their submission.

The original submitter grants a non-exclusive right to SoylentNews PBC to publish the story.

Published Stories

SoylentNews PBC retains copyright to the story as published on the site.

Journal Submissions

Each logged-in user has the ability to post "stories" to their journal page. The submitter may edit or even delete any of their journal postings.

Question: is a deleted journal entry actually deleted or is just no longer displayed?

Question: Should we add the comment disclaimer here, as well? That is, should this apply:

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

User Comments

The community is encouraged to provide comments in response to stories published on the site as well as to journal entries in which that option has been enabled. Comments may be submitted anonymously, as an "Anonymous Coward", or attributed to the user's site Nickname. In either case, the site's policy is stated on each story page:

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

TODO: how does the user transfer publishing/usage rights to SN? suggest possibly using the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license (simply saying "following comments are owned by whoever posted them" kinda implies that if someone wants their comment deleted, SN gotta give in to that.

Wiki Entries

Copyright on entries on the site's Wikipedia page are governed by this statement which appears at the bottom of each page:

Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike unless otherwise noted.

Further, when submitting to the Wiki, this notice appears above the "Save page", "Show Preview", and "Show changes" buttons:

Please note that all contributions to SoylentNews are considered to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (see <a href="/w/index.php?title=SoylentNews:Copyrights&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="SoylentNews:Copyrights (page does not exist)">SoylentNews:Copyrights</a> for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

NOTE: The SoylentNews:Copyright link has no destination; it needs to be created or this entry revised.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

The submitter of anything posted to any of the site's IRC channels specifically allows the site to retain anything posted there and make it available, for example, in the form of retained logs. In addition, any chats that take place in the form of staff meetings, board meetings, and the like will be retained and may be posted on the site Wiki.

SoylentCode (rehash)

The site is based on Slashcode (Version xyz) which is under a GPL v2 license. Wherever possible, commensurate with maintaining site security, any new or updated code originated by SoylentNews will retain this licensing and be made available for downloading by any individual in accord with this license. Links will be maintained on the site to enable the repository of the code to be easily located.

Disclaimers

TBD. The following is a DRAFT disclaimer policy and is intended to reviewed and/or amended.

Content published on this website is for general information purposes only.
SoylentNews PBC offers no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, regarding completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability of this website, published information and related graphics or hyperlinks contained on this website for any purpose. Use of such information is therefore at your own risk.
In no event shall SoylentNews PBC or its affiliates be held liable for any losses or damages including without limitation, indirect or consequential loss or damage, or any loss or damage whatsoever arising from loss of data or revenue arising out of, or in connection with, the use of this website.
SoylentNews PBC has no control over the nature, content, and availability of hyperlinked websites. The inclusion of hyperlinks to other websites is for reference or informative purposes only and does not imply endorsement of them.
Availability is not guaranteed. SoylentNews PBC takes no responsibility for, and will not be liable for, this website being unavailable for any reason.

Terms of Use

TBD. This is a DRAFT that is intended as a starting point for discussion for use on the Site

Last Modified: 2014-09-11

Use of this website is subject to your agreement with the following terms, as well as your agreement with the Privacy Policy, Copyright Notice, and Disclaimer. You should review these terms and related documents regularly as they may be revised at any time without notice.

The date that these terms were last modified can be found at the top of the page.

Use of this website and any disputes arising out of such use of this website are subject to the laws of the United States of America. [State? of Delaware, too?
All registered trademarks reproduced remain property of their respective owners.
Unauthorized use of this website may give rise to a claim for damages and/or be a criminal offense.
This website includes links to third party websites. These links are provided for your convenience to provide further information, and does not signify endorsement.
Availability of this website is not guaranteed.
Spamming, hacking and/or phishing this website is not permitted.
These terms, as well as terms in the related documents, shall remain continuously in force if there is a change to the domain of this website.

DMCA Notice

TBD. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act should be considered as to its applicability to the site and what our policy should be.

Subscription Fees

Community Fees

The Board may choose to offer a subscription membership fee to some or all members of the SoylentNews community. Nevertheless, non-payment of the subscription fee will not prevent access to the site; the intention is to enable the site to be viewed by as many people as possible and to encourage them to submit stories for publication and to comment on the stories that have already been accepted and released.

Waiving of Subscription Fees

Once an individual has served as a staff member for (immediately, x weeks, y months?) he is no longer required to pay subscription fees to enjoy all the privileges of site membership. This privilege will remain for the period of their service on the staff, plus a discretionary extension of a maximum of 1 year from the individual leaving the staff. The actual duration will be decided by the MG.

Occasionally, the MG might recommend to the Board that an individual be granted lifetime site membership in recognition of a significant period of service, or being a prominent figure from any relevant field of technology or related interests, or some other act deserving of special recognition. The Board can accept or reject such recommendations as they deem fit.

Site Control and Security

Access to Personal Data

No personal data held by the site will be shared, sold or otherwise distributed outside of the site with the exception of demands supported by the appropriate legal documentation served upon the Board.

Personal data shall be held by the site for the minimum time necessary, and efforts should be made to anonymize or encrypt such data wherever possible.

Abusive Behaviour

SoylentNews aims to be tolerant of any individual's personal views and will allow them to express their views in the comments of published stories. However, occasionally, individuals will not express their views relating to a story but will employ offensive and/or abusive behaviour towards an individual. This is not in the spirit of the site and a graduated response will be adopted to anyone who employs such behaviour in their comments.

The moderation system employed usually results in offensive, abusive or off-topic information being reduced to the lowest viewable priority level such that, to most regular users of the site, it does not even display on their screen. Often, this is sufficient to defuse the situation and the offender departs after a short period of time. However, community members should also be encouraged not to 'feed the trolls' and to avoid responding to any posts by the offender. Staff should adopt a non-confrontational attitude while engaging with community members and the offender in an attempt to cool the situation down.

A member of staff should issue a comment in which he politely but firmly requests that the offender stops his offensive/abusive behaviour while explaining that it does nothing to contribute to the site nor does it show the offender in a positive light. However, it is important to try to identify the true cause of the offenders attitude and for the staff member, alone or with the assistance of other members of staff, to try to resolve any genuine issues or grievances that the offender may have.

A TL or senior staff member should attempt to engage the offender in a private communication (either IRC/PM, email or whatever) and warn the offender that there could be serious consequences if the offender continues with his current course of action.

The MG can agree to ban the offender for a specific period or permanently and take action to do so. There are, of course, technical difficulties associated with effectively banning an individual but a block of his personal IPs for each computer system as and when they are identified might be considered as a reasonable action.

Control of SPAM

SPAM is most often found in story submissions (either as a link in an submission or as the entire contents of a submission) or in the comments to a published story. If the SPAM is simply a link then that link may be deleted by an Editor however, other forms of SPAM should NOT be deleted. A SuperAdmin (which is anyone on staff who is not an editor) should be informed so that the origin of the material can be identified and action taken to block that particular source of SPAM. The SPAM is deleted only when the procedure to block the SPAM is complete.

Control of Access and Password Policy

TODO - User passwords. Post-breach actions and analysis etc.

No-one should be given access privileges above those which are essential for them to complete their role. Additionally, no single individual should have a unique set of privileges because, in the event of some unforeseen circumstance, no other individual will be able to fulfill the same role. TLs should ensure that each task for which his team is responsible is documented and that privileges are assigned to team members as required.

In the event of a member of staff permanently leaving then a SuperAdmin is responsible for ensuring that access privileges are removed for that individual promptly. Shared passwords known by the individual, where they exist, should also be changed.

Response to Denial Of Service (DOS) Attack

TODO - This might simply be "... is the responsibility of the Systems Team", or may be more detailed by listing actions to be taken by one or more teams.