🤝Tech Fleet Members' Rights

This page outline our community members' rights.

Tech Fleet, as an organization and as a community, will strive to support the following Members Rights for all participants:

1. Inclusivity

Our community must become reasonably inclusive for all willing participants. Inclusivity requires healthy standards for accessibility, admissions, orientation, onboarding, and rejoining, as follows:

a. Accessibility

Tech Fleet strives to achieve high standards of accessibility in clear language, navigable platforms, and reasonable accommodations for highly diverse participants. We hold ourselves to high accessibility standards in our official media, and expect each other to interact generously according to each other’s abilities and interests as they are relevant to each channel and conversation. We will also, as our community grows, strive to broaden our ability to welcome multiple methods of engagement and communication styles.

See also our supplementary accessibility guidelines.

b. Admissions & Orientation

Admissions: Anyone may join our community through one, or both, of the following simple pathways:

1. Anyone may join Tech Fleet through a form on our website, which requires agreeing to Tech Fleet’s Pledge of Purpose.

2. Anyone may join Tech Fleet's Discord Group by accepting the policies of Tech Fleet and Discord, including the Pledge of Community in this Collective Agreement.

Orientation: We encourage everyone to especially welcome new members. We encourage new members to explore this Collective Agreement, as well as Tech Fleet user guide, website and related resources. We encourage new members to discover our culture by attending an Onboarding session, participating in Master Classes, being an Observer on projects, and asking questions whenever relevant.

As Tech Fleet grows, we will strive to improve our orientation resources, and we welcome input from new members about what would help them get started.

c. Onboarding

We will all consider new members to be onboarding until they’ve been in our community for at least one month and have engaged meaningfully. Onboarding is meant to be a protected and nurturing status, with the assumption that onboarding members may need to learn more about Tech Fleet and to acclimate to our culture.

As Tech Fleet grows, we expect that our Community Stewardship guild will develop more resources and offerings for new members.

d. Rejoining

We support people to join, leave and rejoin Tech Fleet however they wish, with no particular expectations other than adherence to our Collective Agreement (plus any personally assigned roles or tasks).

Our Collective Agreement allows removals for cause, but we will never intentionally exile anyone. Removals are always subject to discussion per our open- ended standards for transforming tension & conflict.

2. Freedom of Expression

We mean for our Collective Agreement to be useful and relevant to all of our interactions with each other, and it applies strongly to all use of our channels. However, we openly recognize our members’ default freedom to communicate using whichever tools, times, and communicative styles and levels of detail are mutually acceptable to participants.

Spontaneous communications can occur in or outside of any official channels and systems, and we support connection among members unless it contains violations.

With freedom comes responsibility. Please consider how your spontaneous communications (anywhere) will affect our community. Are you genuinely trying to help our community? Are you open to critical feedback? If you develop ideas or recommendations for specific teams or groups, are they practical and accessible for their intended recipients? If not, please rethink, or redirect your ideas through supported use of our channels. We welcome you to ask questions about what may be appropriate or encouraged in our Discord or via email.

3. Confidentiality

Confidentiality is a key principle in building relationships and trust. We must safeguard our freedom of expression with a deep respect for confidentiality, while retaining the right to report harmful or dangerous behaviors wherever they occur. We are always seeking to balance access and transparency with trust and privacy.

One of our few violations is unapproved and unnecessary sharing of confidential information. This is especially true of any data we collect from or about people not in our community, such as our nonprofit partner’s clients. Before any potentially risky sharing, consider the Sharing Test below:

The Sharing Test

Before sharing private information more openly, especially if sharing publicly, ask yourself:

1. Do I have clear permission to share this?

   1. For example, the context of a meeting or conversation may indirectly, but clearly, establish or withhold permission to share. Permission may also be directly defined by official roles and policies developed by Tech Fleet and its related projects.

   2. If permission is explicit, but indirect or subtle, do the stakeholders realize that permission has been predetermined? If you’re not sure, check with them. It’s better to err on the side of caution. If information needs to be shared, consider if it can be done without violating the privacy of its source.

   3. Do I feel comfortable requesting permission to share? Are you comfortable asking permission to share information as intended? If not, why not? (Proceed to #3 below if necessary.) Asking permission not only safeguards confidentiality, but helps to develop relationships (and new permissions) as needed.

2. If other stakeholder(s) do object, or might object, am I justified in taking that risk?

   1. This should rarely come up, and when it does, it can be a major cultural challenge. However, if we’re specifically thinking of gossiping or whistleblowing, including situations of perceived harassment or abuse, consider "the four gates of speech" below. Is what you might share:

• true

• kind

• necessary, and

• timely?

4. Self-Determination

Tech Fleet channels, teams and sub-projects are free to develop their own cultural and technical standards, as long as such standards are compatible with our Collective Agreement and any other Tech Fleet-wide policies.

Examples of self-determination:

1. We may develop special channels which are devoted to topics of special interest in our community. Special channels may address risky or challenging subjects, as long as they’re responsibly labeled and (whenever applicable) have appropriate admissions criteria.

2. We may develop special rules and guidelines to optimize our use of special tools, including digital systems and subsystems.

3. Any teams and subprojects which the Board or the Guilds confer authority to may create internal standards such as personal participation and availability standards. Likewise, any teams and projects which emerge within or use our channels, but have no Tech Fleet-wide authority, may create additional internal standards, so long as the standards outlined here are followed.

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