- Clear link to R/data/tech communities
- Relevant to increasing diversity in R community
- Supportive and constructive
- Information/news vs opinion
- Generally retweet rather than tweet original content
- Summarise key content (e.g. cost, dates) from linked resources
- Accessible
- Add alt text to images/gifs on our own tweets
- Add image descriptions/plain text versions to re-tweets
- Avoid excessive emoji/emoji where the text alternative is not consistent with the implied meaning, as screen readers read out the description for each one
- Do not use fancy fonts as screen readers read out each character
- Responsible
- Make a timely response to community concerns (e.g. if a community group has concerns about an account that we retweet)
- Obtain approval from other organizations or members of the taskforce if you are tweeting news about them/on their behalf (not simply re-tweeting)
- R conferences and events, particularly supporting R Foundation/community-organized events
- Other data/tech events, particularly aimed at under-represented groups
- Achievements of under-represented individuals e.g. awards, R packages, books
- Notable activity of R User Groups/R-Ladies Groups/other community groups, e.g. first meetup, campaigns, content of wide interest
- Opportunities to develop as R programmers/to progress in data science, e.g. calls for funding proposals, scholarships, internships, Google Summer of Code projects
- Learning resources/workshops
- Job opportunities at non-profits/social good organizations
- Follow related organizations e.g. R-Ladies groups, R User Groups in underserved regions, diversity in tech groups
- Follow those that follow us if they use their account to share data science/science-related content and there are no red flags, e.g. looking like a bot account, inciting hate.
N.B. Currently we are not monitoring new individuals to follow back, this is time-intensive and we have done it periodically.
- Unfollow in rare cases that an account shows evidence of behaviour counter to our mission, e.g. targeting members of under-represented groups.
- Consider reverting retweets of tweets from that account
- Check accounts that unfollow us: this can be a sign of a bot account, or account that is no longer relevant.
- Criticism of Forwards or other community groups is not necessarily a reason to unfollow.
At least two Twitter moderators should agree that unfollowing is necessary.
Blocking can be more helpful than unfollowing as our account will show any blocked accounts and therefore we keep the fact that action was necessary in our institutional memory.
- Block in rare cases that an account shows particularly unpleasant behaviour, e.g. offensive tweets.
- Consider reverting retweets of tweets from that account
- Report the account if the behaviour is abusive.
At least two Twitter moderators should agree that blocking is necessary.
Muting can be useful to down-weight irrelevant content or accounts that we respect but that already have a lot of exposure on #rstats Twitter. This will help to surface relevant content from under-represented groups.
- Mute accounts that use clashing hashtags (this can sometimes happen with events)
- Mute #rstats accounts with especially high follower numbers
- Mute accounts from respected community members that tweet about non-data science content with high frequency
At least two Twitter moderators should agree that muting is necessary. Note that this will affect what other Twitter moderators can see when they are logged in as Forwards!
- Like rather than retweet to avoid over-sharing on same topic/from same account
- Like responses to our tweets/re-tweets
- Thank people as appropriate
- Try to avoid getting into Twitter wars
- Check whether an account is a member of the data science/tech community acting in good faith before responding.
- Check with other Forwards members how to respond if unsure
- Be careful who is cc'd on replies - do not add to harm by replying to trolls who have cc'd other people.