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Community Rules, Best Practices, and Etiquette

R Skelton edited this page Sep 24, 2020 · 18 revisions

Digital.gov looks to drive conversation and engagement which facilitates inter-agency conversations to drive efficiency and innovations in the federal sector. To create a safe space that fosters collaboration and knowledge-sharing, Digital.gov has documented some rules, best practices, and general etiquette to keep our members interested and coming back for more.

Membership Recruitment

Digital.gov can help increase interest, awareness, and membership of existing or new groups. Depending on the topic, our team will help CoP Leads promote a group, especially among other communities, to increase its members. If you are looking to increase membership, please send us an email at digitalgov@gsa.gov.

Membership Engagement

Tips from community leads to increase engagement of community members:

  • Keep a list of community-related articles in a backlog to help spur discussion in the LISTSERV.
  • Pose a question to the group related to a shared article. Ex. "How do you negotiate what a plain language review of a document means?"
  • Use keywords in a message subject line to let readers know right away what type of content you're sharing. Ex. Use “[Discuss]” to get folks to start a conversation or "[Action]" when you're expecting them to do something.
  • When meeting in person, small groups give you the opportunity to learn more about the attendees. Take the opportunity to do a round of introductions to see who's joining you and what they're interested in. A fun ice breaker question like "What's your favorite board game?" is great to just get people started talking.
  • If you're seeing a lot of questions around the same topic, lead the group in putting together a resource for it. Gather what's come up so far in conversations and summarize the information to give people a seeded start in contributing.

LISTSERV Management

Digital.gov provides LISTSERV as a tool for communities to communicate and share knowledge. Some settings like content and subscriptions approvals will be established as a standard practice.

If you want to know more about the settings and how to manage the LISTSERV, check out the LISTSERV manual.

How to Approve Content

Community Leads and Co-Leads may need to approve content based on their LISTSERV settings. To review and approve or reject content, you can:

Approve via email (there is no email disapproval mechanism)

  1. List owners and moderators will receive an email notification when new content is posted to the LISTSERV.
  2. Click the link provided in the confirmation email or else reply back to listserv@listserv.gsa.gov with just the two characters, OK. Case does not matter.
  3. Make sure to delete your signature block to prevent the LISTSERV from replying back that it does not understand what you are trying to tell it with your signature.

Approve/Reject in the LISTSERV web portal

  1. Go to https://listserv.gsa.gov/cgi-bin/wa.exe?LOGON=INDEX.
  2. Sign into LISTSERV using your email and password.
  3. Go to the “List Management Dashboard” for your list(s).
  4. Check the section on the page called, “Moderation.”
  5. Email(s) awaiting approval will be noted in this section.
  6. Review any pending emails.
  7. Change the state to Approve or Reject.

How to Approve a Subscription Request

Community Leads and Co-Leads may need to approve subscribers based on their LISTSERV settings. To review and approve or reject a subscriber, you can:

Approve via email (There is no email disapproval mechanism)

  1. List owners and moderators will receive an email notification when a new subscriber asks to join a LISTSERV.
  2. Click the link provided in the confirmation email to make a decision on the subscription request.

Approve/Reject in the LISTSERV web portal

  1. Go to https://listserv.gsa.gov/cgi-bin/wa.exe?LOGON=INDEX.
  2. Sign into LISTSERV using your email and password.
  3. Go to the “List Management Dashboard” for your list(s).
  4. Use the left navigation to select “Subscriber Management.”
  5. Input the subscriber’s email address into the field at the bottom of the page.
  6. Select “Do Not Notify User” to prevent the user from getting an email, if you want.
  7. Click “Add Subscriber.”

When to Approve or Deny Content

Digital.gov is run by GSA Technology Transformation Service (TTS), so our channels and any communications sent by community members must comply with the TTS Code of Conduct. In addition to the Code of Conduct, community leads should consider:

  • Is this content relevant or interesting for my members? If no, then don't share the information.
  • Does this content attempt to sell or promote a fee-based or commercial product? If yes, then don't share this information.
  • Are my members likely going to engage or reply to this content? If no, then don't share the information.

Community Huddles / Meetings

Some communities hold regular community meetings or “huddles” to improve connections, increase knowledge-sharing, and gather inputs from members. These meetings are on a monthly or quarterly basis with a limited agenda focused on letting the community members discuss their work, challenges, a news topic, or ask questions among the group.

Please note that any Huddles or Meetings that communities want to turn into Digital.gov resources must follow our Event Process guidelines.

Types of Huddles

Below are a few types of huddles:

  • Open forums where just a topic is provided to members to discuss.
  • Use case discussion which allows 2-3 projects to explain how they implemented or approached a problem and members can discuss.
  • Information gathering which is focused on asking members for their feedback or inputs regarding a specific topic, piece of content, or ideas for future content/events.

Running a Huddle

To run a huddle, Digital.gov recommends taking the following steps:

  1. Try to identify a good day and time that’s repeatable for the Community Leads and Co-Leads (e.g., second Tuesday of the month). Considering coordinating this time with Digital.gov resources as well.
  2. Set up a recurring calendar hold for your huddle and distribute it to your community members. (Do not provide recurring web conferencing details in case you need to alter them later or change the password to a meeting.)
  3. Schedule captioning for the huddle. (Approximately 15% of the U.S. population has some difficulty hearing according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.)
  4. Send a reminder and details about the focus of the meeting roughly 1-2 weeks prior to the event. (You also can do other promotions or send another reminder the day before and day of the event, but it’s not always necessary.)
  5. Host the meeting.
  • Turn off your notifications and phones.
  • Make sure participants can mute/unmute as needed.
  • Record the event (if appropriate).
  • Provide the captioning link in the chat.
  • Set the ground rules for the meeting and remind them of the topic.
  • Have some staged questions or transitions between topics or speakers.
  • Thank everyone for attending.
  • Download and save the captioning after the event.
  • Download and save video, chat transcripts, and presentation into the same folder as the captioning.
  1. Send a follow up note or a re-cap of the event to the Community to continue the discussion. (Try to add a call to action or ask a question to increase engagement.)
  2. Provide Digital.gov with a copy of the recording, captioning, and chat transcripts if you are interested in turning the event into a resource or other piece of content.

Digital.gov Huddle Support

Digital.gov often will help support the first 3-4 huddles for communities, then allow them to set up and manage their own huddles moving forward. We will continue to check-in on the huddles, but the Community Lead(s) will run them moving forward.

If any huddle is recorded and might have valuable content to post on Digital.gov, please email us at digitalgov@gsa.gov and we’ll review to see if we can make it into a resource, news post, or find another means to distribute it to your community.

Communication Channels

Digital.gov manages several channels for communities to share news, resources, guides, training and other information. To submit something to Digital.gov or review some of our typical formats for information sharing, visit our Contribute page.

In addition to to the website, we also provide share information via:

  • Digital.gov Newsletter. Subscribe to receive this newsletter once a week. We include a feature article with links and promote upcoming events, recent content, open opportunities and more.
  • Social Media (🐦 @Digital_Gov or 👤 @DigitalGov). Follow us to get updates about upcoming events or recent content. We sometimes share links about other federal agency technologies, implementations or success stories.
  • Internal LISTSERVs. Digital.gov can share notices or messages across our various communities, or directly with all of our CoP Leads and Co-Leads.

Contributors and Speakers

Digital.gov regularly accepts articles, blog posts, events, presentations, resources, tools, and other content for this site from federal employees at various agencies and other contributors.

Please note, however, we must follow the GSA Office of General Counsel (OGC) and TTS’ Outreach Team additional guidance regarding steps to mitigate any concerns regarding contributors, speakers or presenters that are not federal employees. This information has been posted in the TTS Handbook for your reference.

If you need a copy of the materials in the handbook or additional information, email us at digitalgov@gsa.gov. For more information about how to contribute and what we are looking for when it comes to contributions, check out our Contribute page.

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