Week 11 Term 2 Exec Meeting Minutes
Posted on 26th March 2021
Present: Amelie, Dan, John, Josh, Keegan, Leo, Ryan, Ella, Skiros, Scott, Thomas, Toby
Absent: Daisy
Discord Layout
Link to initial ideas/prospective changes: Discord changes - Google Docs
Membership screening
- Introduction to Discord
- Specifically looking at "community servers" new feature.
- Would not affect current users, nailing down what new users need to do/be aware of before taking part.
Intros
- Suggestion to remove #intros and change bot to introduce in #general, for example.
- Don't create a separate #grad-intros channel
- Decisions: Don't keep #intros, don't create #grad-intros, keep welcome messages
Rules/Code of Conduct
- Start pushing people to content-warn potentially-upsetting content
- Would we need a "not-exhaustive" list of CW ideas?
- Tabletop doesn't have a list
- Pushing people to edit, so they get an idea over time.
- There will be a transition period.
- In general, anything NSFW
- In general it's a bit subjective as to what could be triggering.
- Reminder that we are a student platform, but we shouldn't need to justify ourselves.
- Where would this list go?
- A lot of the things in our rules/CoC are also in Discord's guidelines.
- Purpose of our rules is it is stuff that applies to all events, virtual and in-person, that don't necessarily happen on Discord.
- This year is a bit of an exception with a lot of activity existing in Discord
- More changing how it is presented rather than the content
- Action: take a look at CoC and see if anything needs a rewrite?
Roles
- Currently #roles at top of Discord, split by categories, react gives/removes roles.
- Other than opt-in, roles don't serve much of a purpose
- RE split into multiple channels: separate important and optional roles so you do see important roles first
- Counter: most do find the important roles anyway
- Focus of this discussion is on those who are new to Discord etc.
- Other role changes:
- Split @postgrad into @pgr and @pgt
- Change for role and channel
- Specifically PG-Taught and PG-Research? Nope
- Quite long
- Widely used terms
- Put description in role menu rather than in name
- @Physics, @Biology, @Chemistry, @Engineering -> @Other STEM
- @Business, @Humanities, @Social Sciences -> @Non-STEM
- Summary of this: anyone can take DCS modules. At what point do we feel we have too many/too little channels?
- Keep Direct DCS courses (everything to Data Science) as separate roles then group otherwise similar to above?
- Strawpoll?
- Add @prospective-student
- Channel for prospectives to ask current students questions? Not needed all the time.
- #undergrad?
- Channel for prospectives to ask current students questions? Not needed all the time.
- Remove @garrys-mod, @jackbox, @film roles
- @film merged with @social
- Agreed! Let's move on please as I'm losing my sanity... :D
- Split @postgrad into @pgr and @pgt
- Generally follow Slack model (important channels available to everyone, everything else opt in)
- May look a bit unsightly but its the best option we have right now.
- Remove BDFL/ex-exec colour
- Ex-exec don't have any powers in the server, they are listed in the exec history
- Limit colours to years/course roles + exec
IRC
- Whatever happens, we need a #general
- Point of #freshers is for first years to go/meet people -> repurpose #first-year
- Just make and see if they get used? Was requested by freshers as there wasn't a starting area for them with their peers.
- Worth trying and looking at the end result
- Hmm it's already 6.50...
Continue original agenda at next meeting in a week
Other things for now:
- More public exec discussion in #exec
- General discussion etc to move public? General pinging to stay private (e.g. write the newsletter!)
- Anything discussed resulting in an action is discussed in a meeting anyway. General planning in front has previously normally been in private.
- Don't put sponsor stuff public!
- Mundane convos used to happen in person, however that can't happen because of a certain pomegranate going on right now.
- Perhaps a #exec-readonly channel where discussions happen publicly?
- Does everyone need to comment on stuff right from the initial idea, if everything is discussed publicly later?
- Action: do something I don't know....
- Real action: cut out everything that can be public and put messages to get exec to make it public. But otherwise sit and think and see what happens
- Amelie's action point: improve !reminder command so they don't default to other reminder bots.
- Shrekathon date: poll to go up shortly
Move Academic events section to next meeting whenever that may be
I'm lost...
"That was the sudden shrek scare" Ryan (slightly paraphrased as I forgot the quote half way through typing...
"I WARNED YOU!!!" Amelie
"Don't make any good decisions without me" Alex in chat (don't worry, we won't!)