Etiquette/Moderation Team Guidelines
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Guidelines
General operations
At the first meeting of the talk list moderators in June 2022, the moderators unanimously adopted operational guidelines.
Our objective is to increase participation in the talk lists, not to discourage participation. The way we do that is by counseling those who drive others away with bad behavior, and expelling them from the list as a last resort, in line with the Etiquette Guidelines.
1. Operationally, the group will seek to hold monthly video conferences, and in between them will deal with moderation issues via online chat using WhatsApp and votes using Loomio.
2. The Etiquette Guidelines specify the following table of responses to etiquette violations:
- Nothing (if the Moderation Team determines no violation has occurred, or that the community's reaction was sufficient to lay the matter to rest)
- An admonition and/or formal warning message to individuals from a designated OSMF moderation account, outlining the issue and offering to speak directly with the persons, if appropriate, via an OSMF platform
- A recommended one-week break from the mailing list and/or forum
- A temporary block or thread freeze of up to 24 hours to slow down or prevent direct participation by the individual (“mod flag” feature of Mailman, block/freeze feature of Discourse)
- A longer temporary or in rare cases a permanent ban from the OSM talk@ and/or OSMF talk@ mailing lists and/or the community forum
Based on guidance from the Board of Directors of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, these responses need not be implemented consecutively; any of them may be applied in first instance depending on the severity of the violation of the Etiquette Guidelines.
3. Decisions to counsel and temporarily to block a talk list participant will be made by simple majority vote via Loomio. Decisions to expel (“final block”) will be made by unanimous vote of the moderators following discussion.
4. Decisions are posted publicly to the Foundation moderators page under the rubric "Votes".
5. These guidelines apply to other OSMF-sponsored communications media when these moderators respond to requests from moderators of other channels/lists or the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board of Directors.[1]
Policy on Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence
The talk lists and community forum exist to facilitation communication among the human beings who populate the OpenStreetMap community.
Posts to the assigned community forum channels or talk lists by chatbots or which consist of copy-and-paste reproductions of chatbot compositions which contribute no additional knowledge or otherwise merely clutter the forum or talk lists may be deleted by any member of the Moderation Team. Further, if the putative community member is determined to be a chatbot and not a human being, its account may be suspended by direction of a single member of the moderation team and does not require formal approval by vote of the entire Moderation Team.
Sharing of accurate information that contributes to general knowledge created through artificial intelligence, such as computer code, step-by-step instructions for procedures, and the like, is of course always permissible.
In the event that a suspected chatbot is found to be a human being, the normal process of appeal to the Board of Directors of the OpenStreetMap Foundation will apply.
Approved by the Moderation Team on 3 June 2025.
See also
- Moderation team for talk and osmf-talk mailing lists
- Etiquette
- Etiquette/Etiquette Guidelines
- Etiquette/Process for Moderation