The Document Foundation Code of Conduct Committee Enforcement Procedures

This document summarizes the procedures The Document Foundation Code of Conduct Committee uses to enforce the Code of Conduct.

Summary of the processes

When the Committee receives a report of a possible Code of Conduct violation, it will:

1. Acknowledge the receipt of the report.

2. Evaluate conflicts of interest.

3. Call a meeting of committee members without conflict of interest

4. Evaluate the reported incident.

5. Propose a behavioral modification plan.

6. Propose consequences for the reported behavior.

7. Vote on behavioral modification plan and consequences for the reported person.

8. Contact online community administrators/moderators to approve the behavioral modification plan and consequences.

9. Follow up with the reported person.

10. Decide further responses.

11. Follow up with the reporter.

Acknowledge the report

Reporters should receive an emailed acknowledgment of the receipt of their report within 24 hours.

Dealing with Conflicts of Interest of Committee members

Examples of conflicts of interest include:

• the reporter or reported person is your manager

• you have a romantic or platonic relationship with either the reporter or the reported person. It’s fine to participate if they are an acquaintance

• the reporter or the reported person is your family member

• the reporter or the reported person is someone you work closely with. This could be someone on your team or someone who works on the same project as you

• the reporter or reported person is a maintainer who regularly reviews your contributions

Committee members do not need to state why they have a conflict of interest, only that one exists. Other committee members should not ask why the person has a conflict of interest.

Anyone who has a conflict of interest will remove themselves from the discussion of the incident and recluse themselves from voting on a response to the report.

Evaluating a report

Jurisdiction

• Is this a Code of Conduct violation? Is this behavior on our list of inappropriate behavior? Is it borderline inappropriate behavior? Does it violate our community norms?

• Did this occur in a space that is within our Code of Conduct’s scope? If the incident occurred outside the community, but a community member’s mental health or physical safety may be negatively impacted if no action is taken, the incident may be in scope. Private conversation in community spaces are also in scope.

Impact

• Did this incident occur in a private conversation or in a public space? Incidents that all community members can see will have more negative impact.

• Does this behavior negatively impact a marginalized group in our community? Is the reporter a person from a marginalized group in our community? How is the reporter being negatively impacted by the reported person’s behavior? Are members of the marginalized group likely to disengage with the community if no action was taken on this report?

• Does this incident involve a community leader? Community members often look up to community leaders to set the standard of acceptable behavior.

Risk

• Does this incident include sexual harassment?

• Does this pose a safety risk? Does the behavior put a person’s physical safety at risk? Will this incident severely negatively impact someone’s mental health?

• Is there a risk of this behavior being repeated? Does the reported person understand why their behavior was inappropriate? Is there an established pattern of behavior form past reports?

Reports which involve higher risk or higher impact may face more severe consequences than reports which involve lower risk or lower impact.

Propose a behavioral modification plan

The committee will determine a concrete behavioral modification plan that ensures the inappropriate behavior is not repeated. The work group will also discuss what actions may need to be taken if the reported person does not agree to the behavioral modification plan.

What follows are examples of possible behavioral modification plans for incidents that occur in online spaces under the scope of this Code of Conduct. This behavioral modification list is not inclusive and The Document Foundation Code of Conduct Committee reserves the right to take any action it deems necessary.

• Requiring that the reported person not use specific language

• Requiring that the reported person not join in on specific type of discussions

• Requiring that the reported person not send private messages to a community member

• Requiring that the reported person not join specific communication channels

• Removing the reported person from administrator or moderator rights to community infrastructure

• Removing a volunteer form their duties and responsibilities

• Removing a person form leadership of relevant organizations

• Removing a person from membership of relevant organizations

In case removing a person from a position is part of the plan, the committee advises the board to act to that extend, which is an advice that the board will follow in general.

Propose consequences

What follow are examples of possible consequences to an incident report. This consequences list is not inclusive and The Document Foundation Code of Conduct Committee reserves the right to take any action it deems necessary.

Possible private responses to an incident include:

• Nothing, if the behavior was determined to not be a Code of Conduct violation

• A verbal or emailed warning

• A final warning

• Temporarily removing the reported person from the online community

• Permanently removing the reported person form the online community

• Publishing an account of the incident

Committee vote

Some committee members may have a conflict of interest and may be excluded from discussions of a particular incident report. Member can either exclude themselves or the committee can vote on that.. All decisions of the committee, such as excluding members in case of a conflict, on the behavioral modification plans and consequences, will be determined by a two-thirds majority vote of The Document Foundation Code of Conduct Committee.

Administrators/moderators approval

Once the committee has approved the behavioral modification plans and consequences, they will communicate the recommended response to the administrators/moderators of the online community. The committee should not state who reported this incident. They should attempt to anonymize any identifying information from the report.

Administrators/moderators are required to respond back with whether they accept the recommended response to the report. If they disagree with the recommended response, they should provide a detailed response or additional context as to why they disagree. Administrators/moderators are encouraged to respond within a week.

In cases where the administrators/moderators disagree on the suggested resolution for a report, The Document Foundation Code of Conduct Committee should notify The Document Foundation Board of Directors.

Follow up with reported person

The Code of Conduct committee will work with online community administrators/moderators to draft a response to the reported person. The email should contain:

• A description of the person’s behavior in neutral language

• The negative impact of that behavior

• A concrete behavioral modification plan

• Any consequences of their behavior

The Code of Conduct committee should not state who reported this incident. They should attempt to anonymize any identifying information from the report. The reported person should be discouraged from contacting the reporter to discuss the report. If they wish to apologize to the reporter, the committee can accept the apology on behalf of the reporter.

Follow up with reporter

A person who makes a report should receive a follow up email stating what action was taken in response to the report. If the committee decided no response was needed, they should provide an email explaining why it was not a Code of Conduct violation. Reports that are not made in good faith (such as “reverse sexism” or “reverse racism”) may receive no response.

The follow up email should be sent no later than one week after the receipt of the report. If deliberation or follow up with the reported person takes longer than one week, the work group should send a status email to the reporter.

Documentation and Privacy Policies

Depending on how the Code of Conduct committee is set up, there may be different places where information about Code of Conduct reports may be accessible:

• Personal email of Code of Conduct committee members

• Archives of committee mailing lists

• Logs from committee online chats

• Shared online documents on Nextcloud

In all cases, documents and notes should only be available to committee members who do not have a conflict of interest for the report. This requires communities to choose documentation tools that will meet their needs to communicate in private.

Committee shared email address

Code of Conduct committees need to be able to be reached by one email address which is currently conduct@documentfoundation.org. In order to prevent potential conflicts of interest, it is recommended to not have a mailing list archive.

Each member of the committee should be reachable and their address should be displayed on the Code of Conduct Committee page.

Committee online discussion

A Code of Conduct committee may have an online, real-time discussion forum, TDF jitsi, Mattrix or IRC. If the online chat platform allows, it is recommended to set the committee channel to have past history not be available to new committee members who join the channel.

When a report comes in and a discussion needs to happen in an online space, care needs to be taken to avoid conflicts of interest. In the committee chat channel, state ‘We have a report that involves [REPORTED PERSON]’. Do not say who was the reporter or who were witnesses if the report was sent to an individual committee member. Ask which committee members do not have a conflict of interest. Add those committee members to a group discussion, separate from the committee channel. If a committee member does not respond, do not add them to the new group discussion. If a committee member finds they have a conflict of interest because of who reported the incident or who witnessed it, they should recuse themselves from the discussion.

Committee members should not use bots or IRC bouncers to log the group discussions. All documentation of discussions and decisions should be put in online, shared documentation on platforms under TDF’s direct control.

If no online real-time discussion forum is used, committee members without a conflict of interest will discuss the case on a separate email thread. If no committee member has a conflict of interest, and the committee email is an alias, the committee may reply to the alias to discuss the issues.

Shared Documentation

The Code of Conduct Committee should keep two types of shared documents:

• A spreadsheet with the status of open and closed cases

• A separate document for each report

Status spreadsheet

The spreadsheet with status of open and closed cases should have the following format:

Keep resolutions and notes vague enough that enforcement team members with a conflict of interest don’t know the details of the incident. Use gender neutral language when describing the reported person in the spreadsheet.

Report documentation

Each report should be assigned a code name, using an online random phrase generator. The code name should be used in the document’s title. Only committee members without a conflict of interest should have access to the report documentation.

Report document should include:

• A summary of a verbal report or the text of an emailed report. Use neutral, non judgmental words to describe the behavior. Where possible, separate out the behavior of the reported person and the impact on the reporter.

• A summary of committee discussions, including whether the report is in scope.

• Proposed behavioral modification plan

• Proposed consequences for the reported behavior.

• A summary of verbal discussions, or the test of email discussions with community moderators, administrators or event organizers about the proposed consequences and behavioral modification plan.

• A summary of verbal discussions or the text of email discussions with the reported person.

• The text that was sent to follow up with the reporter.

All discussion summaries should include dates that they took place.

Privacy concerns

There are some common privacy pitfalls to online tools. Make sure to always share the document with committee members who don’t have a conflict of interest, rather than turning link sharing on. This prevents people outside of the committee from accessing the documents.

Another common issue is that when a folder is shared with the whole committee, even if a person doesn’t have edit or view access to an individual report, they can still see the document’s title. This can give information away, such as the person who made the report. Some communities use initials in the report title instead. That can still reveal information, and it makes it hard to talk about report status in public spaces (such as an event). The committee may want to assign a code name to each report, and reference that name in the report title and status spreadsheet. You can use an online random phrase generator to create the code name.

When on-boarding new committee members, they should be provided with a list of names of people who have been reported in a Code of Conduct incident. The new committee member should state whether they have any conflicts of interest with reviewing documentation for those cases. If not, they will be given edit access to the report documents.

Composition of the Code of Conduct Committee

The Code of Conduct committee is composed by:

• Jona Azizaj

• Sophie Gautier

• Marina Latini

• Michael Meeks

• Gabriele Ponzo

Changes to Code of Conduct

When discussing a change to The Document Foundation Code of Conduct or enforcement policies, The Document Foundation Code of Conduct Committee will follow this decision-making process:

• Brainstorm options. Committee members should discuss any relevant context and brainstorm a set of possible options. It is important to provide constructive feedback without getting side-tracked from the main question. Brainstorming should be limited to 3-7 days maximum.

• Vote. Proposed changes to the Code of Conduct will be decided byt a two-thirds majority of all voting members of the Code of Conduct Committee. Committee members are listed on the Code of Conduct Committee page.

• Board Vote. Once a working draft is in place for the Code of Conduct and procedures, the Code of Conduct Committee shall provide The Document Foundation Board of Directors with a draft of the changes and when needed some background information. The Document Foundation Board of Directors will vote on the changes at a Board meeting.