Community Code of Conduct
I think we need to remember the Community Code of Conduct when we are in discussions.
Community code of conduct
Article Id: 885
April 20, 2020
Welcome to the FamilySearch community. Please adhere to these standards when you communicate with others in any of our online forums:
- Be kind.
- Be honest.
- Be constructive.
- Be relevant.
We do not permit these inappropriate behaviors:
- Commercial use of the content.
- Selling or promotion of products or services.
- Spam.
- Profanity and other inappropriate content.
- Trolling, insulting, name calling, and other personal attacks.
- Using formatting techniques to shout, such as ALL CAPS, repeated characters, or excessive boldface.
- Conjecture, gossip, or debate about the priorities, motives, processes, policies, or competence of FamilySearch or its personnel.
- Thread bumping and repetitive comments.
- Debate or discussion of topics that are not relevant to family history (like politics or religion).
- Plagiarism and other violations of the law.
References to content
When you want to reference content, link to FamilySearch articles and references. For example, to explain how to reset a FamilySearch Account password, link to a FamilySearch Help Center document rather than third-party instructions not produced by FamilySearch. When referring to historical record collections, link to the collections on FamilySearch.
Enforcement
We realize that moderation of content is subjective and requires judgment. Reasonable people can disagree about what constitutes a violation of this code. Enforcement decisions are made exclusively by FamilySearch moderators.
Enforcement is typically one of these actions:
- Moderators remind offenders to obey the code of conduct. We can ask offenders to edit or delete their own comments.
- Moderators can edit, close, or remove posts or discussions.
- Severe or repeated violations can result in temporary or permanent suspension of group, community, or FamilySearch.org access.
Comments
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Community should be meant to be helpful. If particular persons are not helpful then Familysearch can do as they wish. "Reasonable people can disagree about what constitutes a violation of this code."
This 'code' has been around since the newer platform and I believe back in the previous one - which had public and official response options. It sounds like Mods have been instructed to implement enforcement changes. Community platform has also recently changed - community members no longer can do enforcement option #1 (after 4 hours of edit privilege): "Moderators remind offenders to obey the code of conduct. We can ask offenders to edit or delete their own comments [or we can undelete deleted comments rather than delete the blank comments the poster has retracted]."
Essentially it seems Familysearch is asserting more control/ownership over Community posts/threads (thus hoping to incentivize compliance and perhaps to more narrowly constrain 'guest' privileges). Perhaps they want less Community interaction and more Tree interaction (I think that is the focus - more actual 'work'). That way Community responses from Familysearch representatives will become more the rule than exception. (Sorry if I am conjecturing about processes - likely to become a common reason for posts to disappear. Just ask your question - or if answering - post the relevant Help Center document ... No conjecturing...all responses shall be official 'cookie-cutter' or deleted). Well ... Interesting ...
Questions:
If Familysearch would like all responses to be official - why not just re-implement a 'case #' system and route all queries through that system?
Will Community account suspension - temporary or permanent - also suspend the Familysearch Tree account? It's one thing for Community Code of Conduct and a separate 'contract' for Tree Terms of Use (see the difference)? If I understand correctly - all Community 'banishment' would do - would be to remove Account Settings> Permissions> Community permissions?
What is the temporary suspension timeframe?
I guess it would have to be really severe/repeated to be banished from the platform permanently - again might be subjective - but generally my feedback: I don't like where this is going - but "do whatcha gotta do."
Thanks for the warning MOD/enforcers ...
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I have seen a lot of angry posts by people who are new and / or are not familiar with how the world tree works. They are offended someone has access to their tree. They are offended when there is a wrong entry. They believe someone should fix things they see as wrong. They believe someone should do their research for them and get it right. They have all levels of confusion about simple functions of the tree and the result is rudeness. I do not know how to divert this crowd to a course or tutorial so they can better grasp the basics, but it saddens me to see this. I am not even LDS and it still seems like a lot of grumpiness about a good deed on the part of the Church.
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With all due respect, moderators also need to facilitate getting answers to questions. There seem to be an awful lot of unanswered questions on various groups or pages. I counted 72 "Unanswered Questions" beginning from Jan 1 to Feb 13 (today) with Zero comments. People will not come and ask questions or post suggestions if they don't think anyone is listening. They will not recommend the site to their friends and colleagues if they see that getting feedback is inconsistent.
The moderators not only need to monitor the conversations to make sure they are kind and considerate, but, also make sure they are creating a supportive environment. There is a difference between chat room monitors and chat room moderators. If a moderator can't answer a question or suggest where the answer lies, or tell the "guest" that they have read their concern and will pass along the information, then maybe they should tag (or private message) someone who might be of assistance. A chat room monitor sits back and makes sure that everyone is being kind and not violating the rules, makes sure everyone is safe, and is available 24/7/365.
Sometimes it is necessary to use formatting like caps and bold to make certain that the post is understood. Text has no emotion. One can't stress an idea, or point to an important instruction without the use of capital letters and bolding. This should not be regarded as shouting in all cases.
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Thank you for your remarks. In the discussions, we try and let those in the group answer questions and in the groups that I am assigned to, I don’t let the questions go unanswered.
I do appreciate that you brought this to my attention and I will pass this on to my leaders.
Kind Regards,
Shannon
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Thank you for your remarks and your understanding of the FamilySearch platform and how it works.
We are delighted that you are using FamilySearch and I hope the FamilySearch Community has help you in your research. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if we can assist you as well.
Kind Regards,
Shannon Wilcox
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"When you want to reference content, link to FamilySearch articles and references. For example, to explain how to reset a FamilySearch Account password, link to a FamilySearch Help Center document..."
This should be expanded to say "unless there is no help center article, the help center article has not been updated recently enough, or the help center article is wrong. Before linking an article be sure to re-read the question, read the help center article, and make sure the help center article actually is pertinent to the question asked."
One thing that seems to really trigger somewhat unkind responses is when someones asks a question and a moderator posts a link to an article that has nothing to do with the question. There seems to be less of a reaction if another user makes a mistake like this, but that "mod" after a name seems to cause users to hold moderators to a higher standard.
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Thank you for your response and I apologize if that has been something that has happened to you as I can see the frustration it may bring.
I hope that FamilySearch Community will continue to be a place where you are able to find answers to your questions. Have you ever used the Research Resource Links in the groups? In them, you will find some excellent resources to help in your research.
Please, don’t hesitate to reach out if we can assist you.
Kind Regards,
Shannon Wilcox
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Unless you have been instructed to add these comments, I feel it would have been better for an administrator (like @Mark McLemore) to have posted such a reminder, regarding the Code of Conduct.
I’m sure any responses posted here are not meant to be a criticism of you personally, but you have raised some issues that have produced comments that, I feel, might have been expected.
Firstly, I am always upset by the use of the term “guest(s)”. It does create a divisive feel to this forum, I’m afraid – whereby we have “us” - the moderators & employees - as opposed to “them” - other participants, who do not fall into the former categories, but have often been contributing to FamilySearch activities for many years, yet are still only considered “guests”. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, this is not a personal criticism of you / your vocabulary, as it obviously originated from “further up the chain”.
Secondly, it always seems a bit paradoxical to me that the code includes (as a “we do not permit” item): ”Debate or discussion of topics that are not relevant to family history (like politics or religion).” Against this, surely you have to take into account the inevitable discussion on “religious matters” on a website run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. At least half of FamilySearch participants have been found not to be LDS Church members (including members of Community), yet you use the sentence, “FamilySearch Community is a wonderful tool inspired by the Lord to help those seeking to find their ancestors.” I do not object per se to finding such phrases used in “Community”, but would ask - how, then, is religion not relevant to family history (with regards to this website)?
Thirdly, I’m sure many will disagree with you in your assertion, “The sole purpose of a moderator is to make sure discussions are done in a kind and considerate way.” As Melissa has pointed out, the role of moderators goes way beyond this. As you know, moderators (including probably yourself) do escalate certain issues and answer many queries posted here – notably with the excellent way they provide links to the relevant instructions / advice on users’ issues.
Finally, I must be honest in expressing my disappointment that respect does not always seem to work “both ways”. FamilySearch developers have been responsible for introducing the most unpopular “enhancement” I have encountered in the last ten years. I refer to the new Search interface, of course. Yet there has been no acknowledgement or apology (either here or in the “Blog”) for the problems and upset this has caused for the overwhelming majority of FS users. Wouldn’t it have been “kind” or “considerate” for an employee to offer some empathy here, and assure us all that FamilySearch is working hard at making the necessary changes, which will prevent it losing many of its users, who have become so disillusioned about their current (in)ability to get the search results required.
Whilst there was nothing “wrong” in your raising this important issue of the Community Code of Conduct, please understand that many users often feel their contributions to Community are not being valued, but in feeling this they sometimes express themselves more strongly than (later) they would have wished!
For my part, I am genuinely grateful for the help provided by the moderators of this forum and hope we can all continue to work in harmony here in our efforts to give and receive help regarding FamilySearch issues.
Kind regards
Paul Wrightson
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Greetings Friends,
Lots of good points and discussions in this post. I really appreciate the effort and thought put into the responses in the thread. Quite a few topics were covered, some of which should to be clarified or expanded upon.
- The code of conduct is currently undergoing some adjustments to the wording and line items. These adjustments are being made to provide more clarity around what behaviors are acceptable/unacceptable. More info to come soon.
- @genthusiast - Some setting adjustments have been made recently, such as the 4-hour window to edit discussions and posts. Please know we do not make these adjustments lightly, and that changes like this are made after thoughtful consideration of the problem we are trying to solve & the options available to us. In this case, the open-ended ability to edit/delete discussions and comments was having a negative impact on discussions in the community, often causing confusion or comments to be taken out of context.
- @genthusiast - Account suspension is typically a final effort to remedy ongoing behaviors or actions which violate the code of conduct, and which have not been resolved by the account owner. For confidentiality reasons, we can't go into much more detail than that.
- Community moderation - there have been quite a few internal discussions about this, and frankly, we did a poor job on this topic. Moderation roles & responsibilities were not as clearly defined as they needed to be, which caused several issues & challenges for both the moderators and the community members alike. We are in the process of revising moderation roles and responsibilities, drawing from many discussions and recommendations you all have made. More to come on this topic soon.
- @Gail S Watson - The problems with people not understanding the world tree model is something we are aware of and working on. This is a rather complex problem to solve, but we do have folks dedicated to working on this problem.
- @Melissa S Himes - the facilitation of getting answers to questions as well as creating a supportive environment is spot on. I will take this back to the team for further discussion on how to best approach this.
- @Gordon Collett - Valid points. I'll take these suggestions back to the team for discussion.
- @Paul W - thank you for your response, and for tagging me in it.
- The term "guest" - we absolutely want to avoid divisiveness in any form while still being inclusive to all. I'm not sure how to resolve this particular concern but am open to ideas or suggestions on how we could improve in this area.
- Regarding the "we do not permit" item on religion, we do need to take into account the inevitable discussions on religious matters and consider how words/terms may not be in line with the inclusive atmosphere we all would like in the community. I will take this one back to the team for further discussion.
A couple of other points to touch on:
- Moderator/moderation is ambiguous and needs to be better defined. I am working with several key folks to provide clearer distinctions related to titles & their associated responsibilities.
- "FamilySearch developers have been responsible for introducing the most unpopular “enhancement” I have encountered in the last ten years. I refer to the new Search interface, of course. Yet there has been no acknowledgment or apology (either here or in the “Blog”) for the problems and upset this has caused for the overwhelming majority of FS users. Wouldn’t it have been “kind” or “considerate” for an employee to offer some empathy here, and assure us all that FamilySearch is working hard at making the necessary changes, which will prevent it losing many of its users, who have become so disillusioned about their current (in)ability to get the search results required."
- You raise some very valid points, although I'm not sure how to respond in a way that would adequately address the issues you noted. FamilySearch definitely has some room for improvement here, and I have raised this & similar concerns with the appropriate internal leaders and will continue to advocate for improvements to be made on this topic
@Paul W said it best in his closing comment: "I am genuinely grateful for the help provided by the moderators of this forum and hope we can all continue to work in harmony here in our efforts to give and receive help regarding FamilySearch issues."
Best,
Mark
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Adding to @Paul W 's second point: I think it would be better that a new forum/community was created for matters relating to Latter Day Saint ordinances, and that the Code of Conduct of this community explicitly banned discussions of LDS ordinances. Therefore any discussion of religion and politics would have to be directly relevant to family history(e.g. church records, an ancestor who fought in a civil war or held public office).
Many of the discussions on ordinances are quite doctrinal or personal. I've seen at least two people scan letters giving permission for people who were born less than 110 years ago to receive ordinances. One recent discussion was about the appropriate time to perform ordinances for a Latter Day Saint who had (reading between the lines) taken their own life as teenager. Many discussions mention PID numbers of living or recently deceased people.
In another recent discussion, a fellow user who appeared to be a Latter Day Saint and wrongly thought I was too expressed his opinion that a certain non-LDS ancestor of his strongly desired to be sealed to his parents. Later, after learning that it was unlikely he'd ever know their names, he suggested that we should pray , fast and hold out hope that their names could be found. While I acknowledge the significance of this for Latter Day Saints and the disappointment this person was feeling at the time, I feel this sort of discussion doesn't belong in this community.
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Adding to A Van Helsdingen's comments above, my suggestion is to make the Temple category only visible if someone has signed in with a LSD Church account.
Regarding the Code of Conduct and kind comments, as I see it, a frequent problem is that at least some moderators think they know more than they do, they give incorrect advice, a Community member tell them they are wrong, the moderator is offended by what they consider an unkind comment, and the Community member's post is deleted. I think the Code of Conduct needs to give examples of what wording is considered acceptable and what is not considered acceptable in this situation.
Following on from this, I also think there should be instructions to moderators about when it is considered appropriate to send Private messages to Community members inviting them to change their comments made when replying to Discussions. One one occasion I was sent 5 PMs about some comments I had made, where the moderator had also posted. I replied if the moderator considered my comments incorrect she should comment on the particular Discussion with her reasons. She subsequently edited out HER comments on the Discussion ( as she came to realise she was incorrect). If I make a comment on a Discussion, I consider it wrong for someone ask me to withdraw it, just because she thought I was not knowledgeable. Surely for many questions, the answer may be a matter of opinion, and Community members should be able to consider the differing views and come to their own decision. Or is this considered unkind?
Regarding Gordon Collett's comment above. As I read it, Gordon is giving his views on this discussion, he is not asking a question. There are 5 stars after his name, showing him to be extremely experienced and his profile shows he has made 1.5k Comments. He must be one of the most experienced people in this Community. The moderator's response directing him to Research Resource Links to help in his research comes across to me as not relevant to his comments as he wasn't asking for advice, and patronising.in view of his 5 star status. To me, the moderator's comments were not kind.
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Hi Maureen, howzit? As a part time Service Missionary for the Church for all of 2 months since completion of training let me comment from my perspective. Firstly, Moderators are not the only representatives of the Church who are commenting and trying to answer questions in FamilySearch Community. Service Missionaries are also trained to do that. Obviously we all have to start somewhere, just as all the experienced users have had to, probably without training, in the meantime making mistakes and learning from them. Learning is an unending process assuming you haven't closed your mind to the possibility that you may not know everything. If you experienced a lot of criticism while you were learning the ropes then I apologise for any demotivation you may have felt because of that. It can be very unpleasant. I'm not making excuses for not taking the time to prepare carefully and fully to answer such queries as we see in FS C. That is obviously of no help to anyone. From my point of view, I didn't commit myself to two years of service just to sit at my laptop reading other people's questions and their associated answers, and posting none of my own. I will try to help as best as I can even though I realise there are many more experienced users out there who will post more comprehensive comments than myself. I don't claim to be what I'm not and I'm supremely aware of my limitations. As far as I can see, there is room for all levels of experience in FS C and users can compare the responses given and make up their own minds which are of most benefit to them. Any system is capable of improvement and those who can see that probably know how best to effectively influence that without ranting in FS C. It doesn't help users to be exposed to all of the negativity so often displayed by those who should know better. Why don't they utilise that wealth of experience with the administrators to effect the changes they feel so strongly about. In the meantime - "play nice".
Kind Regards,
John L. Kennedy.
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I would also like to thank everyone participating in this discussion for behaving so politely and with level-headedness. This thread could easily have veered off into unhelpful comments. Thank you!
To reiterate what Mark said above, we are taking what you say into account as we move forward - the feedback you've been offering is invaluable!
Many of your ideas have merit; in fact, we were already be considering some. However, please bear in mind that some of your requests are above our abilities at this time. Some things will take longer to implement than one would think. Changes will not roll out overnight, nor all at once. Hang in there with us!
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Wow,
All I want to do is help my 86yr old aunt, who is a descendent of Mormon pioneers put together her genealogy book before she passes, as this is her wish.
She has artifacts from her LDS GG Grandparents that belong in a museum. I am slated to inherit many.
SO many comments scrubbed by FS mods in regards to search tools, simple, easy to use search tools and why FS chose to remove them.
And if we ask we're reprimanded and scolded for being "unkind." Clearly, there is an entirely different issue, all poised to deflect. Quite passive aggressive.
I'm so glad I backed up all these comments yesterday for future reference.
This behavior is exactly why our amazing ancestors left their birth countries.
I truly wish everyone success in their searches, regardless of their religion.
I also wish peace and happiness to the mods of FS.
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For confidentiality reasons, we can't go into much more detail than that.
Certainly the policy about whether Community account suspension/termination also suspends/terminates the associated FamilySearch account can be published? From my point of view account suspension/termination in Community should differ from FamilySearch Tree account (the two precipitating actions most likely being very much separate from each other).
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Hello @genthusiast,
Without getting into specifics - a ban/suspension in the community does not necessarily mean this ban/suspension will carry over to FamilySearch.org, but it may, depending on the totality of circumstances.
Best,
Mark
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What an exciting adventure you have putting together your Aunt's Pioneer Heritage. It is so much fun. I did that a few years ago and was able to put together a 500 plus page book on mine. I digitized it as well and have shared it with many family relatives. Finding their stories and pictures is so much fun. Just curious, who are some of her family names?
I wish you much fun as you compiled it for her.
Kind Regards,
Shannon
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