Identify admins in user profile text

[sallytay]

To make sure that WhatDoTheyKnow admin team are identified in their WDTK user profiles.

Suggest that standard text could be used for all?
"Official account used by the WhatDoTheyKnow.com team. If you need assistance, please contact us here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/contact"

13 out of the 22 admin users don't have any information on their profiles and others could update their profiles to include the text above, although they do identify themselves as pert of the WDTK team. Is there a way we could add this in bulk to the 13 users with no profiles or would they need to do that themselves?

Plus a could add a note to any 'onboarding' to the admin team to put this on the WDTK user profile and update the Wiki to ask admins to sign off annotations with 'WhatDoThyKnow Team' @sallytay happy to take this action

Sally

[garethrees]

Is there a way we could add this in bulk to the 13 users with no profiles or would they need to do that themselves?

Yep, pretty easily.

text = "Official account used…"
emails = %w[a@example.com b@example.com]
User.where(email: emails).update_all(about_me: text)

[RichardTaylor]

While the proposal here has the significant benefit it's something which can be done now with no development work I have a preference for addressing this issue in code:

• Publicly identify users as "volunteers" or "staff", and linking their roles to admin actions alaveteli#6270
• Special annotations - for links to articles based on responses, summaries of correspondence, or admin notes alaveteli#34

As for

update the Wiki to ask admins to sign off annotations with 'WhatDoThyKnow Team'

This should only apply to admin annotations. Administrators may make personal and "official" use of the service under the same account. The proposal is also a bit prescriptive. I've used the following which I think suffices:

--
WhatDoTheyKnow.com volunteer

• Some of the admin users don't take public admin actions so don't really need a profile update.

• These are personal accounts with admin powers in many cases, I don't think the profile text should be changed without consent of the account holder.

"Official account used by the WhatDoTheyKnow.com team."

Again these are personal accounts which are used on occasion for admin actions so I don't think this text is appropriate. Also the statement "Official account used by the WhatDoTheyKnow.com team" makes it sound like it is not an individual's account. "Account used by a member of the WhatDoTheyKnow.com admin team" might be better. I prefer something like: "I am a volunteer WhatDoTheyKnow administrator" / "I work for mySociety, the organisation which runs WhatDoTheyKnow.com".

[mdeuk]

While the proposal here has the significant benefit it's something which can be done now with no development work I have a preference for addressing this issue in code:

+1 - I outlined my thinking on mysociety/alaveteli#6270 (comment) when this one was raised - giving a hybrid option which I think helps with the admin / personal account divide.

As for

update the Wiki to ask admins to sign off annotations with 'WhatDoThyKnow Team'

This should only apply to admin annotations. Administrators may make personal and "official" use of the service under the same account. The proposal is also a bit prescriptive. I've used the following which I think suffices:

-- 
WhatDoTheyKnow.com volunteer

+1 - I use the same text, and I also use something similar in my profile.

[garethrees]

While the proposal here has the significant benefit it's something which can be done now with no development work I have a preference for addressing this issue in code:

This doesn't have to be either-or. We can do the manual step now to at least get us closer to where we want to be, and still have an open issue for improving how Alaveteli itself handles this. We have limited development capacity, so there's no reason not to use other capacity we have to make improvements.

[sallytay]

Of the accounts that have been identified as needed a profile update, i.e .they currently have no profile information at all, 11 of those are mySociety Staff and 2 are newer volunteers. All existing and active volunteers have perfectly good profile information and the proposal was not to update these. I'm happy to advise the 2 volunteers separately of this task to add some information to their profile.

In an ideal world, I agree it would be better for us to address this with code, and that issue should definitely remain open for future consideration. However as it was raised as a concern in the Monthly catch up call, of which I agree, that WDTK administrators should be publically identified as such. The proposal would allow this to happen rather than having to wait months for developer time. I can provide the email address of the staff where this is required.

With the 'sign off' of annotations, this is not something currently mentioned in the on boarding process with either volunteer or staff admins and which I think it should be noted, 'That while adding annotations that have details of a task carried out as an administrator that these should be identified as such" - that's not to say that volunteers who use the site and add personal annotations should have to do this. This will help when training new admins to make sure this isn't overlooked.

Sally

[sallytay]

Proposed next actions for this:

For WDTK staff admin accounts only that currently don't have any public profile information on their user account. @sallytay to check if they are happy to have the following text added to their user profile, if yes then add in bulk as detailed above:
“Official account used by the WhatDoTheyKnow.com team. If you need assistance, please contact us here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/contact”

Add a note to the Wiki https://wdtkwiki.mysociety.org/wiki/Policies#Annotations
On identifying yourself as either a volunteer or staff admin when making an annotation in your admin capacity, not applicable when making annotations in a personal capacity. Example text, "WhatDoTheyKnow.com volunteer" or "WhatDoTheyKnow.com support team" This is something our current team do, however a useful note for new members of the team.

Add to the next steps section of the induction call on the wiki, https://wdtkwiki.mysociety.org/wiki/Agenda_For_Induction_Call a note to advise new volunteer to update their WDTK user account profile to indicate that they are a WDTK volunteer. Using current volunteers account profiles as an example. Volunteers all use WDTK for different purposes so standard profile text isn't appropriate here.

Thoughts on the proposal welcomed along with any other guidance on this that you think could or should be added to the wiki.

Note: This was been raised to resolve an item flagged for the catch up call, that raised concerns that admins weren't always identifying themselves as such and that staff user profiles were not consistent.

[RichardTaylor]

For WDTK staff admin accounts only that currently don't have any public profile information on their user account....“Official account used by the WhatDoTheyKnow.com team. If you need assistance, please contact us here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/contact "

I think my above comments on this still apply even to WDTK staff admin accounts
#902 (comment)

[HelenWDTK]

I'm happy that all of the accounts of volunteer/staff admins who take public actions have a good bio in place, so I'm going to close this, as there are other issues covering the technical improvements.

[WilliamWDTK]

Although there is the issue of people still listed as being volunteers or whatever when they're not. For example, Tom Steinberg is apparently the director of mySociety.