LF Public Health maintains a number of tools to enable collaboration amongst community participants. To help navigate these tools, this document provides a brief outline of how to use them and best practices.
LF Public Health hosts a Slack organization, which can be joined at http://slack.lfph.io. Slack serves as the main communication platform for the LF Public Health community outside of the mailing lists. It’s important that conversations stays on topic in each channel, and that everyone abides by the Code of Conduct. There are thousands of members who should all expect to have a positive experience.
Chat is searchable and public. Do not make comments that you would not say on a video recording or in another public space. Please be courteous to others.
Slack also maintains some best practice etiquette, which has some great basic usage tips and other recommendations to best collaborate and communicate with others.
Please do not engage in proprietary company specific conversations in the LF Public Health Slack instance. This workspace is meant for conversations related to LF Public Health topics and community. Proprietary conversations should occur in your company Slack and/or communication platforms. As with all communication, please be mindful of appropriateness, professionalism, and applicability to the LF Public Health community.
Some channels have specific rules or guidelines. If they do, they will be listed in the purpose, topic, or pinned docs of that channel.
If you encounter an issue using the LF Public Health Slack, please contact the LFPH staff.
Some general guidelines on new channels...
- Channels should be dedicated to sub-projects, community topics, or related LF Public Health programs/projects.
- Channels are NOT:
- Company specific
- Private channels with the exception of: code of conduct matters, mentoring, security/vulnerabilities, github management, or steering committee.
- Special accommodations will be made where necessary.
Bots, tokens, and webhooks are reviewed on a case-by-case basis with most requests being rejected due to security, privacy, and usability concerns. Bots and the like tend to make a lot of noise in channels. The LF Public Health Slack instance has thousands of members and it is crucial to ensure everyone has a great experience.
Typically approved requests include: GitHub, tool requests, or other tools/platforms used to aid in the management of Slack itself. Please contact LFPH staff to submit a request for an additional bot or tool.
LF Public Health maintains a number of mailing lists for the foundation itself, it's members, and the community at large. These mailing lists are hosted at groups.io and managed by the Linux Foundation staff and LF Public Health community leadership.
The primary mailing list for all techincal community discussion is [email protected]. Each hosted project and working group has it's own mailing list as well, which are listed on groups.io.
By default, the TAC chair serves as the moderator for discussions in [email protected], and each hosted project's steering committee will serve as moderator for it's mailing lists. Moderation privileges can be extended to others upon a vote by the TAC or respective steering committee as applicable.
Being a moderator is as much a privilege as it is a duty. As part of volunteering to become a moderator you are now a representative of the LF Public Health community, and it is your responsibility to remain aware of your contributions in this space. These responsibilities apply to all official LF Public Health channels.
Moderators MUST:
- Take action as specified by these Moderator Guidelines.
- You are empowered to take immediate action when there is a violation. You do not need to wait for review or approval if an egregious violation has occurred. Make a judgement call based on our Code of Conduct and Values (see below).
- Removing a bad actor or content from the medium is required, do NOT let it sit there.
- Abide by the documented tasks and actions required of moderators.
- Ensure that the Code of Conduct is in effect on all official LF Public Health channels.
- Make yourself generally available during working hours in your time zone for moderation. This can be handled as a group so that there is enough coverage of people to allow for absences/travel.
- Take care of spam as soon as possible, which may mean taking action by removing a member from that resource.
- Foster a safe and productive environment by being aware of potential multiple cultural differences between community members.
- Understand that you might be contacted by moderators, community managers, and other users via private email or a direct message.
- Keep up with software/platform changes on the property they are responsible for. This might include new UI changes, new features, or other software changes. Moderators are encouraged to meet regularly to train themselves how to be proficient with the platform.
- Report violations of the Code of Conduct to [email protected].
Moderators SHOULD:
- Exercise compassion and empathy when communicating and collaborating with other community members.
- Understand the difference between a user abusing the resource or just having difficulty expressing comments and questions in English.
- Be an example and role model to others in the community. In many cases, moderators are some of the first people new contributors will interact with.
- Remember to check and recognize if you need take a break when you become frustrated or find yourself in a heated debate.
- Help your colleagues if you recognize them in one of the stages of burnout.
- Be helpful and have fun!
- Review your mailing list subscriptions regularly, and either change the delivery mechanism (such as switching from individual emails to daily digests) as it makes sense to keep the signal-to-noise level reasonable for you.
- Keep your comments and conversation on topic
- Recognize with a global community and other obligations, replies aren't instantaneous.
- Refrain from cross-posting as a way to get a larger audience to your post.
- Be sure to contact the list moderators if there are any Code of Conduct concerns.
You can stay subscribed to the meetings of the projects and committees of the LF Public Health by subscribing to the coordinating mailing list. Each mailing list has a calendar which you can subscribe to with your calendar client of choice.
By default, moderators of any group can add and modify calendar events, as can LFPH staff.
If you are running into an issue with calendar events, please reach out to the LFPH staff. It's also recommended to review the groups.io instructions for using the calendar for additional assistance.
- Visit the LF Public Health Calendar
- Scroll to the bottom of the group calendar, select Add Event, and choose the applicable sub-group you are trying to create a new meeting for (such as tac@lists... or info@lists..., etc.). The sub-groups you belong to will be displayed along with those you have privileges for.
- Fill in the fields for:
- Event Name: Please enter a descriptive name for your meeting.
- Start and End Times: Enter the details noting the Timezone, selecting All Day if applicable.
- Event Repeats: Select if applicable, and enter the additional details.
- Location: this will be the LFPH zoom link (which you will need to have previously set up, see Alternate Meeting Host & Recording Privileges info below).
- You must be very careful to not overlap LFPH zoom account meetings. You can view all the meetings on the LFPH website’s calendar.
- Organizer Email: this will be the sub-group mail list (such as tac@lists... or info@lists..., etc.).
- Organizer Phone: is optional.
- Description: this will be the relevant meeting details. It is recommended to enter the following:
- Summary of the meeting purpose
- Meeting lead name
- Meeting agenda
- Any webpages for reference
- Full Zoom details
- Request RSVP: select this item to ensure that guests can provide a response to your meeting (Will Attend, Will Not Attend, and Not Sure). This will also allow you to see the responses within the meeting invite.
- Max Number of Attendees: can be left at 0, which means unlimited.
- Note To Send Attendees: is optional (such as a thank you for the RSVP and a pointer to a wiki page for more information).
- Reminders: set this up for automatic email reminders to be sent to the applicable mail list regarding the meetings.
- A 1 day before and 10 minutes before reminder is suggested as a standard, leave as Send As Normal Message.
- Notifications: you must select “Send Invite To Group” in order for the invite to be sent to the applicable sub-group.
- Leave “Send Notice To Group When Event Happens” unchecked as it is not a necessary notification in most cases.
- Visit the LF Public Health Calendar
- Click on the event you are updating and select Edit Event and make the applicable changes.
- Select Update Event to save the changes and ensure you choose the update to reflect on Only This Event or All Meetings as applicable.
- Make sure to select to notify the group of the change
The meeting update will be reflected in the meeting subscription with the next automatic update.
- Visit the LF Public Health Calendar
- Click on the event you are updating and select Edit Event, scroll to the bottom of the Event and click on Delete Event.
- You'll need to select either Only This Event or All Meetings as applicable here as well.
- Make sure to select to notify the group of the change.
The meeting update will be reflected in the meeting subscription with the next automatic update.
To help individuals to not be inundated with calendar overload, try to follow these guidelines:
- Specific project meetings should be on your project's calendar. All meeting should be on the primary discussion, dev, or user calendar unless it's a specific closed meeting to discuss a sensitive topic.
- Avoid making any meeting invite changes ( including cancellations or reschedulings ) less that 24 hours in advance, as many calendaring clients do not update immediately. It's also best practice to email that calendar's respective mailing list to inform the group of the cancellation.
- If you are rescheduling a meeting, cancel the previous one and issue a new meeting instead of doing a reschedule. Some calendaring clients don't do well with meeting invite changes.
Group calendars are managed within LFPH groups.io mail lists with each sub-group (mail list) having a unique calendar. Meeting invites from these group calendars are sent to the applicable sub-group mail list. In order to see the various group calendars you must: Be logged into Groups.io Be subscribed to the sub-group mail list you're interested in Thereafter, you will see all the calendars for the sub-groups you subscribe to under your LF Public Health Calendar page in Groups.io You can directly subscribe to the LF Public Health Calendar to stay in sync with meetings and events. Scroll down below the calendar itself Click on the "Subscribe to Calendar" button Copy the iCal link from the pop up Add it as a subscribed calendar to your preferred mail tool If you’d like to subscribe to all public LFPH events, you can add the LFPH website’s calendar to your calendar as well. Note that some of your groups may be invite-only, which would mean they do not display on the LFPH website’s calendar.
Instructions for subscribing to an iCal calendar for popular calendaring tools:
- Google Calendar - note calendar updates only happen once daily
- Outlook
- Apple Calendar
- IBM/HCL Notes
- Do ensure that any meeting invites have clearly identified web conference or location details.
- Unless the meeting is only in person, always provide a web conference for those who can't attend in person
- Be sure the description of the meeting has an agenda or a link to the agenda of the meeting.
- Since calendaring clients can not always be good at managing changes...
- If a meeting is to be rescheduled, delete the original meeting invite and add a new one with a title denoting it being rescheduled.
- Avoid cancelling meetings within 24 hours of the meeting
- For changes/cancellations, email the invitees as well to inform them of the cancellation
- When provisioning a new series of recurring meetings, instruct invites to remove old entries manually.
- Courtesy Email, as a meeting lead it is a best practice to email the applicable sub-group with a note about any new meetings available, any meeting changes, or meeting cancellations.
This is regarding the public calendar hosted at lfph.io/calendar and is mostly for LFPH staff reference.
- To have a groups.io calendar get added to the LFPH public calendar, that group needs to add [email protected] as a member to the group.
- After that, any events that are posted to that group within groups.io should also be posted to the public calendar.
- If an event is changed or removed, it is worth double-checking that the public calendar gets updated.
- If there are any problems with the public calendar, please contact the Hyperledger Community Architects Team, who are kind enough to maintain this technology for LFPH.