Skip to main content
●
Log in
●
RSS
Main navigation
●
Articles
●
Resources
●
What is open source?
●
The open source way
●
Projects and applications
●
Organizations
●
Open source alternatives
●
Alternatives to Acrobat
●
Alternatives to AutoCAD
●
Alternatives to Dreamweaver
●
Alternatives to Gmail
●
Alternatives to MATLAB
●
Alternatives to Minecraft
●
Alternatives to Google Photos
●
Alternatives to Photoshop
●
Alternatives to Skype
●
Alternatives to Slack
●
Alternatives to Trello
●
More...
●
Linux
●
Downloads
●
Frequently Asked Questions
How to encourage positive online communication in your open source community
The Drupal community uses nudges to keep conversations productive and inclusive.
By
Michael Anello
|
Ruth Cheesley
|
AmyJune Hineline
(Team)
March 30, 2023 |
|
%t min read
Threaded online conversations are a relatively new form of communication that can improve knowledge transfer and availability, but they can also stray from the original intent. Online technical conversations in open source communities using Slack or one of the several open source alternatives experience these benefits and drawbacks.
Say a community member posts a question or shares an idea to start a conversation. As in any conversation, sometimes things can get off track. While not all diversions from the prompt are unhelpful, there are times when a comment can be unproductive—and sometimes even hurtful.
The Drupal community is like most other open source communities, in that we have many online conversations happening at any given time, in a variety of places. Sometimes, when a community member flags an online comment as hurtful, the Drupal Community Working Group (CWG) is asked to step in and mediate the situation. The CWG is responsible for maintaining the health of the community. Often, the solution is as simple as reminding the author of the comment of the Code of Conduct.
In 2020, the CWG began looking into how they could crowdsource this activity in a way that would be predictable and non-confrontational. The group decided to author several nudges: prewritten, formatted responses that community members could copy and paste into an online conversation to get conversations back on track.
The Drupal community currently has five different nudges depending on the situation. It is up to community members to select one from this list:
●Inclusive language, gendered terms
●Inclusive language, ableist terms
●Gatekeeping knowledge
●Cultural differences
●Escalating emotions
For example, the inclusive language, ableist terms nudge contains this message:
This discussion appears to include the use of ableist language in a comment. Ableist language can be harmful to our community because it can devalue challenges experienced by people with disabilities.
For more information, please refer to Drupal’s Values and Principles about treating each other with dignity and respect.
This comment is provided as a service (currently being tested) of the Drupal Community Health Team as part of a project to encourage all participants to engage in positive discourse. For more information, please visit https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_cwg/issues/3129687
Skip to bottom of list
Our favorite resources about open source
Git cheat sheet
Advanced Linux commands cheat sheet
Open source alternatives
Free online course: RHEL technical overview
Register for your free Red Hat account
Check out more cheat sheets
Currently, using one of the nudges is a manual copy-paste process, but the group is discussing the possibility of providing tools for easier use. We provide both formatted (for forum and issue queues) and unformatted (Slack) versions of each nudge. The CWG is also working on adding a sixth nudge for unhelpful or inauthentic comments. This nudge is aimed at discouraging users who add comments to a thread solely to gain a contribution credit on the issue.
Over the past two years that nudges have been available, the CWG has not fielded any complaints related to their use. While the number of conflicts between community members escalated to the CWG has declined during this period, it is difficult to attribute this solely to nudges. Other efforts have been made to improve community health (not to mention outside factors). Nevertheless, the CWG feels that nudges have been a net positive to the community and continues to access, improve, and encourage their use. In a blog post to the community announcing their general availability, the CWG wrote:
To continue to grow a healthy community, we all must work under the assumption that no one intentionally uses language to hurt others. Even so, despite our best efforts we sometimes still use words or phrases that are discouraging, harmful, or offensive to others. We are all human beings who make mistakes, but as members of a shared community, it's our responsibility to lift each other up and encourage the best in each other.
Prewritten nudges for various situations are useful prompts for members of any community to keep conversations productive and encouraging—and do so in a friendly way!
What to read next
Tags
Drupal
Community management
Diversity and inclusion
Michael Anello
Michael Anello is co-founder and vice president of DrupalEasy, a Drupal training and consulting firm based in Central Florida.
More about me
Ruth Cheesley
Ruth has been a keen advocate of Open Source for over 18 years.
More about me
AmyJune Hineline
AmyJune is an experienced community manager, mentor, public speaker, and inclusion advocate. While her roots are in Drupal, she also contributes regularly to the Linux and Accessibility communities.
More about me
2 Comments
These comments are closed.
Neeraj Kumar | March 29, 2023
Interesting read, but I'm not entirely sold on the idea of using prewritten nudges. While it's important to maintain a positive atmosphere, I worry that these nudges might come across as insincere or impersonal. Encouraging genuine, thoughtful discussions might be a more effective approach to fostering a healthy community. Just my two cents!
Michael Anello | April 3, 2023
I understand exactly what you're saying, but in a large community, not all conversations can be monitored (or should be!) by individuals skilled in writing "genuine, thoughtful" comments in times of high emotions.
The nudges are pre-written with neutral language and are very clearly marked as such. I agree with you that when possible, "genuine, thoughtful" replies should be used, but this is not always possible.
Additionally, if a conversation is getting heated, a community member may not want to insert themselves into the conversation. In these cases, they can ask a neutral, third-party to post the nudge.
Nudges are not meant to replace "genuine, thoughtful" comments, only to provide an additional tool for community members to utilize.
-mike
In reply to Interesting read, but I'm…byneerajskydiver
Related Content
Test your Drupal website with Cypress
What you need to know about the Drupal 9 to 10 migration
Use autoloading and namespaces in PHP
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
About This Site
The opinions expressed on this website are those of each author, not of the author's employer or of Red Hat.
Opensource.com aspires to publish all content under a Creative Commons license but may not be able to do so in all cases. You are responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary permission to reuse any work on this site. Red Hat and the Red Hat logo are trademarks of Red Hat, LLC, registered in the United States and other countries.
A note on advertising: Opensource.com does not sell advertising on the site or in any of its newsletters.
Copyright ©2021 Red Hat, LLC
●
Privacy Policy
●
Terms of use