Telegram Admin guidelines

Thanks in advance for your thoughts, lovely people. We want to hear them.

I want to share my motivations for wanting Telegram admin guidelines. In an ideal world, shared values and trust and communication are all we need. But sometimes that breaks down, and when it does, we need a minimum set of standards for how people must act - rules.

Secondly, admins have power. They can censor others and delete topics and throw people off the server. They can drastically impact our community. Because they hold power over us, we must have limits on their power and a way to know if they are acting appropriately. This protects us all.

In an ideal world, we don't need these things. But we are all safer for having them, just in case.

Thank you so much for all the hard work, much appreciated and needed. I agree with this AP.
My only comment: it's not clear on this how a person becomes an admin.

@Rachel Liberty thank you. I hear your point about admin "promotion". We wanted to create a similar process for it but then decided against it, so we don't formalise everything like in the default world. That being said, we can mention it better: get volunteers from the group, discuss them amongst current admin group and then promote to admins as decided.

@Jakub Hajko  Sounds good enough for now, safe enough to try : )

I consent to this too, I have no issues with it, I see it as good enough for now and safe enough to try. and seems to align with the needs and purpose of Telegram as far as it serves our community.

These guidelines are a reasonable start point. "Safe enough for now" yes, go ahead.

My only feedback would be that there ought to be some kind of timeframe and guidelines regarding deltion of messages process and perhaps further specs on what is deemed "inappropriate" or "irrelevant". For example, I wouldn't want to post a message only to find it quickly deemed "irrelevant" or "inappropriate" by an admin and therefore deleted.

So, will the authors of deleted messages be notified ahead of deletion? Will they be given an opportunity to move their message to a more relevant thread or reword it before it disappears? How long will a message be left in situ before being deleted?

I'm definitely not keen on things just being deleted from threads without the author's awareness and opportunity to save their message if they want to.

Also curious about circumstances where someone would get banned?

@Madeleine thank you for your feedback. The guidelines were written with potentially compromising messages in mind (point no.5 in Strict Guidelines), which would get deleted as soon as they're found/admin is notified. Reason for deletion will be stated in the same topic where the message was deleted.

Content Management might request deletion of/delete messages in a topic too. This is intended to curate the topic and will not be happening in all topics across the board.

Posting in "incorrect" topic has been happening all the time and anyone can point out that there is a more suitable place for the message. The author can then decide what to do. So yes - a discussion/notification takes place already and it's usually the author of the message who moves it.

If you suspect someone is deleting your messages without consent, please approach the Admin group (we will make ourselves known). We can check a log of changes that happened in the last 2 days.

Banning is mentioned in Strict Guidelines point no.6:

• the user is a bot

• the user poses a threat to the community

• the user is spamming

• a ban has been agreed upon by the community

Thank you very much for all the hard work of everyone who contributed to this. Well written and organized ❤️

My advice is not on the content of the Admins Guidelines and not directed at the authors of the AP - Jakub, I think you did an impeccable job on the content level of writing all this and sharing it here! x

I'm one of the admins myself, and I care a lot about the tone and the ways of being with each other in our online community, but I don't see any need to change or discuss in this format here, the Admin Guidelines. As has been said many times throughout this whole process: all this "should be" just common sense.

But this also points to my only main concern / piece of advice that I want to share here:
about how and why this came to be an AP in the first place?

I was surprised when I first heard Tyler suggest this, because in my understanding, this is a misuse of the AP system. APs/the type of decision-making system that underpins them are a form of consensual doocracy that was designed to work when there is trust.

They were not designed as a way to deal with tensions. When there are tensions, those need to be resolved via a separate route (which has not happened here, because the majority of the parties involved have refused to do this.)

The content of this AP should have been worked on and decided informally by a team of realizers who have trust between them.

In my opinion, this level of technical stuff does not need to be brought to the whole community (and I'd say the extremely low level of engagement that we're seeing on this AP, confirms this).

The decision to take this to AP is avoiding addressing the tensions and lack of trust within the group who really should have been doing this, and seeking legitimacy via an AP cannot be a substitute for that.

The approach taken here is also - and this is maybe my biggest worry in terms of where we are going as a community:
It's based on an assumption that "we need rules" (and therefore logically speaking, an authority to enforce them), to keep us "safe",
instead of a dialogue and trust based approach.

There are of course, many other places where this would be the correct approach (in a more corporate environment and mindset).

But here in a community, it's a big shift of philosophy, and I fundamentally disagree with it, because it's no longer in line with how our whole decentralised organising & decision-making methods were designed to work.

There are members of this community who have experience with this type of self-organising and also with ways of resolving tensions. I think we should draw on that and that at the moment, sadly, we are doing neither.

@Isabelle Hey Isa, I feel you've made these {generally very agreeable and good} points known previously, and was heard, but for various reasons was not thought to be functional.
Is fair enough to re-state your thoughts again though ay.

I personally like this open to all transparent approach that's open to feedback, like yours, and feel having a couple folk decide amongst themselves with no guidelines was a model that was tried before, and that did not work for the community.

I dont see any radical shift in philosophy, beyond things being more explicit, detailed and laid out? And with a withering mistrust of any and all power! As it should be =)
& I would say, there's a mild paradox in saying we should rely on a trust based approach when dealing with breach's of trust, is a tricky one there no doubt: can be for the Celtic Burn philosophical symposium!

Hope you are well,
was just checking in on this and wanted to highlight that I feel your concerns were raised and heard previously - but very valid regardless.