Signal policy
Who is part of it?
- All residents of the aforementioned address above are cordially invited
- HOWOGE-staff: We’d be happy for the janitor/facility manager to join our group. As for other staff, please kindly refrain from joining our group. If a staff member joins this group, please do not share numbers or names of individual’s within the HOWOGE , unless individual approval was given beforehand.
- As for other people we’d like to ask you not to join our group.
Topics
Generally, anything goes. However, please keep the topics in this group relevant to our communal life and everything that revolves around it.
- Commerce\
- Looking for/Offering
Flea-market type of messages are very welcome - if possible with a picture.
Exceptions:
- Please use the existing, separate, topical groups for these very topics.
- Commerce: We are a non-commercial group, please do not use this group for commercial purposes. This is also true for customers recruit customers/affiliate programs. Please use the “Kleinanzeigen” group to sell or give away personal belongings. For any other offerings with local (our Kiez) relevance, it is ok to mention it sparingly.
Basics
- Message frequency
We are happy about any message! Please keep in mind though, that you are sending a message in the main group to more than 100 people (almost 4 school classes) at the same time. Topics that are only relevant to a few people at the time, could be split into a separate group - these should be mentioned in the main channel so other interested members can join those particular groups. If you feel like, there are to many messages incoming at a time, you can always pause or deactivate the notifications for this channel.
- Time of day
Do not send messages at night (unless it is about urgent / infrastructural incidents).
- Manners
Before sending a message, please keep in mind how other could perceive it. Please avoid polarising/sensitive topics such as your ideology, politics, religion and everything that could lead to clashes inside of the group. Insults and Exclusion of any particular minority are not tolerated. No discussions on the main group, please.
- Youth protection
Please keep in mind, there might me minors in this group. Behave accordingly.
- Given name in your profile
Please update your Signal profile so that it provides (at least) your given name. If this puts you into a difficult situation, please contact the admins - we will then come up with an alternative.
- Address abbreviation
Whenever you write a message, that might be relevant about a certain place, please mention the street and house number, such as “R14” for “Rathausstraße 14”. You can also add this abbreviation to your Signal profile. (However this means all of your contacts in Signal will see it.)
- Criticism
Please keep in mind that HOWOGE, while it is fairly big and thus may face issues with bureaucracy, and while some things could certainly be done better, have our best interest in mind and (being a city owned organization) can not be compared with property sharks. So please do not blindly assume that ‘they want to harm us’ but rather that they might not be perfect yet. The glass is half-full, not half-empty.
- Pictures
All pictures in which persons are recognizable may only be published with the permission of these persons.
Conflict solving
- Main group
The administrators of the group have the possibility and the task, to remind members of the policies or our chat and if necessary also to remove them from the group if they do not refrain from heaving that way. In the case of mobbing or fights, please contact one of the group admins directly, so they can dissolve the fight. Do not try to solve the discussion in the group.
- Other Groups
Not all chats are moderated - so please use your common sense and try to make unmoderated groups successful.
Further Development and Growth
- Growth of the groups
If wanted, we could also open up the groups to surrounding neighbours. However, it might make sense to focus our groups onto the HOWOGE building as it might be more relevant to all of us.
- Further Groups
It could be useful to create groups for separate buildings (house numbers), topics (that not everyone is interested in, such as Pets, Parking spots) and languages. If you create such a group, feel free to mention it in the big group so interested people can join. Furthermore we can also add a link on this page so other members might find it.