RSC Papers
This document describes the Raku Code of Conduct enforcement procedures in general terms but is not intended to be binding or to create any rights; in all cases, ensuring that the Raku community is welcoming, inclusive, safe, and enjoyable for all (“-Ofun”) should take priority over strictly following the procedures described below.
This guide is not legal advice.
The CoC is enforced by the Raku Community Affairs Team. To be able to promptly respond to CoC incidents, the CAT should:
Exchange contact information, including contact methods that allow them to be reached in more urgent situations (e.g., phone numbers).
Ensure that each CAT member has the credentials needed to post announcements on behalf of the CAT when the group has decided on a response.
Ensure that, to the extent possible, each CAT member can access the credentials needed to ban someone from any Raku space and/or remove media from that space (probably via a password manager or other credential-management software).
For cases where it is not practicable for all CAT members to have the necessary credentials, the CAT should clearly document the process for banning someone/removing media (e.g., who to contact).
When the CAT receives a report of a CoC violation, any members who are the subject of the report or who have an actual or apparent conflict of interest shall immediately be recused and will neither participate in further actions nor access information about the report or the CAT’s response.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, the CAT will act on all reports within 72 hours of first receiving the report. Due to the importance of promptly responding to reports, the CAT may act via either synchronous meetings or via asynchronous discussion/voting (e.g., over email). The CAT should attempt to act by consensus but, when consensus cannot be reached, it may act by simple majority vote.
To enable prompt responses, CAT members should strive to be generally responsive or to communicate that they are unavailable to respond to a particular incident and are therefore abstaining. If a CAT member does not respond to the discussion of an incident within 48 hours, they can be treated as abstaining from any vote on that incident. If a vote occurs after some discussion, CAT members may set a reasonable deadline after which non-responses will be treated as abstentions from that vote.
In some cases (especially those involving in-person conduct), the CAT may investigate the incident, such as by having one or more members speak with the reporter, the alleged violator, or others present at the incident. In other cases (especially those where a violation was recorded, such as in an IRC log or recorded conference presentation), no such investigation will be necessary.
When considering alleged violations, the CAT should bear in mind that it lacks the resources of the formal legal system and that the actions it takes inflict far less harm than those taken by the legal system. Accordingly, the CAT should not attempt to determine whether a violation has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Instead, it should ask what action best promotes an -Ofun community based on the facts as they appear.
Similarly, the lower severity of the remedies available to the CAT mean that alleged violators need not receive any of the procedural protections criminal defendants are entitled to, such as the right to speak in their defense. Accordingly, it is especially important that the CAT remember that determining guilt and assigning punishment are not within its purview; the CAT’s only job is to make decisions that will make the Raku community as -Ofun as possible.
Additionally, the CAT should remember that the violator’s intent (which may be impossible to accurately determine) is generally not relevant; instead, the CAT should focus on the impact the incident had, and the impact that other, similar events could be expected to have.
If its investigations into an incident reveal other CoC violations that were not reported (e.g., an IRC argument in which multiple people engaged in personal attacks but only one was reported), the CAT should also evaluate those violations and take appropriate actions.
After reviewing the incident, the CAT should determine what action to take in response. When making this determination, the CAT should consult records of previous violations, both to see whether the violator has a history of poor behavior and to ensure that similar violations receive proportional responses.
Because CoC violations by members of the Raku Steering Council and others in positions of trust or authority within the Raku community are especially harmful, these individuals are appropriately held to an even higher standard than other community members. The CAT should consider this higher standard when deciding what action to take when someone in that group has violated the CoC.
The CAT can respond to reports with any of the following actions or with any other action it deems appropriate:
Time is sometimes of the essence when responding to a CoC incident. Accordingly, without prior input from other CAT members, any member of the CAT may impose a ban of up to 48 hours and/or temporarily remove or edit media that appears to violate the CoC. If a CAT member takes action in this way, the rest of the CAT should discuss the incident (including the possibility of an additional response) and participate in drafting the summary of the incident (see After Taking Action, below).
While the CAT can take appropriate actions other than those listed above, it should not take any of the following inappropriate actions:
The CAT should not require mediation, nor should it recommend mediation as an action it takes in response to a CoC violation. This is because violating the CoC is an action that harms the entire Raku community; reframing the CoC violation as an interpersonal conflict is inappropriate and suggests that the target of the violation is partly or equally responsible for the violation. This is incorrect: it is perfectly possible for two people to dislike each other without either violating the CoC.
However, it is equally the case that continued interpersonal conflict or animosity could lead to future CoC violations and, even if it doesn’t, makes the Raku community less -Ofun. Thus, if the CAT identifies an underlying interpersonal conflict or cross-cultural misunderstanding, it can be appropriate for the CAT to offer mediation after and separate from its resolution of the violation. If the CAT offers mediation, it should state clearly that mediation is not required and is not a response that the CAT is taking based on the CoC violation but rather is a service the CAT is offering to help resolve an underlying interpersonal or cross-cultural issue. Mediation should never be offered if the violation is extremely serious (e.g., harassment).
In all cases, the CAT will inform the reporter how the report was resolved and may inform others who witnessed the incident. When deciding whom to inform, the CAT should keep in mind that, if a bystander is not informed that action was taken based on a CoC violation, they may conclude that the Raku community permits behavior of the sort they witnessed.
The CAT will preserve records of the incident including, at a minimum, the initial report and a record of any action that was taken (including informal conversations with the violator). The CAT will ensure that these records are accessible to the CAT when addressing future reports but are not accessible to non-members.
At least annually, the CAT will publish a summary of all reported incidents and any actions taken in response to those incidents; it may publish reports (either of multiple actions or a single action) more frequently based on their number or severity. Except in cases where naming the violator is essential to the action (e.g., a public reprimand), the CAT will endeavor not to name violators and will not name reporters. However, the nature of an incident may make the identity of one or both parties obvious (for example, if the incident occurred in a publicly logged IRC channel).
When summarizing an incident, the CAT should avoid going into more detail than necessary to fairly inform the community of the incident. Additionally, the CAT should recall that the identity of any party may become known even if that party isn’t named in the summary, and the CAT should be especially careful to avoid descriptions of the event that risk creating misleading impressions of the violation’s severity. If factual disputes about the incident exist, the CAT should avoid creating the impression of greater certainty about the facts than exists. If a violator cannot be identified, then the incident summary should state what action the CAT would have taken if the violator had been identified.
The following incident description from the Conference in the Cloud 2020 SoC Transparency Report provides an example of the appropriate level of detail:
Slides for a talk were reported as containing inappropriate material. The CAT reviewed the recording of the talk and agreed that this was the case. The CAT talked with the speaker, explaining the issue and the consequences. The speaker was given a final warning.
Whenever the CAT publishes a summary of any incidents or otherwise communicates publicly, it shall establish an appropriate venue for discussion (e.g., a GitHub issue) and shall request that all discussion about the incidents be limited to that venue or sent directly to the CAT via email. It shall also state that discussion of the incident or debate about the appropriate response to it is off topic in all other Raku spaces and may itself be a CoC violation.
(The reason for this restriction is that defenses of violations can often do more to make a community non-inclusive than the initial violation itself, especially when those debates occur in spaces that are impractical for community members to avoid (such as #raku). It is essential that there be a space for the community to debate and criticize the CAT’s actions, but it’s also essential that this space be an opt-in one.)
If community discussion reveals significant confusion or misunderstanding about a factual issue, the CAT may issue one follow up communication about the incident. When doing so, it should keep the following rules (from How to Respond to Code of Conduct Reports) in mind:
Regardless of whether the CAT issues a follow-up communication, it must not edit the original communication in any way, except that it may optionally add a single clearly labeled edit linking to the follow-up communication.
For additional guidance (including guidance on handling more severe incidents), the CAT may refer to How to Respond to Code of Conduct Reports. If doing so would be helpful, the CAT may also consult with the Community Affairs Team or Legal Committee at Yet Another Society or with other outside advisors.