Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct

1. Purpose

A primary goal of Kolibri and KA Lite is to be inclusive to the largest number of contributors, with the most varied and diverse backgrounds possible. As such, we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion (or lack thereof).

This code of conduct outlines our expectations for all those who participate in our community, as well as the consequences for unacceptable behavior.

We invite all those who participate in Kolibri or KA Lite to help us create safe and positive experiences for everyone.

2. Open Source Citizenship

A supplemental goal of this Code of Conduct is to increase open source citizenship by encouraging participants to recognize and strengthen the relationships between our actions and their effects on our community.

Communities mirror the societies in which they exist and positive action is essential to counteract the many forms of inequality and abuses of power that exist in society.

If you see someone who is making an extra effort to ensure our community is welcoming, friendly, and encourages all participants to contribute to the fullest extent, we also want to know!

3. Expected Behavior

The following behaviors are expected and requested of all community members:

  • Participate in an authentic and active way. In doing so, you contribute to the health and longevity of this community.

  • Exercise consideration and respect in your speech and actions.

  • Attempt collaboration before conflict.

  • Refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior and speech.

  • Be mindful of your surroundings and of your fellow participants. Alert community leaders if you notice a dangerous situation, someone in distress, or violations of this Code of Conduct, even if they seem inconsequential.

  • Remember that community event venues may be shared with members of the public; please be respectful to all patrons of these locations.

4. Unacceptable Behavior

The following behaviors are considered harassment and are unacceptable within our community:

  • Violence, threats of violence or violent language directed against another person.

  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.

  • Posting or displaying sexually explicit or violent material.

  • Posting or threatening to post other people’s personally identifying information (“doxing”).

  • Personal insults, particularly those related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability.

  • Inappropriate photography or recording.

  • Inappropriate physical contact. You should have someone’s consent before touching them.

  • Unwelcome sexual attention. This includes, sexualized comments or jokes; inappropriate touching, groping, and unwelcomed sexual advances.

  • Deliberate intimidation, stalking or following (online or in person).

  • Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.

  • Sustained disruption of community events, including talks and presentations.

5. Consequences of Unacceptable Behavior

Unacceptable behavior from any community member, including sponsors and those with decision-making authority, will not be tolerated.

Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to comply immediately.

If a community member engages in unacceptable behavior, the community organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including a temporary ban or permanent expulsion from the community without warning (and without refund in the case of a paid event).

6. Reporting Guidelines

If you are subject to or witness unacceptable behavior, or have any other concerns, please notify a community organizer as soon as possible. codeofconduct@learningequality.org.

Reporting Guidelines

Additionally, community organizers are available to help community members engage with local law enforcement or to otherwise help those experiencing unacceptable behavior feel safe. In the context of in-person events, organizers will also provide escorts as desired by the person experiencing distress.

7. Addressing Grievances

If you feel you have been falsely or unfairly accused of violating this Code of Conduct, you should notify Learning Equality with a concise description of your grievance. Your grievance will be handled in accordance with our existing governing policies.

Enforcement Manual

8. Scope

We expect all community participants (contributors, paid or otherwise; sponsors; and other guests) to abide by this Code of Conduct in all community venues–online and in-person–as well as in all one-on-one communications pertaining to community business.

This code of conduct and its related procedures also applies to unacceptable behavior occurring outside the scope of community activities when such behavior has the potential to adversely affect the safety and well-being of community members.

9. Contact info

The Code of Conduct team consists of:

Please write: codeofconduct@learningequality.org

10. License and attribution

This Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Portions of text derived from the Django Code of Conduct and the Geek Feminism Anti-Harassment Policy.

Retrieved on November 22, 2016 from http://citizencodeofconduct.org/

Reporting Guidelines

If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct we ask that you report it to the Learning Equality by emailing codeofconduct@learningequality.org. All reports will be kept confidential. In some cases we may determine that a public statement will need to be made. If that’s the case, the identities of all victims and reporters will remain confidential unless those individuals instruct us otherwise.

If you believe anyone is in physical danger, please notify appropriate law enforcement first. If you are unsure what law enforcement agency is appropriate, please include this in your report and we will attempt to notify them.

If you are unsure whether the incident is a violation, or whether the space where it happened is covered by this Code of Conduct, we encourage you to still report it. We would much rather have a few extra reports where we decide to take no action, rather than miss a report of an actual violation. We do not look negatively on you if we find the incident is not a violation. And knowing about incidents that are not violations, or happen outside our spaces, can also help us to improve the Code of Conduct or the processes surrounding it.

In your report please include:

  1. Your contact info (so we can get in touch with you if we need to follow up)

  2. Names (real, nicknames, or pseudonyms) of any individuals involved. If there were other witnesses besides you, please try to include them as well.

  3. When and where the incident occurred. Please be as specific as possible.

  4. Your account of what occurred. If there is a publicly available record (e.g. a mailing list archive or a public Slack logger) please include a link.

  5. Any extra context you believe existed for the incident.

  6. If you believe this incident is ongoing.

  7. Any other information you believe we should have.

What happens after you file a report?

You will receive an email from the Code of Conduct committee acknowledging receipt within 48 hours (we aim to be quicker than that).

The committee will immediately meet to review the incident and determine:

  1. What happened.

  2. Whether this event constitutes a code of conduct violation.

  3. Who the bad actor was.

  4. Whether this is an ongoing situation, or if there is a threat to anyone’s physical safety.

If this is determined to be an ongoing incident or a threat to physical safety, the committee’s immediate priority will be to protect everyone involved. This means we may delay an “official” response until we believe that the situation has ended and that everyone is physically safe.

Once the committee has a complete account of the events they will make a decision as to how to response. Responses may include:

  • Nothing (if we determine no violation occurred).

  • A private reprimand from the committee to the individual(s) involved.

  • A public reprimand.

  • An imposed vacation (i.e. asking someone to “take a week off” from a mailing list or Slack).

  • A permanent or temporary ban from some or all communication spaces (mailing lists, Slack, etc.)

  • A request for a public or private apology.

We’ll respond within one week to the person who filed the report with either a resolution or an explanation of why the situation is not yet resolved.

Once we’ve determined our final action, we’ll contact the original reporter to let them know what action (if any) we’ll be taking. We’ll take into account feedback from the reporter on the appropriateness of our response, but we don’t guarantee we’ll act on it.

Enforcement Manual

This is the enforcement manual followed by Learning Equality’s Code of Conduct Committee. It’s used when we respond to an issue to make sure we’re consistent and fair. It should be considered an internal document, but we’re publishing it publicly in the interests of transparency.

The Code of Conduct Committee

All responses to reports of conduct violations will be managed by a Code of Conduct Committee (“the committee”).

Learning Equality’s (LE’s) core team (“the core”) will establish this committee, comprised of at least three members.

How the committee will respond to reports

When a report is sent to the committee, a member will reply with a receipt to confirm that a process of reading your report has started.

See the reporting guidelines for details of what reports should contain. If a report doesn’t contain enough information, the committee will obtain all relevant data before acting. The committee is empowered to act on the LE’s behalf in contacting any individuals involved to get a more complete account of events.

The committee will then review the incident and determine, to the best of their ability:

  • what happened

  • whether this event constitutes a code of conduct violation

  • who, if anyone, was the bad actor

  • whether this is an ongoing situation, and there is a threat to anyone’s physical safety

This information will be collected in writing, and whenever possible the committee’s deliberations will be recorded and retained (i.e. Slack transcripts, email discussions, recorded voice conversations, etc).

The committee should aim to have a resolution agreed upon within one week. In the event that a resolution can’t be determined in that time, the committee will respond to the reporter(s) with an update and projected timeline for resolution.

Acting Unilaterally

If the act is ongoing or involves a threat to anyone’s safety (e.g. threats of violence), any committee member may act immediately (before reaching consensus) to end the situation. In ongoing situations, any member may at their discretion employ any of the tools available to the committee, including bans and blocks.

If the incident involves physical danger, any member of the committee may – and should – act unilaterally to protect safety. This can include contacting law enforcement (or other local personnel) and speaking on behalf of Learning Equality.

In situations where an individual committee member acts unilaterally, they must report their actions to the committee for review within 24 hours.

Resolutions

The committee must agree on a resolution by consensus. If the committee cannot reach consensus and deadlocks for over a week, the committee will turn the matter over to the board for resolution.

Possible responses may include:

  • Taking no further action (if we determine no violation occurred).

  • A private reprimand from the committee to the individual(s) involved. In this case, the committee will deliver that reprimand to the individual(s) over email, cc’ing the committee.

  • A public reprimand. In this case, the committee will deliver that reprimand in the same venue that the violation occurred (i.e. in Slack for an Slack violation; email for an email violation, etc.). The committee may choose to publish this message elsewhere for posterity.

  • An imposed vacation (i.e. asking someone to “take a week off” from a mailing list or Slack). The committee will communicate this “vacation” to the individual(s). They’ll be asked to take this vacation voluntarily, but if they don’t agree then a temporary ban may be imposed to enforce this vacation.

  • A permanent or temporary ban from some or all Learning Equality spaces (mailing lists, Slack, etc.). The committee will maintain records of all such bans so that they may be reviewed in the future, extended to new Learning Equality fora, or otherwise maintained.

  • A request for a public or private apology. The committee may, if it chooses, attach “strings” to this request: for example, the committee may ask a violator to apologize in order to retain his or her membership on a mailing list.

Once a resolution is agreed upon, but before it is enacted, the committee will contact the original reporter and any other affected parties and explain the proposed resolution. The committee will ask if this resolution is acceptable, and must note feedback for the record. However, the committee is not required to act on this feedback.

Finally, the committee will make a report for the core team.

The committee will never publicly discuss the issue; all public statements will be made by the core team.

Conflicts of Interest

In the event of any conflict of interest a committee member must immediately notify the other members, and recuse themselves if necessary.

Attribution

Reporting Guidelines and Enforcement Manual are both distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Reporting Guidelines and Enforcement Manual are both derived from the Django’ Reporting Guidelines and Django’ Enforcement Manual

Changes made to the original doc: Instead of involving a board as DSF has, the core team at Learning Equality is considered. Instead of IRC, we refer to Slack. The Code of Conduct Committee does not have a single chair but acts as a group to make conflicts of interest easier, and to avoid problems in case of absence of the chair person. Instead of interchanging “working group” and “committee” notation, we replaced all occurrences of “working group” and “group” with “committee”.