Licensed under CC0Short link: http://bit.ly/ld4CoC
Linked Data for Libraries, Linked Data for Production, and Linked Data for Libraries Labs are a series of grant-funded projects working broadly on implementing Linked Data in library workflows across functional areas and domains. The umbrella, open community effort is referred to as 'LD4'.
The LD4 Community is dedicated to providing a welcoming, open, and positive experience for all our participants, in our community spaces online, in-person, formal, and informal. The LD4 Community welcomes participation from people all over the world and these participants bring with them a wide variety of professional, personal and social backgrounds; whatever these may be, we discuss ideas and collaborate from a standpoint of mutual respect. We work together to promote a respectful, safe, and open community. In particular, we expect that LD4 Community members are:
Respectful. All contributions are welcome. When we disagree, we do this in a polite and professional manner, and we consult with others for help. When frustrated, we back away and look for good intentions. When we see a flaw in a contribution, we offer guidance on how to fix it.Collaborative. Collaboration is vital. We collaborate to reduce redundancy, to share knowledge, to improve our artifacts, and to perfect our processes. We strive to do our work as transparently as possible and we welcome new collaborators with enthusiasm. We also follow community guidelines for contributing.Grateful. We say thank you and let people know when they have done good work. It is a small thing, but it means a lot.Learning. When we are unsure, we ask for help. Questions will always be treated respectfully.Volunteers. We are respectful of each other’s time. The majority of the work done in this community is by volunteers. The depth of experience in the community is a great resource, but not an infinite one.
(Thank you to the Samvera and Islandora Community Code of Conducts, from which we paraphrased for the above wording).
To make this happen, we have here some expectations of all participants in the LD4 Community (virtual or in person). Included are:
- Social Rules to support a diverse and inclusive community;
- Anti-Harassment Policy (including a Conflict Resolution strategy) to maintain a safe community;
- Principles of Openness & Transparency to build an open community.
If you have comments, questions, or feedback, please open an issue on this repository, use the #helpers channel on the LD4 Slack (the sign-up for LD4 Slack Channel is at http://ld4-slack.herokuapp.com), or email the Public LD4 Google Group (email being created).
In order to create an inclusive, safe, and open work environment, we ask that all LD4 Community participants follow a set of rules designed by the Recurse Center, previously the Hacker School. In their own words, 'the goal [of the Recurse Center Social Rules] isn't to burden everyone with a bunch of annoying rules, or to give us a stick to bludgeon people with for "being bad." Rather, these rules are designed to help all of us build a pleasant, productive, and fearless community.'
As such, these four rules are a lightweight set of explicit social norms to curtail specific kinds of behavior found to be destructive to a supportive, productive, and fun learning/working environment. The four rules are listed here; you can read more about them at http://recurse.com/manual#sub-sec-social-rules.
"No feigning surprise."You shouldn't act surprised when someone says they don't know something. There is no benefit to feigning surprise, and regardless of intent, it makes someone feel bad, or worse, about admitting that they don't know something."No well-actually's."This is when someone says something almost, but not entirely correct, and another person responds with "well, actually," and gives a correction that doesn't help move the conversation forward. That's not to say we don't care about truth or precision, but we want people to be aware of how and when they correct people, and whether or not it contributes to the goals of the conversation."No back-seat driving."If you overhear other people working through a problem, don't just intermittently toss advice in without engaging."No subtle -isms". This last rule bans racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and other kinds of bias. Subtle -isms are small things that make others feel uncomfortable, and might be familiar as they're under the term "microagressions."
Tip of the hat here also to Mark Matienzo, who wrote the additional text explaining each of these rules in the context of a collaborative environment. We've paraphrased or, in places, extended Matienzo's work here.
The LD4 Community does not tolerate harassment in any form. Discriminatory language and imagery (including sexual) is not appropriate for any event venue, including talks, or any community channel such as the chatroom or mailing list.
In the event that someone’s conduct is causing offense or distress, the LD4 Community has a Anti-Harassment Policy and Protocol which can be applied to address the problem. The first step in dealing with any serious misconduct is to contact a helper available on the LD4 Slack #helpers channel or a community member you trust.
Harassment is understood as any behavior that threatens another person or group, or produces an unsafe environment. It includes offensive verbal comments or non-verbal expressions related to gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religious beliefs, sexual or discriminatory images in public spaces (including online), deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.
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Initial Incident
If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, and you feel comfortable speaking with the offender, please inform the offender that he/she/ze/they has affected you negatively. Oftentimes, the offending behavior is unintentional, and the accidental offender and offended will resolve the incident by having that initial discussion.
The LD4 Community recognizes that there are many reasons speaking directly to the offender may not be workable for you (including but not limited to unfamiliarity with the community, lack of spoons, and concerns for personal safety). If you don't feel comfortable speaking directly with the offender for any reason, skip straight to step 2.
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Escalation
If the offender insists that he/she/ze/they did not offend, if offender is actively harassing you, or if direct engagement is not a good option for you at this time, then you will need a third party to step in.
If you are at a conference or other event, find the event organizer or staff person. If you can't find the event organizer, there will be other staff available to help if the situation calls for immediate action.
If you are in the LD4 Slack, use the #helpers channel to find someone who can help. There is at least one helper monitoring the channel at most times, there is a pinned list of helpers and their emails on the channel (updated as needed), and invoking @channel will notify everyone in the #helpers channel of your message.
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Wider community response to Incident:
If incident results in corrective action, the community should support the decision made by the Help in Step 2 if they choose corrective action, like ending a talk early or banning from the communication channel, as well as support those harmed by the incident, either publicly or privately (whatever individuals are comfortable with).
If the Help in Step 2 run into issues implementing the CoC, then the Help should come to the LD4 Community with these issues and the community should revise the CoC as they see fit.
In real life, people will have opinions about how social rules and a Code of Conduct is enforced. People will argue that a particular decision was unfair, and others will say that it didn't go far enough. We can't stop people having opinions, but what we could do here is have constructive discussions that lead to something tangible (affirmation of decision, change in this document, modify decision, etc,).
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. If a participant engages in harassing behavior, organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender, expulsion from the LD4 Community communication channel(s), group, or event.
Specific sanctions may include but are not limited to:
- warning the harasser to cease their behavior and that any further reports will result in other sanctions;
- requiring that the harasser avoid any interaction with, and physical proximity to, their victim for the remainder of the event (if applicable);
- early termination of a talk that violates the policy;
- not publishing the video or slides of a talk that violated the policy;
- not allowing a speaker who violated the policy to give (further) talks at the event;
- immediately ending any event volunteer responsibilities and privileges the harasser holds (either indefinitely or for a certain time period);
- requiring that the harasser immediately leave the event, working group, or communication channel and not return;
- publishing an account of the harassment.
We expect participants to follow these rules at all LD4 Community venues, conference-related social events, community gatherings, and communication channels.
The LD4 Community is built upon a wide range of experts, users, collaborators, and experiences. As such, to continually expand and enhance the LD4 Community discussions, collaboration, and artifacts, we need to approach all work from an open-by-default stance. This means all artifacts, discussions, proposals, etc. should happen - where possible - in open channels, and all working artifacts and outputs are in spaces that anyone can find, read, request/propose a change on, or share.
Openness and transparency as a default for LD4 Community work is part of our attachment to collaboration and engagement. Openness includes but is not limited to:
- using public communication channels (or channels open to public requests to join, like the LD4 Slack channel) wherever possible for work discussion and collaboration;
- using public spaces for work, with mechanisms available for public comment, feedback, or pull requests (such as open GitHub repositories with issue tracking or LD4 Wiki Pages that are open to comments);
- publishing any LD4 Community artifacts in open formats and with licenses that support reuse;
- and putting transparency first with regards to LD4 Community direction and decisions.
For our community to be open and transparent but also effective and supportive, we realize that openness requires participants to follow the Social Rules and Anti-Harassment policy above.
- Code4Lib Anti-Harassment Policy
- Islandora Community Code of Conduct
- Hydra / Samvera Community Code of Conduct
- Example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Ada Initiative and other volunteers.