I notice (going through privacy-policy updates around GDPR and similar), that there are many cases where opt-in consent is the truly best respectful way to treat users.
I can imagine so many scenarios. For example, instead of assuming (opt-out) that patrons accept being listed as patrons of any given project, we should have a checkbox, opt-in when pledging that asks something like “include my ____ in a public list of patrons” where the ____ could be a dropdown to choose real name versus nickname or both or I dunno… I mean, the details depend on how we design such a list-of-patrons feature. I imagine someone who does not opt-in gets listed as “anonymous” in this case.
Point is: maybe we should specify in the design area some policy aligned with the privacy policy that basically says we offer opt-in everywhere possible.
I think “opt-in everywhere possible” is too flexible for a useful guide. I see and support what you have in mind generally, but have a concern this is a sensible addition to the “design” guide, as it goes deeper than just design. Did you know of a policy that embraces such a move?
I was wondering if I was even the author you were replying to.
I certainly don’t support the extreme framing I initially wrote. I agree it’s too limiting.
I think we should simply have the right ethical values and principles in our values doc about the whole org, not in design stuff. It will then be sensible to argue that certain cases of opt-in or opt-out go with or against our ethics.
I’m currently updating those ethics docs along with Code of Conduct and new Terms of Service, it might help if we can just state briefly what principles are violated by the cases of opt-out that we know are wrong…
There’s also the honor-projects stuff which references opt-in and opt-out currently related to ideal Terms of Service.
I’m not sure we need anything more. We can close this topic if there’s no further actionable suggestions from anyone soon.
