Members Bill of Rights

The idea of this page is to develop a Members Bill of Rights, which will hopefully be put to the General Assembly of BeVolunteer to vote into the statutes. For the time being we can work towards adoption within BeWelcome.

This is a draft for a universal bill or rights for members of (online) social networks. BeWelcome would be an ideal organization to adopt this bill of rights.

Bill of member rights

As a member of this social networking site:

1. I have the right to fully use the intended functionality of the website, regardless of my race, gender or socio-cultural background.
2. My use of the service shall be free of cost.
3. I have the right to participate in the decision making process that governs this site.
4. I have the right to full organizational transparency for all matters that affect me personally or the community to which I subscribed. This includes access to the bookkeeping and to a record of all organizational decisions and debates.
5. I have the right to physical and social safety within the service. I understand my personal responsibility in providing this safety for others members as well.
6. I have the right to choose the way my personal data is being used in the network. My personal data can not be shared, sold or otherwise distributed without my explicit consent. I have the right to hide, modify, export or remove the personal data that I have entered in the site. I have a right to cancel my membership.
7. I have a right to view the code that is being used to run this site.

These right are inalienable and can not be withdrawn.

What does it all mean?

1. This means that there can be no "special" features (excluding administrative functionality of course) available that only certain members have access to. This means there shall never be different "classes" of users. Note that this only covers "intended" use, so using the site as it wasn't intended (malicious or otherwise) is *not* a right. Also note that certain restrictions might be applied to membership, such as a minimum age, but you can not be discriminated based on gender, race or socio-cultural background.
2. This means the use of the website or of any functionality has to be completely free (as in beer) and unlimited. You may be asked for donations, but it can never be required.
3. This means that there is a way for me to be involved in the organization that regulates the social network. This might be through direct voting, a representation structure or other system.
4. This means all decisions that are being made can be read online, I can see how decisions were reached and how donation money is being used.
5. This means all reasonable measures will be taken to ensure my personal safety. However, my personal safety is equally my responsibility, by keeping in mind good practice and general guidelines.
6. By personal data we mean your contact details and identification data (address, phone numbers, email, name, etc), profile data (description, pictures, ...) and comments you have left others. Collaborative data (Wiki pages, code, forum discussion) are not included. Keep in mind that unauthorized use of a service may result in you losing this right, in essence you might end up on a blacklist (you have consented to this by registering).
7. This means I can see what the software is actually capable of doing. The code can, for instance, be published under an open source license, or other system.

Member Rights

Note that the following listing already existed online before the above list of rights was drafted.

Members shall have the following rights:

1. Ownership of their own personal information, including:
   1. their own profile data
   2. the list of people they are connected to
   3. the activity stream of content they create;
2. Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
3. Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

Sites supporting these rights shall:

1. Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that�s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
2. Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
3. Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
4. Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

based on ..

The syndication and Open Data stuff seems to fall under the right to export personal data and I believe to be a far too technical to be included in a Bill of Rights. A bill of rights (to me) would be about general principles a site agrees to, not as much how it is implemented. --Tgoorden 20:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Possible additions

• Members have the right to use the site without advertising.
• Members have the right to have their information shown without advertising. (Part of Right #2.)

I don't think this is a "right". I think members could have the option to pay for this if they choose to, but I don't think it's a "right". It costs money to host web sites, so unless the user is willing to pay their share of that cost, I don't think they have the right to get it for free. Chmac 01:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

• Bill of " Responsibilities "

Technical implementation

The implementation of these rights will take time. Before these rights can be adopted they will have to be coded.

Additional Links

• A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web
• Callum Macdonald on rights for members of social networks
• BW forum discussion
• A Declaration of Digital Rights

Former Talkpage at BV-Wiki

my edits are copying the Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web. See: http://opensocialweb.org/2007/09/05/bill-of-rights/ I think they're relevant.

• jared

Thanks! When I saw this page in the recent changes I was thinking "I should copy from that page". BTW, you can sign your wiki comments with

[[User:|]] - Sun, 08 Nov 09 18:24:01 +0000

. guaka 18:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I have not fully understood what kind of legal status this Bill of Rights should have in the end. However if it will/should be more than just a couple nice words we have to be careful not to get into legal trouble with what we "grant as a right". We have to carefully examine this and make sure that the "rights" are in line with our procedures and change the procedures or the rights according.

BV could legally adopt the bill of rights by "ratification", the same way countries can ratify agreements like "human rights". This means, in practice, that while we might not always be completely compliant, we'd need to be able to show that we're doing everything we can to make BV adhere to the bill. I very much doubt that this will cause difficult legal implications for us. Most of the comments below are about practical issues, but a bill of rights is much more about intent. --Tgoorden 08:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• (4) - Right now only members of BeVolunteer have a real right to participate in the decision making process and there are some requirements to match to become a member.
  True, but the possibility exists to join in the decision making. We do have to think about the requirements of becoming an official member though, a few adjustments might be necessary. --Tgoorden 08:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• (5) - I would not like to be legally responsible for the safety of a member. Imho the safety is the members own responsibility.
  That's why it also states: "I understand my personal responsibility in providing this safety for others members as well." But, perhaps we can word the first sentence a bit differently. The point is that we, as an organization, should do what we can to make it as safe as possible. --Tgoorden 08:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• (6) - This (modify,share,hide) asks for a very sophisticated technical implementation that we will not be able to provide in the near future. Although I agree in general I would limit it to own/add/delete
  Most of this is already possible (except export, but I think there's a draft XMl export page). You can hide/modify/share all of your personal details (like name and address) already, right? --Tgoorden 08:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• (7) - Right now we do NOT allow people to see the code that is actually running the code but only the (pretty much identical) code that is under development.
  Again, I believe the intent is much more important here. It doesn't say "live" code, but it's clear that we shouldn't have any hidden functionality, which is precisely why this right is there. Also, right now right nr 5 justifies holding back a little to ensure we don't expose security risks until the code is stable enough. --Tgoorden 08:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

1- I included "Political and Religion" in "socio-cultural background." ? 3(optional extended to 4 and 7)- I'm in the opinion that can only apply to (verified members) to be sure that is one physical person (in case of community profiles, one representation) to prevent abuse, distortion or even take over; in the hypothetical case, use boots/others to manipulate several profiles. (may be to paranoid).

• I do recommend to make explicit that BW will work to carry out this bill, but can't accept any responsibility.
• Sorry my ignorance. Can be explain the picture on the video, 2.08min, please?
• About the adds: BW could intend to exist without adds, but can't warranty.
  • Peregri 08:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)