Carbon Language community transparency report through 2023-12-31

[CelineausBerlin]

The Carbon community works to be welcoming and kind among itself and to others,
with a deep commitment to psychological safety, and we want to ensure that
doesn’t change as we grow and evolve. To that end, we have a few ground rules
that we ask all community members to adhere to:

• be welcoming,
• be friendly and patient,
• be considerate,
• be kind,
• be careful in the words that we choose,
• when we disagree, try to understand why, and
• recognize when progress has stopped, and take a step back.

The following summary is intended to help the community understand what kinds of
Code of Conduct incidents were brought to our attention lately, and how we
dealt with them.

Publishing such transparency reports on a regular basis is helping us track progress
and hold ourselves accountable to high standards of community culture.

Summary

It’s been another quiet quarter leading up to the end of the year 2023 in terms of
moderation. We now have over 4,900 people signed up on our Discord server and
nearly 140 contributors on GitHub.

There are currently 11 people in our moderation and conduct team members,
contributing from 3 different continents, after 2 mods left at the end of 2023.

The Code of Conduct team is getting the support and guidance of our community lead,
who is a professional inclusion specialist.

We also get help from our AutoMod bots, which are automatically catching the use
of some harmful language and spam.
Last quarter, we modified a bot, so messages containing some commonly misused
gendered language would be blocked automatically instead of only flagged, while our
bot would deliver an updated, more helpful educational message in the process.
6 messages were automatically blocked by our AutoMod bots, and 6 other conduct
related incidents were documented in that same period.
There has also been 1 escalation to the conduct team, as well as 1 self report,
concerning the use of harmful language, from within our team.

Please note that some incidents may have escaped our attention. Please help us
keep our spaces welcoming and fostering a spirit of collaboration, and report
any situation that may require our intervention:
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/trunk/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Our interventions from 2023-10-01 through 2023-12-31

The moderation team is running biweekly meetups and an internal book club to
expand their knowledge.
In Q4 2023, the book club focussed on how moral stances and political views are
developed, and how differences in morality and ideology profiles may explain
persisting conflicts and debates.

These are the conduct incidents that were brought to our attention in the last quarter:

• "Be welcoming. We strive to be a community that welcomes and supports
  people of all backgrounds and identities. This includes, but is not limited to,
  members of any race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, color, immigration
  status, social and economic class, educational level, sex, sexual orientation,
  gender identity and expression, physical appearance, age, size, family status,
  relationship status, political belief, religion or lack thereof, and mental and
  physical ability."
  Carbon community Code of Conduct, version from 2023-12-31

  The Carbon community has been addressed in the default masculine on Discord
  7+ times, resulting in messages being automatically blocked 6 times.
  2 users modified their messages as a consequence. 1 profile was deleted by the
  user after the block.

• “Be kind. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is
  no excuse for poor behavior and hurtful words. We might all experience some
  frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a
  personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel
  threatened is not a productive one. Members of our community should be
  kind when dealing with other members as well as with people outside the
  Carbon community.”
  Carbon community Code of Conduct, version from 2023-12-31

  1 user was banned after starting posting destructive comments, arguing about
  our community rules.

• “Recognize when progress has stopped, and take a step back.
  Regardless of whether you're trying to resolve a disagreement or anything else,
  think about whether you're making progress. Sometimes messaging doesn't
  give time to think about a situation fully, and repeating positions can make
  people defensive. Step back for a few minutes or hours to think through the
  issue before responding again. Consider pulling in another community member
  to give a fresh perspective. Maybe meet over VC instead. Switching approaches
  can help resume progress.”
  Carbon community Code of Conduct, version from 2023-12-31

  2 comments on GitHub posted by a single user were deemed off-topic and
  hid. The moderation team helped the user find more adequate ways to contribute
  in both situations.

• Other interventions

  In the previous quarter, there was a report to the conduct team about people
  sharing content created by a person who was banned for serious code of conduct
  violations. The conduct team decided to create a bot that would catch and block
  links to content from that user. This was implemented in Q4 2023.
  Also, the conduct team was approached about a potentially triggering user alias.
  The user was not active at the time of the review, and the conduct team did not
  intervene for the time being.

Closing observations

The intensity and type of our moderation work has been very similar in Q4 2023
than in Q3, including AutoMod bot activity.
The team has also collected some thoughts around the current state of our
moderation approach, so we can make adjustments in the future.
We’ll keep watching and providing support when needed, and are hoping for
more contributions while keeping the atmosphere friendly and kind.

Thank you very much for your contributions, good spirits and see you around!

The Carbon Code of Conduct team, 2024-01-18