Community Guidelines
As of August 2021, an effort is being made to establish an approach to resolving community issues that rose above the level of game- or ruleset-challenges. This page is to document that process and provide a community platform for discussion of the outcome.
Statement of Purpose
This section aims to arrive at some mutually agreeable language regarding the purpose of the community resolution process. It is separated into elements to allow for the discussion of separate issues.
The BlogNomic (BN) community is dedicated to providing an enjoyable, tolerant, and harassment-free environment for everyone. Antisocial conduct should not be accepted in this community, including (but not limited to) intolerance of another person's gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
- This process has a slightly awkward tension, in that it should be appropriate to use for both interpersonal tension that can't be resolved by the participants (at the lowest extreme) and incidents of violence or harassment (at the greater extreme). Given the nature and size of this community, we probably don't need something heavy-duty, and least not every day, although we may end up being grateful that we have a process for serious cases if one emerges. Josh (talk) 09:44, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
This code of conduct applies to all BlogNomic spaces, including the blog, the slack channel, and the wiki, as well as any other spaces that BlogNomic hosts.
This document sets out the process for reporting and seeking redress for antisocial or harassing behaviour on BlogNomic. Its key principles are to be fair, objective and transparent, and to take the needs of the complainant, the community, and the subject of the complaint into account.
- The principle of transparent decision making is important but needs to be balanced against the needs of the participants, particularly - where appropriate - the need for anonymity. Josh (talk) 09:44, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
Approach for Resolutions
Some models to consider:
If you are being harassed by a member of the community, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the Anti-Abuse Team. If the person who is harassing you is on the team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.
This code of conduct applies to our spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of the community outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by community members, especially bloggers, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The abuse team reserves the right to exclude people from the community based on their past behavior, including behavior outside out spaces and behavior towards people who are not in the community.
In order to protect volunteers from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. The Anti-Abuse Team is not here to explain power differentials or other basic social justice concepts to you. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response.
We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Consequences Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the Anti-Abuse Team may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all Geek Feminism spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other GF members or the general public.
Speaking up form
Members and non members can speak up via a form available on {form}. The form makes it clear that the information provided will be directly and solely communicated to a site founder and asks the following from the person wishing to speak up:
Name and email address of the person speaking up Identity or description of the member who did harm What happened? It is reinforced with this last question that 'Our stance is that [the person speaking up] feelings are always valid. What might seem minor to [them] may be part of a larger pattern of behavior that has affected many members.
Members ad hoc committee An ad hoc committee of 6 members is called by the founder via the app general feed to address what happened. It is key that members:
- represent a diverse range of identities and experiences,
- are not related to any protagonists in what happened,
- respect at all time the privacy of the matters discussed.
Process The founder receives an email with the data shared by the member speaking up and contacts on the spot the person to gather as many information as possible and identify what would be a satisfying outcome for them, the member who did harm and our community. The members ad hoc committee is called in a video meeting to discuss the matter, information gathered by the founder and come up with a plan to be submitted to the person who's spoken up for a final go before it is implemented.
Once the plan implemented, the matter and the chosen community response are documented anonymously, shared with all protagonists, archived to support the treatment of matters and a communication is made community-wide.
Consequences
The resolution process should have a wide array of potential tools available to it, including
- A domain-wide ban, including removal from the game
- Enforced idling for a period of time
- Temporary or permanent exclusion from non-gamestate channels, such as the slack
- Do-not-contact orders
- Public statements of sanction
- Public statements of findings
