Moderation policy

This document describes how moderation occurs across the collective. It describes how people can handle code of conduct violations. Furthermore it describes the actions any maintainer, and specifically moderators (maintainers of the collective moderation team), can make.

This document is developed by the unified collective moderation team and the unified collective core team.

Violations

A violation, in the scope of collective governance, is any post that violates the code of conduct. The collective moderation team decides what inappropriate behavior constitutes a violation.

A post includes activity that can be moderated, such as code, comments, commits, edits, issues, posts, or pull requests, in a project governed by the collective. Posts additionally include activity that cannot be moderated, such as emails or tweets, from members of the collective.

Moderation, in the scope of collective governance, includes actions such as editing, deleting, hiding, or locking one or more posts to address violations. Not all posts can be moderated.

These actions are not considered moderation if they do not address violations, such as minor edits to fix formatting or typos, hiding outdated posts, or locking old issues.

Persons should carefully consider the possible intent of the author of a violation. It may be that they made an error, are not familiar with the code of conduct, are unaware that something is inappropriate, or that cultural differences exist. In such cases, the author can be given an opportunity to correct the error they made. This does not excuse a violation, but sometimes making an author aware is better than enforcement.

Violations should be reported and can result in enforcement such as moderation, warning, blocking, and expulsion.

This policy does not restrict any individual blocking another individual from their personal GitHub account (or in another space, such as Twitter). A personal block is not considered enforcement of moderation.

Reporting

Anyone may report a violation. Members should report violations. Violations can be reported in the following ways:

In private, via the collective email address moderation@unifiedjs.com
In private, via email to one or more moderators
In public, via a new post in the same thread as the violation (mentioning @unifiedjs/moderators)

Reporting in private is appropriate when the reporter does not feel comfortable directly or publicly making the request. Reports sent to moderation@unifiedjs.com are forwarded to all maintainers of the collective moderation team.

Reports should contain as much information and context as possible, including the URL and a screenshot of the violation. Details may be modified to obscure obscene or offensive content. Quoting original content of a violation within a report is not a violation. However, discretion is advised when including such quotes in public reports.

Members must not discuss specific details of reports in any public space.

Violations are reported to track violations, their context, and the resulting enforcement, across the collective. Reports are also used to track continued violations across the collective.

Enforcement

Moderators may enforce moderation, warning, expulsion, and blocking.

If the violation is from a user (an individual that is not a member), any maintainer may enforce moderation and blocking.

Moderators may moderate any post, and maintainers may moderate a post from a user, by following (if possible) the moderation playbook.

For extreme violations, moderators may expel any member by following the expulsion playbook, and moderators may block any person, and maintainers may block a user, by following the blocking playbook.

Moderators must keep track of the violations (that are indeed offenses) of an offender. First and second offenses must result in following the warning playbook. A third offense, if offender is a member, must result in following the expulsion playbook. A third offense (or the fourth offense, if the offender is expelled) must result in following the blocking playbook.

Playbooks

Playbooks describe the steps an enactor must follow to enact enforcement of the code of conduct.

Moderation

The enactor of a moderation playbook is a maintainer. The offender is a person that authored a violation. The result of moderation is that a violation is no longer present.

Enactor ensures the violation is reported
If the offender is a member, the enactor should give the offender a reasonable opportunity to self-moderate the post. If the offender disagrees to self-moderate, the enactor can escalate to the collective moderation team, by following up on the report, while not continuing to enact moderation. Moderators can decide to continue enacting moderation
Enactor moderates the post, such as by editing, deleting, hiding, or locking
Enactor posts a notification within the original thread, mentioning the offender, that they are in violation of the code of conduct, what behavior was unacceptable, what changes were made to the post, and previously taken steps to resolve, to justify why moderation was warranted

Warning

The enactor of a warning playbook is a moderator (a maintainer of the collective moderation team). The offender is a person that authored a violation for the first or second time. The result of warning is that an offender is aware that their behavior is in violation of the code of conduct, that the code of conduct is enforced, and of future enforcements for continued violations.

Enactor posts a warning within the original thread, confirming the justification of why moderation was warranted, that this their first or second official warning, and how a third violation is enforced

Expulsion

The enactor of an expulsion playbook is a moderator (a maintainer of the collective moderation team). The offender is a member that authored an extreme or continued violation. The expulsion playbook is followed after (swift) moderation. The result of expulsion is that a member is excused from duty and removed from all teams.

Enactor ensures the violation is reported
Enactor coordinates with a maintainer of the collective core team to jointly and swiftly enact the offboarding playbook for all teams the offender is currently a member of, but instead of assigning a new role, removing them entirely
Enactor posts within the original thread, mentioning the offender, explaining what behavior was unacceptable, that this was the offender’s third violation or an extreme violation, and confirming that they are expelled from the collective

Expulsion poses an imminent risk to the collective as it could cause the offender to act in extreme bad-faith and misuse the permissions they were granted.

Blocking

The enactor of a blocking playbook is a moderator (a maintainer of the collective moderation team) and in some cases a maintainer. The offender is a person that authored an extreme violation, or a continued third (or fourth) violation. The result of blocking is that an offender is forcefully removed from the spaces governed by the collective.

Enactor ensures the violation is reported
Enactor coordinates with a maintainer of the collective core team to jointly block the offender in the spaces governed by the collective, such as GitHub and Twitter
Enactor posts within the original thread, mentioning the offender, explaining what behavior was unacceptable, that this was the offender’s third/fourth violation or an extreme violation, and confirming that they are blocked from the collective

GitHub provides an interface for blocking persons for 1, 3, 7, or 30 days, or indefinitely. This policy intentionally does not dictate whether blocking is temporary or indefinite, and leaves that up to moderators.

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