Mailing List Guidelines

Mailing list guidelines

The Kubernetes mailing list or Google Groups functions as the primary means of asynchronous communication for the project’s Special Interest Groups (SIG), Working Groups (WG), and large subprojects.

• Code of conduct
• Admins
  • Mailing list owners
• Moderation
  • Moderator expectations and guidelines
    • New user posting queue
    • Annual permissions review
• Mailing list creation
  • Prerequisites for creating a mailing list
  • Create the leads and members mailing lists
• Set up shared calendars and meeting with a mailing list
  • Prerequisites for sharing a calendar and meeting notes
  • Sharing the calendar with the Google Group
  • Sharing the meeting notes with the Google Group
• Archive a mailing list

Code of conduct

The Kubernetes project adheres to the community Code of Conduct throughout all platforms and includes all communication mediums.

Admins

Check the centralized list of administrators for contact information.

To connect: Reach out to one of the listed moderators, mailing list owners, the SIG Contributor Experience mailing list or the #sig-contribex slack channel.

Mailing list owners

Mailing list owners should include the Chairs for your SIG or WG, or the leads for your subproject, and the below contacts:

• contributors@kubernetes.io

Moderation

SIG, Working Group, and subproject mailing lists should have the mailing list owners as co-owners to the list so that administrative functions can be managed centrally across the project.

Moderation of the SIG/WG/subproject lists is up to that individual SIG/WG/subproject. The admins are there to help facilitate leadership changes, or various other administrative functions.

Users who are violating the Code of Conduct or other negative activities (like spamming) should be moderated.

• Lock the thread immediately so that people cannot reply to the thread.
• Delete the post.
• In some cases you might need to ban a user from the group, follow these instructions on how stop a member from being able to post to the group. For more technical help on how to use Google Groups, check the Groups Help page.

Moderator expectations and guidelines

Moderators should adhere to the general Kubernetes project moderation guidelines.

New user posting queue

New members who post to the mailing list will automatically have their messages put in the moderation queue. Moderators of the list will receive a notification of their message and should process them accordingly.

Annual permissions review

SIG, WG, and subproject Moderators must establish an annual review of their mailing lists to ensure their Moderator list is current and includes mailing list owners. Many of the SIG and WG mailing lists pre-date current communication policy and an annual review ensures ownership is up to date.

This review does not need to occur at a specific recurring date and can be combined with other actions such as SIG/WG/subproject leadership changes or sub-project additions.

Mailing list creation

All SIGs and WGs require two discussion groups: one for leads/chairs, and one for members. Subprojects that opt to have a mailing list only require one for members.

Prerequisites for creating a mailing list

• An email account that can create Google Groups and add members external to your organization to a Google Group mailing list. This might not be possible with your employer’s email account. You might need to use a personal email account.
• At least 3 mailing list owners (leads), in addition to contributors@kubernetes.io
• Familiarity with the moderation guidelines for the project and moderation queues. Chairs should be cognizant that a new group will require an initial time investment moderation-wise as the group establishes itself.

Create the leads and members mailing lists

Note: You will need follow these steps twice! Once for the leads mailing list, and again for the members mailing list.

1. Navigate to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!creategroup and fill out the Enter group info form as follows:

Click Next.

2. Fill out the the Choose privacy settings with these options:

Click Next.

3. Fill out the Add members form as follows:

Note: You can add new owners to a mailing list at any time in the People > Members screen.

Leave all other fields as-is. Click Next.

4. Once the group is created, navigate to your group in the Google Groups UI and go to Group settings to continue setting up permissions. Set the following settings:

Member Privacy

Posting policies

Email options

Member moderation

5. Click Save changes. Once your mailing list is created, it should also be added to the sigs.yaml file. For subprojects, it should be added like:

- name: Foo
  contact:
    mailing_list: [link to Google Group]

Set up shared calendars and meeting with a mailing list

Once you’ve set up your SIG/WG mailing list, you’ll need to:

• Share a calendar with meeting invites on it with the mailing list
• Share a meeting notes google doc with the mailing list

Prerequisites for sharing a calendar and meeting notes

• A member’s Google Group.
• A shared calendar.

  Note: Like with mailing lists, your organization’s permissions might not let you share calendars with the correct permissions. You might need to use a personal email address.

Sharing the calendar with the Google Group

You must share the meeting calendar with the following people:

• All leads (individually)
• The kubernetes-[sig-/wg-]foo-leads mailing list
• contributors@kubernetes.io
• The kubernetes-[sig-/wg-]foo (members) mailing list

1. In Google Calendar, click on the calendar’s … menu and select Settings and sharing.
2. In Access permissions, check Make available to public.
3. Under Share with specific people, do the following:

• For each lead, contributors@kubernetes.io, and kubernetes-sig-foo-leads@googlegroups.com:
  1. Add their email
  2. Give them the permission Make changes and manage sharing.
• For kubernetes-sig-foo@googlegroups.com, add them and give them the permission See all event details.

Note: You need to add the member’s mailing list as a guest to any meeting invites on the shared calendar for an invite to be sent to members of the group.

Sharing the meeting notes with the Google Group

• Create and share your “meeting notes” Google doc with the following permissions settings:
  • Can edit for members of the newly created Mailing List.
  • Can comment for dev@kubernetes.io
  • View only for anyone with the link. NOTE: Depending on employer organization policy, this may not be possible to configure. The document should be copied over to an account without the restriction and include the owner reference at the top of the document.

Archive a mailing list

To archive a mailing list, use the below procedure.

• Send a final notice to the mailing list that it is closed. This notice should include a brief description as to why and include links to any other relevant information.
• From the Google Groups management page goto Information -> General Information.
  • Configure the following settings:
    • Group description -> Set to the same message used for the final mailing list notice.
• From the Google Groups management page goto Information -> Content Control.
  • Configure the following settings:
    • Archive messages to the group -> checked
• From the Google Groups management page goto Permissions -> Basic permissions.
  • Configure the following settings:
    • View Topics:
      • Managers of the group
      • All members of the group
      • Anyone on the web
    • Post: -> uncheck all options
    • Join the group:
      • Only invited users

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