figure out consent with third parties

[chadwhitacre]

We have good habits around getting consent from users before cross-posting publicly on GitHub. As we interface with journalists, conference organizers, potential vendors or funders, sales prospects, etc.—third parties that Gratipay wants to interact with—we need to develop good habits of consent in those conversations as well. One of the people I've interacted with in the wake of #384 flagged this as an issue.

What are the similarities and differences between the "user" and "third party" case? What's the best way to approach consent with third parties?

[chadwhitacre]

Similarities:

• We need affirmative consent in both cases before cross-posting non-anonymized private conversations to GitHub (or other public fora). :-)

Differences:

• Users are in a subordinate power relationship to us, whereas third parties are roughly equal.
• Private user interaction happens almost entirely in Freshdesk, which is linkable and permissionable, whereas private third-party interaction can happen in Freshdesk (especially on [email protected]), private email (e.g., [email protected]), over the phone/skype, or in person.
• Action items resulting from user conversations many times don't require special decisions from Gratipay as a whole (it's more going through the motions of a TransferWise payout or whatever—something we've already decided to do, this is just an instance), but third-party interactions much more often touch on decisions that Gratipay wants to make together in public as part of our open company nature.

[chadwhitacre]

Our requirement to share conversations publicly adds friction to our interactions with third parties. Especially when first reaching out to or being introduced to somebody, adding even more friction when we have no relationship yet is undesirable. How do we strike the right balance? How about language like this?

Dear Alice,

Lorem!

Ipsum?

Lastly, I'll need to share our conversation publicly with the Gratipay community as part of how we operate. Would you prefer that I only summarize our conversation, or do I have your permission to cross-post verbatim?

chad

[chadwhitacre]

Probably also a good idea to get consent after in-person conversations. "I'm going to need to summarize this conversation for the Gratipay community. Do you want me to run that by you first or just send you the GitHub link after I post it?"

[chadwhitacre]

Here's an example usage: #72 (comment).

[chadwhitacre]

Another example: #456 (comment). I'm pretty well into this habit by now. Closing! :)

[chadwhitacre]

Oops! Last thing is to codify it in a howto on Inside Gratipay ...