TREASURE is a 3-year Research and Innovation Action co-funded by the European Commission under the H2020 programme willing to offer new opportunities for testing innovative technologies to make the automotive sector more circular. The TREASURE consortium is coordinated by Politecnico di Milano and it is formed by a group of 15 organisations from 7 EU countries.
Draft TREASURE social contract
- TREASURE, the project you are helping by your participation, is designed to work as a catalyst. It will run until the summer of 2024, though its materials will remain available long after that.
- We cannot promise you it will solve any of the environmental issues raised by the automotive industry. It is meant for all of us to raise awareness, share with one another information and experiences about how we, as a community, cope with those issues.
- You are free to use materials from the TREASURE discussion to draw your own conclusions about the issues we discuss. You are free to report those conclusion anywhere, on the web and in real life, subject only to the law and the terms of the license, as long as you attribute those materials to their authors. See here (links to: CC BY 3.0 Deed | Attribution 3.0 Unported | Creative Commons ) for an explanation of your rights and duties when using these materials. We, the TREASURE research group, plan to do it too. We commit to publicly discussing our practices, to be transparent and to have the opportunity of discovering what could be done better, or differently.
- TREASURE is funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 framework program for research (grant number 101003587). We commit to procuring and managing resources adhering to the ethical standards we apply in all our activities
- We have designed TREASURE with you, its community, in mind. We commit to making every effort to maintain its space open for everyone of you to join us and use, or ethically misuse (for example by introducing topics that we did not think connect to the project, but you want to discuss with the community), so that the conversation space we maintain can evolve with the community itself. We are aware we cannot do it alone, and we try to facilitate your participation.
- We may enforce temporary restrictions to your access to the TREASURE space, under those circumstances in which your behavior represents a risk for others (e.g.: violent or otherwise threatening behaviors).
- We commit to continuing independent evaluation of our activities, and to turning any breach or near miss consequently identified into the awareness of a changing landscape that would guide an evolution of our operations and governance.
Consent funnel questions and feedback mechanism
The consent funnel asks of participants to answer the following questions, and provides them with the given options to answer. The questions are optimized for all research activity such as described on Edgeryders, not just for TREASURE.
Q1. This platform is used for research (learn more). Researchers are encouraged to treat what we post into it as a window into societal, economic, technological, and political trends and transformations that affect all of us. As you participate in these discussions, you might reveal where you stand with respect to important societal, economic and political issues. Knowing this, which of the following best describes your position? [single choice answers provided as follows:]
- I do not fear bad consequences when sharing with others my views and alignment on societal, economic, technological and political issues. Outcome: allow posting.
- I worry about the risks involved in sharing my views and alignment online, where others (such as the government or my employer) could access them. But I will participate in the conversation on this platform under my real name. Outcome: do not allow posting. Feedback: We want you to stay safe. If sharing information about your views and alignment is risky for you, you should consider not participating in public discussion. We would still like to hear from you. You could (1) participate under a pseudonym, or (2) register under a one-time email address to reduce the risks that the content you post will be linked to you. Or (3) you can contact our community managers securely and anonymously to share your content.
- I worry about the risks involved in sharing my views and alignment online, where others (such as the government or my employer) could access them. Therefore, I protect my identity to a degree I think is adequate, for example posting under a pseudonym, using a fake e-mail address, using a VPN etc… Outcome: allow posting.
- I worry about the risks involved in sharing my views and alignment online, where others (such as the government or my employer) could access them, and I don’t know how to deal with that risk when posting on this platform. Outcome: do not allow posting. Feedback: As for answer 2 above.
Q2. This platform is only loosely moderated, to avoid harassment and exploitative behaviour, but to allow unconstrained conversation. Knowing this, would you: [multiple choice answers provided as follows:]
- Share my credit card’s details at another participant’s request. Outcome: do not allow posting. Feedback: This is a public forum meant for conversation on general issues, and it is not secure to share personal information on. You should not share personal information that you do not want out in the open on it, such as your credit card detail, with anyone (including researchers and community managers and under any circumstance).
- Engage in a conversation about important issues in my country, and how it should be reflected by the government’s policies Outcome: allow posting.
Note: the questions are preceded by a sentence explaining why the consent funnel is there. This sentence also contains a link for participants to ask for help, resolve ambiguities and suggest improvements to the questions themselves.