Towards less conflicts from biases/assumptions in communication styles/conventions

[SMotaal]

💭

how you can help 1 of n

I gave this my best effort as someone with writing difference trying to relate to others with a more traditional communication style — it is undignifying to be honest and I give up trying to — please feel free to help by closing this first gap where if it will ever communicate and make sense to others then it takes that other's communication benefit to get it there

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Roadmap

Goals

1. Establish appropriate long-term space/efforts for this dialog to begin, so that more dialog can happen, towards less conflicts from biases/assumptions in communication styles/conventions.

Next Steps

• Open an issue proposing and detailing an initiative towards better odds for equal-access across official collaboration mediums (maybe).

  • Create a public slack channel for discussions

    Note: Discussions ongoing in #equal-access-initiative

    Join the slack Node Slackers workspace!.

  • Set up an out-of-band meeting for first steps

    Thanks for everyone who joined — no meetings scheduled for this time.

  • Seek a champion Initiative #507 — Backing champion for phase 0, … #539

  • Put out "feeler" survey questions Initiative #507 — Preparing questions for annual survey #538

    • Parse the data and Make it count!

Explainer

For someone who has to always put so much effort into doing things others take for granted, there seems to be a disconnect between our excitement and sentiment of making our communication mediums more accessible and how much it actually takes from them to feel that they are able to attain appropriate relevance of their communication among their peers.

So aside from what obviously is not meant here, I am sure that some of us out there collaborating (or trying to) in open source projects often feel the unintentional but overbearingly disabling and sometimes maybe unwittingly misappropriated exclusion by the impatience and false assumptions forming around their attempts to communicate. The sad reality of it, at least from personal experience, these challenges are not easily relatable to others, and while most are able to focus on making their point heard, others are left dealing with odds that take away any contribution they offer.

To elaborate on this, cautiously but realistically speaking, others reading more similarly being the systematically inherent bias forced on people who cannot keep up with what is taken for granted, what is intended and quickly gleaned, let alone what was assumed to be (or not) implied between-the-lines. And, because it is not relatable to others, the discrimination burdens of our norms of pace and adherence to naturally biased communication means, forces one to choose either to withdraw and perpetuate this bias or to become increasingly the one burdened by observing it unfolding on to them. And, because it is not relatable to others, the logical foregone conclusion that it is only downhill to even try when one starts noticing their best efforts are considered their own burden of wanting to be part of a so called "dialogue", and I quote, "it is on the messenger to…" — as in if fail happens, where they know you struggle (sometimes even because of the knowing bit itself), they are in and you are out 😞 — not what is said, and certainly not what is intended, but is more often than not the less popular conclusion some in particular are too too often left to draw when they are inevitably becoming omitted from many a discussion by conventions and norms.

Please appreciate that the above is my best effort to try to state this, and the goal here in my mind at least is not to point fingers or complain. Instead, my hope is to take my readiness to openly disclose my own experience (and hopefully others) as the missing feedback from a segment of our community that finds struggles in subtle aspects of our collective collaboration experience that can be gradually improved upon when suitable feedback and response mechanisms are in place to make that possible.

[mhdawson]

I talked to @SMotaal last week before suggesting he open this issue. One of the discussions to be had is how to understand the challenges (which are likely not obvious to many of us already engaged) and then what we might do within the project to help new contributors

One of the concrete examples we discussed was around handling conflict and that some additional guidance might help. For example, to recommend that if you need to step away from a discussion it is important to let other participants know you are doing that and some additional context (are you dis-engaging completely, cooling off and then you'll come back or whatever?)

[bnb]

@nodejs/community-committee please check this issue out prior to the next meeting.

[bnb]

@SMotaal nope, meetings are every other week. It'll be next Thursday 👍

[SMotaal]

Next step from the Aug-08 meeting:

• Open an issue proposing and detailing an initiative towards better odds for equal-access across official collaboration mediums (maybe).

  • This probably being a good effort for more individuals, please reply here if you are interested in co-authoring or helping in any capacity.

  • I am traveling through August so it will likely be very spares effort at first.

  • If it helps we can create a slack thread to begin the discussion.

[saulonunesdev]

We could also use others sources of meeting like gmeets if zooms slot is not available

[SMotaal]

I was talking to @bnb earlier and he could weight in… As I understand, we're trying to keep everything in the official space, right?

I'd like to get some traction so if we can manage to organize the zoom through the @nodejs/community-committee account, would be preferred/ideal.

[bnb]

If it's about a potential Initiative, I'd prefer to keep it within official media so there wouldn't be any question of it being covered by the Code of Conduct.

If a recording is provided and y'all document that you're using a different medium + assert that this is a meeting where the Node.js Code of Conduct is expected to be followed, I'd assume it would be acceptable.

[codeekage]

I wouldn’t want to miss this... and would to see this move towards and long term initiative moving forward.

However, does this have a CommComm champion guiding on processes and ensuring the CoC is been followed?

[saulonunesdev]

I Believe that would be @SMotaal

[saulonunesdev]

yeah, me too. already update my doodle slots availability

[codeekage]

I will be available on Friday 16:00 WAT don’t know if that will be ok?

[SMotaal]

Based on that, we can have just a preliminary meeting this Friday at 1100 EDT/AMT - 1600 WAT.

The doodle will remain open until Sunday 0800 EDT time to gauge interests for next week too.

@codeekage: I reflected that in your doodle (hope you don't mind)

[SMotaal]

I'm proposing "improving odds" here as working title moving forward… please 👍 or 👎 here (suggestions are welcome).

/cc @nodejs/community-committee

[bnb]

I'd personally recommend something that's a bit more explicit as a name that explicitly defines your goal that could be easily understood by someone who doesn't have context. Improving Odds is incredibly broad, and many of the things that I think of when I hear that aren't – as far as I know – an intended part of this.

I'm still not feeling familiar enough with the intent to be able to suggest something more precise, unfortunately 😬

[SMotaal]

Sure… sorry I just saw this, reflecting on issues :)

Update: I think we need to make a little headway within the group in trying to address the void aspect somehow to move forward on necessary steps even before the survey — it does help to appreciate wanting to find some balanced resolution between being transparent and those aspects less likely to become more articulated just through on stream discussions and being more easily in a sufficiently appropriate space.

[Trott]

I've unarchived this repo so I can close all PRs and issues before re-archiving.