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We are PyDistrict

Washington, DC's premiere Python meetup.

Code of Conduct

The PyDistrict community is made up of members from around the globe with a diverse set of skills, personalities, and experiences. It is through these differences that our community experiences great successes and continued growth. When you're working with members of the community, this Code of Conduct will help steer your interactions and keep PyDistrict a positive, successful, and growing community.

Our Community

Members of the PyDistrict community are open, considerate, and respectful. Behaviours that reinforce these values contribute to a positive environment, and include:

Our Standards

Every member of our community has the right to have their identity respected. The PyDistrict community is dedicated to providing a positive experience for everyone, regardless of age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion (or lack thereof), education, or socio-economic status.

Inappropriate Behavior

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:

Community members asked to stop any inappropriate behavior are expected to comply immediately.

Weapons Policy

No weapons are allowed at PyDistrict events. Weapons include but are not limited to explosives (including fireworks), guns, and large knives such as those used for hunting or display, as well as any other item used for the purpose of causing injury or harm to others. Anyone seen in possession of one of these items will be asked to leave immediately, and will only be allowed to return without the weapon.

Consequences

If a participant engages in behavior that violates this code of conduct, the PyDistrict organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expulsion from the community and community events with no refund of event tickets. The full list of consequences for inappropriate behavior is listed in ENFORCEMENT PROCEDURES.

Thank you for helping make this a welcoming, friendly community for everyone.

Scope

PyDistrict Events

This Code of Conduct applies to the following people at events hosted by PyDistrict:

The Code of Conduct applies in official venue event spaces, including:

The Code of Conduct applies to interactions with official event accounts on social media spaces and phone applications, including:

Meetup organizers will enforce this code throughout the event. Each event is required to provide a Code of Conduct committee that receives, evaluates, and acts on incident reports. Each event is required to provide contact information for the committee to attendees.

PyDistrict Online Spaces

This Code of Conduct applies to the following online spaces:

This Code of Conduct applies to the following people in official PyDistrict online spaces:

Each online space listed above is required to provide the following information to the PyDistrict organiers:

Each online space listed above is encouraged to provide the following information to community members:

The PyDistrict organizers will receive and evaluate incident reports from the online communities listed above. The PyDistrict organizers will work with online community administrators/moderators to suggest actions to take in response to a report.

Contact Information

If you believe that someone is violating the code of conduct, or have any other concerns, please contact a PyDistrict organizer immediately. They can be reached by emailing: [pydistrict-conduct@googlegroups.com]

Procedure for Handling Incidents

REPORTER PROCEDURES

ENFORCEMENT PROCEDURES

License

This Code of Conduct is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Creative Commons License

Attributions

This Code of Conduct was forked from the PSF's policy, which in turn was forked from the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers, which is under a Creative Commons Zero license.

Additional new language and modifications were created by Sage Sharp of Otter Tech.

Language was incorporated from the following Codes of Conduct:

Community Member Procedure For Reporting Code of Conduct Incidents

If you believe someone is in physical danger, including from themselves, the most important thing is to get that person help. Please contact the appropriate crisis number, non-emergency number, or police number. If you are in a PyDistrict-sponsored conference or meeting, you can consult with a volunteer or staff member to help find an appropriate number.

If you believe someone has violated the Code of Conduct, we encourage you to report it. If you are unsure whether the incident is a violation, or whether the space where it happened is covered by the Code of Conduct, we encourage you to still report it. We are fine with receiving reports where we decide to take no action for the sake of creating a safer space.

Each PyDistrict-controlled meeting or online forum should have a designated moderator or Code of Conduct point of contact. Larger gatherings, like conferences, may have several people to contact. Specific information should be available for each PyDistrict-affiliated gathering, online or off.

If you find that you need to make a report, and you cannot find the appropriate Code of Conduct reporting contact, you may report to the Code of Conduct email alias below. PyDistrict will handle your report. If this happens, please also mention that you could not find specific reporting information so that we can improve.

General reporting procedure:

The best way to contact the Code of Conduct working group is by email at conduct@python.org. The members of the Code of Conduct Working Group who monitor this alias is listed at LINK.

Report Data

When you make a report via email or phone, please include:

Please provide as much information as possible.

Confidentiality

All reports will be kept confidential. When we discuss incidents with people who are reported, we will anonymize details as much as we can to protect reporter privacy.

However, some incidents happen in one-on-one interactions, and even if the details are anonymized, the reported person may be able to guess who made the report. If you have concerns about retaliation or your personal safety, please note those in your report. We still encourage you to report, so that we can support you while keeping our conference attendees safe. In some cases, we can compile several anonymized reports into a pattern of behavior, and take action on that pattern.

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.

Report Handling Procedure

When you make a report to an incident responder, they will gather information about the incident according to the Procedure For Incident Response).

After an incident responder takes the report, they will immediately consult with the Code of Conduct Working Group, unless there is a conflict of interest, in which case any non-interested parties will be contacted.

If the incident is ongoing and needs to be immediately addressed, any lead incident responder may take appropriate action to ensure the safety of everyone involved. If the situation requires it, this may take the form of a referral to an appropriate non-PyDistrict agency, including the local police. PyDistrict is not equipped to handle emergency situations.

If the incident is less urgent, the report will be discussed by the Code of Conduct work group will meet to determine an appropriate response. Examples of possible incident responses are outlined in the Procedure For Incident Response.

Before any large in-person gathering conference, staff will have a mandatory meeting where incident response procedures will be outlined. After the conference, all incident responders will attend a debriefing session with the lead responders to discuss all incidents and determine any necessary follow-up actions.

Following Up With Reporters

Within one week of an incident report, the a member of the Code of Conduct Working Group, or one of the lead responders, will follow up with the person who made the report and provided their contact information. The follow up may include:

In some cases, the lead responders may need to ask additional questions about the incident in order to identify the reported person.

Conflicts of Interest

If an incident responder has a conflict of interest for a report, they will recuse themselves from the discussion and handling of the incident. The incident documentation will not be available to them, and they will excuse themselves from any conversations involving handling the incident.

Should more than two of the lead incident responders need to recuse themselves, another organizer will step in as a temporary lead incident responder.

Enforcement Procedures

Summary of processes

When the organizers receive 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 organizers without a 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.

Conflict of interest policy

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 organizers 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

Impact

Risk

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 organizers will determine a concrete behavioral modification plan that ensures the inappropriate behavior is not repeated. The organizers 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 PyDistrict organizers reserve the right to take any action it deems necessary.

Propose consequences

What follows are examples of possible consequences to an incident report. This consequences list is not inclusive, and the PyDistrict organizers reserve the right to take any action it deems necessary.

Possible private responses to an incident include:

Organizer vote

Some organizers may have a conflict of interest and may be excluded from discussions of a particular incident report. Excluding those members, decisions on the behavioral modification plans and consequences will be determined by a two-thirds majority vote of the PyDistrict organizers.

Administrators/moderators approval

Once the organizers have approved the behavioral modification plans and consequences, they will communicate the recommended response to the administrators/moderators of the online community. The organizers 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.

Follow up with the reported person

The PyDistrict organizers will work with online community administrators/moderators to draft a response to the reported person. The email should contain:

The organizers 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 organizers can accept the apology on behalf of the reporter.

Decide further responses

If the reported person provides additional context, the PyDistrict organizers may need to re-evaluate the behavioral modification plan and consequences.

Follow up with the 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 organizers 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 organizers 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:

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 privacy needs.

Committee shared email address

Code of Conduct committees need to be able to be reached by one email address. It is recommended that the committee use an alias which forwards email to individual members.

Using a mailing list is not recommended. This is because mailing lists typically archive all emails. This means new committee members gain access to all past archives. They can deliberately or accidentally see past reports where they have a conflict of interest. In order to prevent potential conflicts of interest, it is recommended to not have a mailing list archive.

Committee online discussion

A Code of Conduct committee may have an online, real-time discussion forum, such as Slack, Zulip, 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 recluse 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.

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:

Status Spreadsheet

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

Safety risk? Risk of repeating? Status Code Name Date & Time Actions needed Resolution
Yes Yes Ongoing home shelf 07/07 8:30am and 07/08 12:30pm Team on the lookout for reported person Temporary ban for the remainder of the event, reevaluate attendance for next year
No Maybe Resolved stunned bulb 07/07 8:00pm - Verbal warning

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 documents should include:

All discussion summaries should include dates that they took place.

Privacy Concerns

There are some common privacy pitfalls to online tools like Google Docs. 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.

Changes to Code of Conduct

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

Current list of voting members