WiNLP Guidelines for Zoom moderation

These guidelines are intended to help protect all WiNLP attendees and speakers in our Zoom events. 

Guidelines for WiNLP attendees:

  1. Do not share the Zoom link with anyone else. All WiNLP attendees will have access to our Zoom link via our registration email, or via the hosting conference workshop/session page. No one who is not either a WiNLP registree nor a hosting conference attendee should attend. Making the link public, in any way, opens you up to Zoom-bombing and other malicious activity by outside trolls.
  2. Please ensure your Zoom name matches your registration. This helps chairs or volunteers easily catch non-registered attendees.
  3. Ask us for help if you need it. Should you encounter disruptive behavior by an attendee, there are several steps you can take. Please keep in mind the following:   
    1. For panels, a WiNLP chair or volunteer will be present in the Zoom session. You may post a note in the Zoom chat requesting assistance. (If you feel uncomfortable with the chat message being seen by all participants, you may use the private message function.)  You can also call a WiNLP volunteer or chair by putting a note requesting assistance with a link to your Zoom room in the WiNLP Slack channel #incidents. If the host conference has a RocketChat, you can likewise call a conference volunteer by putting a note in the RocketChat #incidents channel. (Precise channel name per hosting conference to be determined and communicated prior to each event.) The volunteers, on arrival, will have co-host permissions in the Zoom room.
    2. If you are not comfortable taking these actions yourself, you can call on a WiNLP chair or conference volunteer to assist. 
    3. These are only for cases of disruptive behavior, and are not to be used, for example, merely in case of scientific disagreement.
    4. Any author or volunteer who finds it necessary to deploy one of these ‘silencing’ options should report that fact to the WiNLP chairs, immediately upon the conclusion of the session, via Slack or email (winlp-chairs@googlegroups.com). You can and should also report the incident to the hosting conference’s PCC co-chairs, but if you do not feel comfortable doing so directly, the WiNLP chairs will help funnel that reporting. 

Guidelines for WiNLP chairs & volunteers:

  1. A chair or volunteer must be assigned to monitor the WiNLP Slack #incidents channel throughout the session, for potential incident reports. 
  2. A chair or volunteer must be assigned to be in the WiNLP Zoom session to monitor directly for potential harassment incidents.

Steps for Active Moderation, for attendees & volunteers:

We encourage you to take the minimal action that manages the disruption.Possible actions to handle a disruptive participant: 

  1. Mute the participant. This can be done via the Participants pane. At this point, it is also a good idea to uncheck the option that allows participants to unmute themselves.
  2. Move the participant to the waiting room. If a participant continues to be disruptive despite being muted (e.g. via the chat), you can move them to the waiting room. This can be done even if the waiting room isn’t ‘enabled’, but it may be valuable to enable it at this point, in case the person tries to leave and reenter. Anyone with host or co-host privileges can send messages to the waiting room, but it is not possible to communicate with people in the waiting room via individual chat.
  3. Remove the participant. This prevents the participant from easily coming back into the room.