Social Media and Marketing Communications Policy#32
Conversation
Outlines governance for PHP's official social media presence
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| Official PHP accounts MUST NOT post: | ||
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| - Political statements unrelated to PHP |
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What qualifies as a political statement? This is a much tougher ask than it was 20 years ago. Celebrating a keynote speaker at a conference who happens to be trans is a political statement these days, because (especially in the US) there's an active political campaign to erase such people.
Welcoming someone to a team who is Palestinian and referring to them as "from Palestine" is political; half the world recognizes Palestine but not Israel, and the other half recognizes Israel but not Palestine.
For that matter, what about contributors from Iran? Is that even legal? That's a political question.
Would participating in or supporting a pro-free software campaign (like the "blackout" campaigns in the past) count as political? That's PHP related, as we are a Free Software project. (And Free Software is political; anyone claiming otherwise is just ignorant.)
I realize what you're trying to get to here, but it gets very squishy and complicated very fast.
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@Crell, I understand your concern, but the rhetorical move "this principle has edge cases, therefore it's unsuitable" can be applied to literally any rule.
This is the classic "no vehicles in the park" problem (https://novehiclesinthepark.com/). Any plain-English rule generates edge cases when you push on it.
Same thing here. "No political statements unrelated to PHP" is a principle. The overwhelming majority of posts are trivially fine: releases, RFC summaries, conference shoutouts, package highlights, language features. A small number might require judgment, and for those the community can, and in practice does, reach consensus case by case.
And empirically PHP accounts have operated for years without political content. So we're writing down what's already working.
That said, how would you suggest phrasing it? Is there wording that addresses your concerns while keeping the underlying norm?
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Prohibited ought to probably be something like "Overt political
statements". Drop related to PHP; if someone wants to consider the
political angle on a statement about a trans speaker or whatever other edge
case you like to mention, that's their lookout.
Cheers
Joe
…On Mon, 18 May 2026, 20:43 Roman Pronskiy, ***@***.***> wrote:
***@***.**** commented on this pull request.
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In social-media-and-marketing-communications.rst
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> +Social Media Team. These MAY include:
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+- Coordinated campaigns
+- Responses to industry narratives
+- Developer outreach initiatives
+- Cross-promotion with ecosystem projects
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+The Social Media Team MAY delegate marketing initiatives to the PHP Foundation,
+as described in `Delegation to the PHP Foundation`_.
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+Prohibited Content
+==================
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+Official PHP accounts MUST NOT post:
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+- Political statements unrelated to PHP
@Crell <https://github.com/Crell>, I understand your concern, but the
rhetorical move "this principle has edge cases, therefore it's unsuitable"
can be applied to literally any rule.
This is the classic "no vehicles in the park" problem (
https://novehiclesinthepark.com/ — worth a look). Any plain-English rule
generates edge cases when you push on it.
Same thing here. "No political statements unrelated to PHP" is a
principle, not an algorithm. The overwhelming majority of posts are
trivially fine: releases, RFC summaries, conference shoutouts, package
highlights, language features. A small number might require judgment, and
for those the community can, and in practice does, reach consensus case by
case.
And empirically PHP accounts have operated for years without political
content. So we're writing down what's already working, not inventing new
restrictions.
That said, how would you suggest phrasing it? Is there wording that
addresses your concerns while keeping the underlying norm?
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| Official PHP accounts MUST NOT post: | ||
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| - Political statements unrelated to PHP |
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| - Political statements unrelated to PHP | |
| - Overt political statements |
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Alternatively:
| - Political statements unrelated to PHP | |
| - Mention of race, ethnicity, caste, color, age, physical characteristics, neurodiversity, disability, sex or gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, language, philosophy or religion, national or social origin, socio-economic position, level of education, or other group or individual status. |
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@Crell, what do you think about these two options above?
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Would "Mention of ... race, ethnicity ... gender identity or expression, sexual orientation" mean the PHP account couldn't post about groups like Larabelles, PHP Women, Black Girls Code, LGBT Tech, and many others?
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"Overtly political" statements is better. The "mention of" version I would absolutely vote against, in part for the reason @ramsey mentions.
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@Crell, agree. As a non-native speaker, I'm not sure should it be "overt" or "overly"? Wdyt?
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Overtly means "publicly or openly". "Overly" would mean "too much."
I think Overtly is better here, though it's still not ideal. As noted, "political" takes in an extremely broad area, especially these days, so even just pointing to LGBT tech group would be taking a political stand against the current US government.
If we have to say something, I'd go much narrower: Disallow direct support for any particular candidate or political party. I think most would agree that's wildly off topic. But issues-based discussion, I don't think we can safely prohibit.
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I'd prefer to keep "Political statements unrelated to PHP". Even if "political" could be considered broad, that's probably a good thing to avoid posting about potentially controversial topics and alienating developers.
| Roles and Responsibilities | ||
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| PHP Infrastructure Team: Account Custody |
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This entire section should probably be a separate policy document about the "infrastructure team" and control of accounts.
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Agree. Also raised by @Crell in the mailing list. Currently I define it by reference to the existing Systems/Infrastructure.
| The Infrastructure Team's role is operational and technical. It does not decide | ||
| content. | ||
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| PHP Social Media Team: Content Authority |
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I think it would be useful to look at how other similar software projects have organized similar social media and advocacy teams. It might be worthwhile to speak with their teams and leaders about what works and what doesn't work.
| remains accountable for content posted under delegated authority. | ||
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| ******************** | ||
| Content Categories |
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I don't think content categories should be defined as part of this policy. I think the social media and marketing communications team should be empowered to develop its own policies. Obviously, this should be an open and transparent process, but I don't think it should require an RFC to change the team's policies.
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Moved to social-media/team-operations.rst
| #. Mark the original account as non-official on PHP.net. | ||
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| *************************************** | ||
| Adding and Removing Official Accounts |
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This is another section that should be part of the team's own policies and not require a PHP-project RFC to change.
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Moved to social-media/team-operations.rst
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@ramsey, thanks for the comments Ben, i'll get back to you. |
- Move content categories and the procedures to social-media/team-operations.rst. - Keep prohibited content in the policy as a project-level constraint. - Add an Operational Policies subsection. - Rework Amendments into an explicit list of no-RFC changes.
…nfra team definition - Add discretion and no-silent-abandonment principles - Announce team additions on internals with a comment window - Define the Infrastructure Team by reference
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I hoped to add anything useful but I read the entire thing and I think this is really really good. I have nothing to add, I'm sorry! |
7 participants
Based on the conversations https://externals.io/message/130719 and the feedback on the frist draft version of the Social Media RFC https://wiki.php.net/rfc/social-media-policy, I'd like to propose this new policy.