Re: [Tails-project] [#16784] Tails people page (and pronouns…

Delete this message

Reply to this message
Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: Public mailing list about the Tails project
Subject: Re: [Tails-project] [#16784] Tails people page (and pronouns)
It feels good to see so many people participating in this discussion. :)

1 month later, I'm sending you:

- A summary of what I understood could be a consensus that could work
for intrigeri, mercedes508, Ulrike, segfault, and me.

- Some more questions to emmapeel and goupille because it's not clear to
me whether this proposal would work for them.


Proposal
========

- Create a "People" page which goals are:

  - Make our project more accessible and more easily understandable,
    giving it a human face somehow (Ulrike)
  - Destroy the myth that Tails people are anonymous (cf. roadmap 2017)
  - Build trust by showing that [we] are real people (sajolida)
  - Avoid idolization and becoming famous and celebrities (emmapeel)
  - Document the pronouns of people in the team (cf. #16784)


The target audience for this page is anybody who might need more clues
to build trust and feel like Tails is a group of real and trustworthy
humans and not some shady entity: users, new contributors, job
seekers, funders or potential funders, the press, etc.

- Allow anybody who is subscribed to tails-summit@ to opt-it to be
listed on this "People" page.

- The item of each person on the list MUST at least include:

  - a name, possibly a pseudonym
  - a description of the work they do in Tails, without mention of
    whether it is paid or not
  - favorite pronouns


- The item of each person on the list CAN also include:

- an email address
- social media handles
- OpenPGP keys
- personal website

- Order the list of people alphabetically.

- To solve the picture issue, I propose to have a pixel art character
for everybody, in the style of those that anonym can do, cf. myself in
attachment (my feet were cut in the original picture!).

People can decide how their avatar looks like (if you don't want the
Internet to know that you are blond you can put blue hair on your
avatar).

I think that this trick would solve both the privacy concerns while
keeping a consistent, welcoming, and human feeling.

I haven't discussed this with anonym but I'm sure that he'll be happy
to help us on that. Otherwise, I don't mind learning.


Question to goupille
====================

> picture, email address, paid work or not, or whatever else) would make
> me uncomfortable


Do you mean, if they were mandatory or opt-out or even if they were
opt-in?


Questions to emma peel
======================

emma peel:
> I kind of like that Tails is a more collective identity though, not
> so personalized as in Tor Project.


Me too!

> In general, I dislike the idolization because i think it goes then to
> 'heroes' and then 'martyrs'.


+1

> I think it is more important to be welcoming to new people when
> engaging on 1-on-1 interactions, on the mailing list and afk, but I
> am not sure adding a description on the webpage makes us closer to
> the users/contributors. We become 'famous' then... celebrities or
> something.


I share your concerns about personalization and idolization but I'm not
sure either whether having a people's page will have a real impact on it.

We are already personalized:

- When interacting on all our public channels: mailing lists, Redmine,
XMPP, and Git.

It makes it pretty clear who's doing what kind of work, who dedicates
more time to Tails, who's more vocal and has more initiative, who's
mostly lurking, etc.

The difference is that this is visible to people how are on our
communication channels but not to people who only see our website (cf.
the target audience described above). So, contrary to what I
understand from your answer, for me, new contributors are not the main
target audience of this page.

- When attending events on behalf of Tails.

Very few people in the community do that and it already leads to other
projects (eg. Tor) and funders to associate Tails with the few faces
that they see there.

This little diversity is more concerning to me in terms of
personalization and idolization than having a "People" page as
described above. Pretty much every time people write to me in private
about Tails matters, it's people who I met at events and find it
easier to write me than to find out which collective communication
channels to use.

We are very strong about preferring identities:

- All our teams have a collective email address documented on the
website. Other projects like Tor don't have this, for example.

- As much as possible, we use collective identities when giving public
statements (eg. in the press team).

Following up with your comparison with Tor, which I agree with, how much
of it do you think is due to having a "People" page and how much of it
is due to other aspects of the Tor culture (eg. specialization,
hierarchy, less communication channels for teams, talking to the press
with their names, etc.)?

Now, I understand that you might be afraid of making "one more little"
step away in the direction of personalization even if the impacts are
unclear.

So my questions to you are:

- Do you see any way of improving the proposal summarized above?

- Do you see a different way of solving the goals? Keeping in mind that,
for me, the vast majority of its target audience who won't get a
chance of interacting with us 1-on-1 as you are proposing.

> Also there is the whole process of entering to the page, leaving,
> etc...


As a consequence of the proposal summarized above:

- Anybody who enters tails-summit@ could also opt-in to appear on the
"People" page.
- Anybody who leaves tails-summit@ would be removed from the "People"
page.

Would this work for you?

--
sajolida