RBE10K/Facebook/Support
The RBE10K Project|RBE10K Project Facebook contributors support Facebook users are actually teams of people committed to assisting and supporting individually to those supporters who wish to contribute and are not familiar with the needs of the project or the tools for participation. The team is self supporting and self training, relying on each other for preparing and training new contributors who might want to participate in the team.
Suggested behaviour and attitude whilst providing support
Every participant of any of the teams is welcome to handle support in ways they see fit. The following is a list of practices suggested for promoting a spirit in accordance with the tenets of a RBEM, as well as RBE10K Project's chosen principles of voluntarism and horizontality. These are recommended for consideration, and are not fixed, anyone is welcome to make amendments, add new practices, or discuss (in the page's discussion thread on the top-left of this page) personal views or criticism about the encouraged practices.
- Support never tells a person what to do. Support invites, persuades, proposes, gives examples, makes suggestions. It is all in the language. For example, instead of saying "what you have to do is such and such", Support suggests "you may want to do such and such if you feel you'll have fun", or something along the lines.
- Support never makes the other person wrong. It doesn't matter how wacko a person's attitude might be, they're always entitled to their own preferences, values, principles, opinions, objectives, likes and dislikes. The challenge is finding something in their interests or likes that can be used for the project, according to what Support understands about the project needs. This is why understanding the project in it's entirety is highly convenient when contributing in this role.
- Support is always polite, encouraging, celebrating of the little things, caring, being interested, keen, supportive, helpful.
- Support always shows gratitude for every little contribution people make. People don't owe the project anything, so every contribution they make is exceptional. Even though these contributors aren't doing anything specifically for Support, and may seem like their contribution is tiny and poor quality, careless, dumb, childish, whatever negative opinion Support might personally have, Support always shows gratitude, as it is rewarding for the contributor and encourages them to want to do more, to better themselves, and to continue contributing.
- Support is always relentless, positive, hopeful and smart to pull stuff from people without being intrusive or annoying. Support is always inviting and persuasive, but nevertheless does not take no for an answer easily. For every door people shut, Support looks for alternative avenues to conquer people's interest.
- Support always show genuine interest in anything people have personal interest on, or about any skill they claim to have. Support create the interest out of nothing, expressly for each conversation in particular, even if the subject may not be of particular interest for the Support person. Support puts themselves in people's shoes, try seeing the world from their eyes. Support wonders at the magnificence of being someone else and having odd interests, without questioning them, sticking only to what is useful for the project, and gently but assertively dismissing everything that is unsuitable for the project.