[Incubation] - Ratifying a Code of Conduct and Granting the Moderation Workstream Authority to Enforce Its Provisions

Proposal Discussion
1

Summary

The intent of this proposal is to define and formally recognize a Code of Conduct that describes a shared set of expectations for the nature of the interaction between all DAO participants. In addition, this proposal also introduces a set of enforcement guidelines used to address violations of the Code of Conduct and delegates to the Moderation Workstream authority to enforce the Code of Conduct as defined.

Abstract

The success of the ShapeShift DAO is directly dependent on the ability of its members to collaborate effectively via online communication channels. To the aim of maximizing productivity at the DAO, it is reasonable to expect that the interactions between community members are of consistently high quality, but what exactly does “high-quality” mean in this context, and who, if anyone at the DAO, has the authority to curate our discussions? Furthermore, what actions may that trusted party take in situations where some violation of the understood standard of interaction is believed to have occurred? Without clear definitions for the above proposed and agreed upon by the community, no such action can definitely be taken, and concerns about potential detriments to organizational productivity as a result of unclearly defined community expectations are reasonable. To address these concerns, this proposal is introduced with the aim of establishing a formally-defined Code of Conduct, a set of enforcement guidelines to fairly address violations of the Code of Conduct, and formally delegating authority to enforce the Code of Conduct to the Moderation Workstream.

Motivation

There currently exists some ambiguity about the role of the Moderation Workstream in resolving conflicts between DAO participants and the actions that the Moderation Workstream may take during the resolution process. SCP-39 established the Moderation Workstream and provided a definition of its mission and success metrics, but is somewhat ambiguous about its intended role in addressing conflicts between community members and does not clearly define a process for doing so. A Forum Code of Conduct was posted previously but has not been formally adopted by the community through governance. Reasonably, DAO participants cannot at the current time be entirely certain about what constitutes a violation of the Code of Conduct, whether the current Code of Conduct may be considered as a binding agreement amongst DAO participants, and whether or not the Moderation Workstream has the authority to enforce the provisions of the Code of Conduct as written.

Specification

The updated Code of Conduct is defined as follows:

Our Pledge

We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

Our Standards

  • Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our community include:

    Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people

  • Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
  • Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
  • Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
  • Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community
  • Examples of unacceptable behavior include:

    Sexual harassment

  • Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
  • Public or private harassment
  • Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
  • Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

Enforcement Responsibilities

Moderators are responsible for clarifying and enforcing our standards of acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any behavior that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful. Moderators have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate. ## Scope This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event.

Enforcement

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported to the Moderation Workstream responsible for enforcement at giantkin@giantkin.com, Discord - Tag Modsquad, Telegram - Giantkin or via the Anonymous Feedback Submission Form. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated fairly. The Moderation Workstream has the authority to use any tools available to them to enforce the Code of Conduct. If it is ever unclear whether or not a community member has violated the code or what the appropriate enforcement steps should be, the Moderation Workstream is welcome to hold a vote or discussion with other community members to help inform their decision. Ultimately the community of FOX Token holders has final say, and any decision made by the Moderation Workstream, as well as changes to this code or enforcement process, can be changed via governance. All Moderators are obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.

Enforcement Guidelines

Moderators will follow these Community Impact Guidelines in determining the consequences for any action they deem in violation of this Code of Conduct: ALL Enforcements are on a case-by-case basis and at the sole discretion of the Moderation Workstream.

1.) Correction

Flagged items can be hidden/deleted until review.

2.) Warning

Community Impact: A violation through a single incident or series of actions.

Consequence: A warning with consequences for continued behavior. Optionally, moderation may require that the community member to whom a warning was issued cease interaction with the other community member(s) involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, for a specified period of time. This includes avoiding interactions in community spaces as well as external channels like social media. Violating these terms may lead to a temporary or permanent ban. ** the intent of a warning is to inform the community member that he/she has engaged in repeated violations of the code of conduct, and subsequent violations may result at any time in either a temporary or permanent ban, depending on the severity of the violation.

3.) Temporary Ban (as possible)

Community Impact: A serious violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior.

Consequence: A temporary ban from any sort of interaction or public communication with the community for a specified period of time. No public or private interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, is allowed during this period. Violating these terms may lead to a permanent ban.

4.) Permanent Ban

Community Impact: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals.

Consequence: A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the community.

Appeal Process

Appealing a ban or asking for a review of moderation actions can be done by contacting [giantkin(at)giantkin.com], Discord - Tag Modsquad, Telegram - Giantkin or via the https://bit.ly/QuestionsAndFeedback Form Forum - Giantkin Alternatively, any decision made by the Moderation Workstream can be appealed via governance This Code of Conduct is adapted from the [Contributor Covenant][homepage], version 2.1, available at [Contributor Covenant:][v2.1]. Community Impact Guidelines were inspired by [Mozilla’s code of conduct enforcement ladder][Mozilla CoC]. For answers to common questions about this code of conduct, see the FAQ at [Contributor Covenant: Frequently Asked Questions about Contributor Covenant][FAQ]. Translations are available at [Contributor Covenant: Contributor Covenant Translations][translations]. [homepage]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org [v2.1]: Contributor Covenant: [Mozilla CoC]: GitHub - mozilla/inclusion: Our repository for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work at Mozilla [FAQ]: Contributor Covenant: Frequently Asked Questions about Contributor Covenant [translations]: Contributor Covenant: Contributor Covenant Translations

Benefits

Ratifying a code of conduct will provide an objective set of standards that may be used to evaluate the appropriateness of discourse at the DAO. Publishing a document that can be referenced by all which explains in clear language the set of mutual expectations between community members allows all DAO participants to properly orient themselves prior to interacting with the community and for conflicts that may arise between community members to be formally and fairly adjudicated. With the terms defined in the Code of Conduct requiring buy-in from the community through governance, it can reasonably be expected that mutual adherence to the defined terms will ensure that the portion of experience at the DAO related to interaction with other community members will be of consistently high quality. The enforcement policy defined above contains a multi-stage process for addressing violations of the Code of Conduct, which if properly interpreted, ensures that content or DAO participants are only removed in cases where repeated violations have occurred and fair warning has been given by the Moderation Workstream ahead of time.

Drawbacks

The Code of Conduct defined above depends fundamentally on a shared understanding of subjective terms such as “conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate” or “unacceptable behavior.” It is stated as part of this proposal that the responsibility to enforce the Code of Conduct is delegated exclusively to the Moderation Workstream. It is therefore critical that the DAO be able to trust the judgment of a small number of individuals granted authority to enforce the Code above, and that enforcement of the Code of Conduct is carried out appropriately and equally. On the one hand, should the Moderation Workstream be insufficiently attentive to violations of the Code of Conduct, the social/professional environment at the DAO may degrade and as a result become unattractive to both current and future contributors. On the other hand, should the Moderation Workstream be overly aggressive in its application of the enforcement guidelines outlined above, should its understanding of the subjective terms defined in the Code of Conduct depart significantly from that held by the DAO participants in majority, or should it fail to apply the enforcement guidelines to all DAO members fairly and equally, then the DAO incurs a risk of creating an environment that is intolerant to strong differences in opinion, centralizing influence on the governance process, and undermining the power of collective decision-making through free and open public discourse. This is particularly relevant when considering the expressions of dissenting opinions about ideas or individuals at the DAO, which will necessarily be negative in nature.

2

Did all workstream leaders get involved in the creation of this proposal?

3

Thank you for posting this .

I am generally in support of this moving forward to a vote as written and think it is important for the DAO and community.

My only suggestion is to make it a little more clear what a “ban” constitutes when it happens, I would assume it specifically means being banned from any DAO communications platforms (specifically discord, the forum, and eventually metaforo).

4

I think clarification would be helpful as well.

5

, the Code of Conduct in the “Specification” section was drafted by who enlisted the help of other workstream leaders for review and editing. The other sections of the proposal were written by me.

7

Thanks for the help! I just wanted to make sure that all leaders had input.

8

Thanks for getting this posted and thanks to and the mod squad for keeping our community healthy and a place other’s are attracted to.

Only suggestion I have is to make this more explicit

Consequence: A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the community.

Could read something like

Consequence: A permanent ban from any interaction within the community through any medium that the DAO has control over. This includes all DAO owned communication channels such as forums, chat platforms, and social media. This list is not meant to be exhaustive and could grow as the DAO grows.

Either way, I am in full support of this proposal in its current form.

Thanks again!

9

ah, i was thinking the original would cover more, but your wordage does sound good.

10

After the points raised during the Weekly Governance call, and once again without any relation to the current Moderation WS which I think is doing an impeccable job, in my opinion it would be a good idea to restrict any moderation action towards an appeal made to their moderation decisions through governance.

Meaning that incubation posts for this specific purpose only will not be subject to moderation (outside of completely outrageous/spam posts/not relating to an actual ban).

And in the spirit of transparency, I also think that making public all the moderation actions in this context, in a public log (not alterable by the Moderation Workstream once logged), would be a good idea. Provided the governance platform(s) we use have this ability of course (it might actually be a feature request for our upcoming move to Metaforo ?).

There is a Makrdown formatting that failed in the post, look for “## Scope”. Look also for " via governance This Code", a “.” seems to be missing there… maybe this whole section would be more readable as a bulleted list (or more paragraphs). Just suggestions of course, thanks for posting this!

11

An additional point that should be discussed about “Permanent bans” of active/paid contributor(s), in my understanding they are akin to their termination for the DAO. This is a lot of power wielded by the Moderation team that affect the WS which employs the services of the banned user.

The terms of such a termination (or actually any termination) are already unclear in our DAO as far as I can tell. The fair action would be to notify this termination properly to the banned individual and pay the work/days that are still unpaid in my opinion.

Short of doing this the DAO (and/or related entities) most likely expose themselves to potential lawsuits. I’m not a lawyer but clearly if work was delivered/executed, it should be paid.

These kind of “details” should really be codified too. If not in this specific code, maybe as an addendum to the Workstream Leader responsibilities (considering they are the ones dealing with payments). But I do think explaining the actual consequences it has on an active/paid contributor should be done here.

12

Thanks for the response here and your thoughts on the matter. If a contributor has gone so far as to require a permanent ban, then my opinion is that should result in immediate termination from the work-stream as well.

How else would this individual continue to function effectively in their role?

I do agree that work that has been delivered should be compensated for, but would expect a work-stream leader to be able to handle this without codifying through governance.

I trust work-stream leaders have been people managers in the past (or if not would reach out to others who have) and are able to set their own guidelines for hiring and firing per the definition of the WS leader which was ratified by governance.

13

discourse-post-upload20231125-65354-zsozg2.png 0xean:

How else would this individual continue to function effectively in their role?

I agree with you these are not desirable working conditions, and as I’ve suggested it’s effectively a termination.

As it is codified, the ban/termination is initially decided by the Moderation WS and it affects other Workstreams’ work force. Which is why I suggest we clearly codify that this power is in the hands of the Moderation WS for this specific case, and preferably also describe how the affected Workstream Leader(s) must handle it once it has been decided.

Not specifying this will be grounds for a workers/contributors to claim they were unfairly terminated/compensated and potentially sue the DAO/its members.

I also think we should not rely on trust for compensation in these cases because early terminations can be contentious and a WS Leader who decided (or is forced) to terminate someone should not be the one deciding whether the worker gets compensated or not. In a normal org, HR would make this call, we don’t have an HR dept but we have a community that can decide to take a stand on how the DAO should handle this in all cases to protect itself.

We seem to agree on a fair compensation on principle, it shouldn’t be hard to get the community to take a firm engagement on for example pro rata temporis compensation for people paid monthly and by task delivered for bounty contributors. I don’t currently see cases in which this would be a liability for the DAO, compared to the risk of legal actions it seems like a no-brainer to establish these “rules”, but if I’m missing something please clarify why this should be decided on case by case by Workstream Leaders (besides that you’d just trust them to do the right choice in general).

14

Definitely understand your points here, and if the DAO wanted to create some DAO wide terms for work stream contributors or bounty hunters I think that would be reasonable, I just don’t think they need to be attached to this code of conduct.

15

If we are going to codify terminations of participants by the decision of the Moderation WS to ban them, we do need to codify what this termination implies, or at the very least mention that it is effectively a termination.

Currently the section only mentions restrictions regarding their access to public platforms ran by the community. I suggest this to complete your modification:

Consequence: A permanent ban from any interaction within the community through any medium that the DAO has control over. This includes all DAO owned communication channels such as forums, chat platforms, and social media. This list is not meant to be exhaustive and could grow as the DAO grows.

If the permanently banned participant is an active DAO contributor or leader, their current work relations with the DAO are effectively terminated.

I don’t think this should be controversial as it describe the reality of the consequences a perma ban with this new Code of Conduct has on such participants. It doesn’t satisfy my other request but we will maybe discuss this further in another incubation/ideation post.

Lastly, if anyone also has feedback on my suggestion to make moderation logs public on every platform possible I would be happy to hear it. I find it worrying to give this kind of power to one Workstream, without supervision. As much as I appreciate the work of the current Moderation Workstream I can’t stress enough how transparency is necessary when power gets concentrated in fewer hands.

16

While i agree, all that ability is what I am worried about, and discussed and me and pasta worked over the Conduct pretty well together, i felt he was the perfect choice to discuss, as he has that worry foremost in his mind, along with me. but he is able to talk better in public!

The ban logs.   Going to be a bit weird here.  which actions being taken?  its more like ban lists.   other servers that I am connected to, also has ban lists, that are auto shared with each other.   I have a view access on those, and randomly add the obvious ones, that log list gets long quick.
or if your looking at just the high end Contributor ban list? That list is hugely shorter. however, I dont like putting out there that list either. more in respect to outing them. yes. we have an annc. but I dont feel comfortable pointing more fingers at those persons for whatever violations they had. If something comes up that is… contentious, i ask for others opinions in the matter. I brought up several instances where the code we have, were broken, and asked, if I was in the RIght to do such. Mostly it was agreed i did, but some wanted to look and update the Code to the newer version (that some internet committee oversees) While the previous Code was already in place, they might not have been clear enough for our usage. The main change was to make the Mod WS responsible, instead of any one else.
Also, anything wrong done on the  Mod workstream leaders part, should be mentioned. I would ofc like to be said to me, i am open to critisism ofc.   but in the future maybe my position that person is NOT.  In that case ANY leader should be the recip of that complaint, and it brought up to the group through that channel, which would then be discussed etc.     ( ive reversed 2(?) bans that were done, with a misunderstanding, or  apology and promise)  (also reverse an obvious error that was done during a bot raid, but a human was banned, that user simply reached out to someone and we did some research and found the spot.)

summary This Code currently doesnt change how this has been working, nor how it will work. it does add some easier methods to reach out if some action is believed to be in error.

*edit i have no idea why some of my lines are scroll able…

17

oh and - i dont communicate well. so please take my posts from a positive viewpoint 1f642

18

I was thinking of a public live log for each platform, listing the moderation actions: bans, kicks, deleted messages (without content), or any action affecting an user’s ability to use the platform for communication. Each entry mentioning the target user/channel, the reason(s) for the actions and the moderator (or if an action is automated the bot) involved.

Fully understand that most of this will be spammers and such, but the existence of such a log, if not alterable by the Moderation Workstream, is meant as a deterrent for any stealth abuse of power.

This would be enough transparency in my opinion. And I don’t think anyone would have any ground to blame you for lacking respect for publishing names. If the moderation action enforces the present Code, if someone feels shame for ending up on such a list they should consider respecting the Code which is a pretty reasonable balance of free speech in a professional environment.

discourse-post-upload20231125-65354-l33m0h.png giantkin:

*edit i have no idea why some of my lines are scroll able…

Seems like you used the “`” markdown for the paragraph so it turns it into a code block. Might have been a missclick on the “</>” button in the toolbar.

19

Well, there is a log channel that the admins can see, that shows every ban. However it also shows every name, not sure how to display that, without the content however. hm. Im not opposed to such, oh… maybe a role to see those channels !

IE: i have … 20? log channels. I have redundant logs. I’ll discuss with others. Most of the time, im told noone wants to see this stuff. lol 1f642

20

I am only talking Discord. I dont know about viability of logs in other platforms. (or how to display them) but i like the concept, while worried about a few risks. I made the mod role, have to add it to the Role selector. (i been wanting an excuse to do this, i felt left out! lol)

-Unsure about the actual logisitcs of it. but love to experiment with it.

21

discourse-post-upload20231125-65354-l33m0h.png giantkin:

Most of the time, im told noone wants to see this stuff. lol 1f642

Oh yeah, it’s definitely not a channel which needs to be at the top of the list 1f606 But for the sake of transparency, and since we want to formalize the reach of the Moderation WS it’s good to have in my opinion. It preemptively clears up any suspicion/criticism participants could have towards moderation actions.

For Metaforo (since we are moving there soon I doubt setting up anything on Discourse makes sense), I think is the best able to know if a public log is feasible and if it’s not possible currently maybe request this feature?

For Telegram, I am not even on it, so if there is activity there I would guess a similar setup than Discord should be doable.