Committee procedures

The audience for this document is the GNOME Code of Conduct committee. The goal of this document is to ensure that the committee consistently handles all reported Code of Conduct incidents.

Committee members

The GNOME Code of Conduct committee has the following members:

Temporary committee members

The GNOME Foundation executive director, president of the board, vice president, and other GNOME Foundation executives may serve as temporary Code of Conduct committee members. They will only serve as temporary members when less than three committee members do not have a conflict of interest for a report.

The executive with the most authority without a conflict of interest will be invited to become a temporary Code of Conduct committee member for this report. GNOME Foundation executives will be added as temporary committee members until there are at least three people to evaluate a report.

Temporary committee members will discuss and vote like any other committee member, as outlined in this document. Temporary committee members will only have access to documentation for that report. Documentation for other reports will remain restricted to the permanent GNOME Code of Conduct committee members.

Additional access to reports

Please note that GNOME sysadmins have administrative access to some private committee resources. If a report is received that involves a GNOME sysadmin, all committee report discussion and documentation should occur off GNOME servers. GNOME sysadmins making a report and people reporting GNOME sysadmins are encouraged to contact committee members individually via private email. If a GNOME sysadmin accesses private committee resources, the committee will contact the GNOME Foundation board.

Committee roles

The committee has one chairperson. The committee chair's duties involve:

The currently acting committee chair is Federico Mena Quintero.

The committee has one director. The director provides a communication link between the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors and the GNOME Code of Conduct committee. The board appoints one committee member to be the committee director.

The currently acting director is Federico Mena Quintero.

The chair may assign a committee member, or a committee member can nominate themselves, to do the following duties:

On-boarding new committee members

Should there be two or fewer committee members, additional committee members will be added.

New committee members will be appointed by the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors. The GNOME Code of Conduct committee may recommend new members to the board. The committee may provide feedback on potential candidates under discussion by the board. The GNOME Foundation Board of Directors will vote on all potential candidates.

All committee members will be re-confirmed by the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors once per year. The committee director will ask all committee members if they wish to continue serving on the committee. The committee director will then report back to the board which committee members wish to continue serving. The board will then vote to re-confirm those members.

Confirmed committee members will be given access to the following committee resources:

When a new committee member is on-boarded, they will be asked whether they have a conflict of interest with any open or closed reports. Go through the list of reported people verbally and see whether they have a conflict of interest. If not, grant them access to that report's documentation.

Off-boarding committee members

Committee members shall serve for a term of one year. After one year, the committee chair will check in with the committee member. If the member confirms they wish to continue serving, the committee liaison to the board will report this to the board. If the member fails to respond to the chair request communications, they will be removed from the committee and off-boarded.

If a committee member displays behavior that makes them unfit to continue serving on the Code of Conduct committee, the committee should discuss their removal. One person should email all committee members privately to discuss the person's conduct. If necessary, committee members will privately email the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors to recommend the member be removed. The board will then vote to remove the member, and notify the subset of the committee with the results of the vote.

If the board vote passes, the committee chair will email the person to let them know they have been removed from the committee. Their access to committee resources should be revoked before the email is sent.

When a committee member is resigning or being removed, they should have their access removed from the committee resources listed in the on-boarding section.

Ratifying Code of Conduct Changes

When discussing a change to the Code of Conduct or enforcement policies, the GNOME Code of Conduct committee will follow this decision-making process:

Reporting methods

Reports will come in from the email code-of-conduct-committee@gnome.org. This is a private mailing list with archives. It is only accessible to committee members and GNOME sysadmins.

Conflicts of Interest

When a new incident report is received, it's important to only involve the Code of Conduct committee members who don't have a conflict of interest. Committee members who have a conflict of interest should not have access to discussion of the report, documentation of the report, or information about who made the report.

Examples of conflicts of interest include:

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.

Talking to reporters

When taking a report:

Things to avoid when taking a report:

Talking to hesitant reporters

Sometimes a reporter may seem hesitant to meet with you or reluctant to provide details in a report. They may fear retribution. They may be worried you won’t act on the report. They may be worried that you won’t believe them. There are several different things you can do. Try them in order:

Dealing with immediate danger

If there is immediate danger at an event (e.g. occurrence or threat of physical violence), ask the event organizers to call venue security, a crisis line, or other non-emergency numbers. Only call law enforcement if the person at risk asks you to.

If there is an online incident that could threaten someone's physical safety or mental health, only involve law enforcement if the person at risk asks you to. This includes situations such as stalking or sharing personal information publicly in order to encourage harassment (doxxing).

Filing a report with law enforcement without the impacted person's consent may cause unnecessary distress. Filing a police report means the person will have to recount the events, which may further re-traumatize them. Law enforcement may not believe reports of sexual harassment or hate crimes. Police officers may harass the reporter. Police officers often are not trained to handle people who are experiencing mental health issues. Law enforcement often shows bias against people of color. Law enforcement may use the report as an excuse to deport immigrants or children of immigrants, whether that is the reporter or the reported person. In summary, involving law enforcement may put people in further danger.

If a reporter wishes to seek additional help, point them to crisis and non-emergency resources first. Then provide contact information for law enforcement, and say, "if you want any help reporting this incident, please let us know."

Note that there may be cases where the GNOME Foundation is legally obligated to contact law enforcement, even if the reporter did not request it.

Support for Reporters

If someone has been impacted by a Code of Conduct incident, it is important to ensure that they receive appropriate support. This is important not only to ensure their well being, but also to show that the project takes their welfare seriously. Even if an offer of support is not accepted, it still sends a powerful message.

Judging when to offer support and who requires it can be difficult. Remember that it isn't always obvious who might be experiencing distress or hurt. Therefore, as a rule, it is better to offer support than not.

Ways you may be able to offer support to people who have been impacted by an incident at an event:

Ways you may be able to offer support to people who have been impacted by an incident in an online space:

Documenting a report

FIXMESteps for documenting a report are listed on a private wiki page accessible to committee members.

Data Retention Policy

Each reported incident will be documented in order to retain records of:

Records must be retained to:

These records might also include communications such as copies of electronic correspondence between the committee and reporters, third party witnesses, or reported people.

Records must be securely kept on GNOME Foundation servers or under individual access control under Google Documents. Do not turn Google doc link sharing on. Only committee members should have access to the records. Information can be shared with the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors on a case by case, need to know basis. Personal copies of information should not be retained by anyone who has access to them.

If a GNOME online community wishes to abide by the GNOME Code of Conduct, or a GNOME event wishes to abide by the GNOME events Code of Conduct, the moderators or event planners must notify the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors. Such online communities or events may share information about Code of Conduct reports with the GNOME Code of Conduct committee. Appropriate safeguards should be in place to ensure that data can be legally transferred between online community moderators/event organizers and the GNOME Foundation.

Records should be retained for no more than six years after collection. After this time, they should be put beyond use. This means that they must:

Records may be retained for longer than six years if a sanction is active or record removal would negatively impact GNOME community safety.

Discussing a report

Meetings to discuss reports should be held as soon as possible. If the incident requires an immediate response, the meeting should be held within 24 hours of receiving the report. If the incident is not urgent, the meeting should be scheduled within one week of receiving the report.

Only members of the committee should be present at the meeting. At least half of the committee must be in attendance in order to determine consequences and a behavioral modification plan.

The current status of all reports should be documented. This includes documenting email and verbal conversations as they occur. A designated committee member will document committee meeting notes, the committee's report evaluation, and what behavioral modification plan and consequences are decided on. The committee member who follows up with the reported person will document their response.

Follow up meetings may need to be scheduled to review additional information, decide additional consequences based on the reported person's response, or to review an appeal.

Evaluating a report

Jurisdiction

Impact

Risk

Impact vs risk matrix is CC-BY-SA 3.0 Safety First PDX and Otter Tech

Potential consequences

What follows are examples of possible responses to an incident report. This list is not inclusive, and the GNOME Code of Conduct committee reserves the right to take any action it deems necessary. Possible responses to an incident include:

Talking to a reported person

When talking to a person who was reported, discuss the incident in terms of their behavior, its impact, and a behavioral modification plan.

Example:

If the reported person wants to apologize, tell them that you will relay their apology, but that they should not contact the reporter. Apologies often center the hurt feelings of the reported person and put the reporter in the awkward position of having to forgive the person. As an incident responder, you can choose to relay the reported person's apology, or you can choose not to if it is not genuine.

Sometimes a reported person does not understand why their behavior was inappropriate, or they will not agree to the behavioral modification plan. If this happens, there may be a risk of the inappropriate behavior repeating. You may need to respond with a more severe consequence than a warning, such as removal from an event or a temporary ban from an online community. Talk with your Code of Conduct committee before hand to determine what response to take if the person does not agree to the behavioral modification plan.

No Forced Apologies

Do not ask for the reported person to make an apology to the reporter, third party witnesses, or other people who were impacted by their behavior. Committee members have no responsibility to enforce friendship or reconciliation. The committee's goal is to stop the inappropriate behavior.

Forcing an apology can cause the impacted person additional distress or trauma. It forces further contact with the reported person, which can cause the impacted person to feel unsafe or impact their mental health. It also creates a social expectation that the impacted person will accept the apology, forgive the reported person, and return their social connection to its previous status.

If the reported person offers to apologize to the impacted people (especially in person), discourage it. Say, "I accept your apology on behalf of (the impacted people)."

If a committee member relays an apology to the impacted people, it should be brief and not require a response. "(The reported person) apologizes and agrees to have no further contact with you" is brief. "(The reported person) is very sorry that their attempts to woo you were not received in the manner that was intended and will try to do better next time, they're really really sorry and hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive them" is emphatically not.

If the reported person recognizes that their behavior was inappropriate, note that in the relayed apology. If the reported person does not recognize their behavior was inappropriate, do not relay the apology, as it is not genuine.

Tell the reported person they are not to further discuss the incident with the impacted people. If the reported person attempts to press an apology on someone who would clearly prefer to avoid them, or attempts to recruit others to relay messages on their behalf, this may constitute continued violation of the Code of Conduct.

Incident reports related to Foundation staff or contractors

If the Code of Conduct Committee receives an incident report about a Foundation staff member, or contractor, it should notify the then-current Executive Director of this. In the event the Executive Director position is vacant, the Board President should be notified instead, pursuant to Section 10.7 of the Foundation Bylaws.

Foundation management tasks for implementing sanctions

If a consequence requires technical tasks (e.g., setting up a ban, removing a user, etc.) the Code of Conduct Committee should inform the then-current Executive Director to instruct the system administrators to perform the work. In the event the Executive Director position is vacant, the approval should be sought by the Board President pursuant to Section 10.7 of the Foundation Bylaws.

In either case, the Executive Director or Board President should be contacted within 24 hours of the Code of Conduct Committee's decision.

Notifying affected third parties

Sometimes the consequence for a reported person implies that they cannot continue to perform the tasks that other people in the project expect from them — especially if someone has been suspended from the project.

In this case, the Code of Conduct Committee must notify affected third parties, including (but not limited to):

The Committee should notify any of these affected parties only of the consequence enacted, providing only the minimum information necessary to understand any restrictions on participation of the sanctioned individual.

Communicating decisions of the Code of Conduct Committee

To prevent retaliation against specific Code of Conduct Committee members, outgoing communication should be as follows:

Following up with reporters

Reporters should receive an acknowledgment of their report within 24 hours. Follow up on a report should be completed within 1 week.

When a report comes in via email:

After you have talked to the reported person, follow up with the reporter. You can talk to them in person or send them an email.

If the report was determined to be a Code of Conduct violation, follow up with the reporter to:

If the report was determined not to be a Code of Conduct violation, follow up with the reporter to:

If handling the report takes longer than 1 week, then the committee will need to send an update to the reporter:

The committee should send an email acknowledging emailed reports or reports via web form within 24 hours. Reporters should receive an email back with the committee’s decisions and actions taken within 1 week. If deliberations are taking longer than a week, you should email the reporter letting them know that the report will take more time to handle.

Public Responses

Some incidents require a public response after the incident in order to protect the GNOME community. Reasons that you might decide to communicate an incident or enforcement decision with the community include:

Be prepared and willing to distance your community from actions of participants that reflect badly on the GNOME community, and to defend your action or inaction in response.

Try to respond quickly to incidents. A late response looks a lot like no response at all and can harm the GNOME community's reputation. Use a simple general statement about the kind of behavior involved.

For example: "$COMMUNITY does not condone $BEHAVIOR. $BEHAVIOR violates the GNOME Code of Conduct. We take harassment seriously and respond to reports of it quickly and firmly."

If the incident has been dealt with at the event, it may be appropriate to make a short announcement at the next plenary, something like: "$thing happened. This was a violation of our policy. We apologize for this. We have taken $action. This is a good time for all attendees to review our policy at $location. If anyone would like to discuss this further they can $contact_us_somehow."

Transparency reports

Once every three months, the GNOME Code of Conduct committee will provide a public transparency report about the resolved and ongoing reports it has handled. The committee may decide to delay a transparency report if the timing of releasing a transparency report would jeopardize the privacy of the reporter, the reported person, or third-party witnesses.

The transparency reports will remove any information about the reporter and the reported person. If there is no way to anonymize the report without revealing the identity of the reporter or the reported person, the transparency report will simply note that a report was made. If no reports have been made in the specified time period, the transparency report will state that.

Transparency reports will include:

Examples of transparency reports include:

Employer Reports

Please consult with the GNOME Foundation board and/or GNOME lawyers before making a report to someone's employer. If approved, it may be appropriate to provide a short report of someone's conduct to their employer. This may be appropriate if someone is working in an official employee capacity.

An incident may be reported to an employer if the incident occurred while the reported person was:

License

The GNOME Code of Conduct committee procedures guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported License

Creative Commons License

Attribution

The GNOME Code of Conduct committee procedures was forked from the Code of Conduct template, which was created by Otter Tech and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Additional language and graphics were incorporated and modified from the following resources: