code of conduct transparency report

[gregcaporaso]

On behalf of the Executable Books Steering Council, the following is a transparency report regarding a recent Code of Conduct violation.

In October, 2022 a Code of Conduct (CoC) violation report was received by the Executable Books Project (EBP) CoC committee stating that a member of the EBP core team edited the content of a GitHub issue comment that was written by a community member. The edit allegedly changed the meaning of the comment, and was done without consent from the comment’s original author.

The CoC committee summarized the violation report by email, and gave the alleged comment editor an opportunity to share their side of the story. That individual responded with an explanation of their intention, expressed regret that they did not discuss this with the comment’s author first, and apologized to them for this.

Public comments by community members are an important part of their personal and professional reputation, and the CoC committee believes that altering such comments without the author's prior permission is unacceptable. Community members must be able to safely contribute to the EBP organization without worrying that other members will change the meaning of what they say.

The CoC committee responded by suspending all write access to EBP repositories for the alleged comment editor for six weeks. The CoC committee has also noted this violation in the Steering Council's notes, and they will be kept on-record for any future CoC committee to consider. They were informed that a subsequent CoC violation that the EBP CoC committee judges to be fair and valid, or any behavior that the steering council unanimously agrees is in opposition to the goals of the project, will result in a significantly stronger penalty, such as removal of write privileges for one year or permanently, depending on the nature of the offense.

The EBP Steering Council aims to build a productive, respectful, diverse and inclusive community around the Executable Books projects. We take allegations of CoC violations seriously as part of our commitment to creating a safe community. The EBP CoC, including instructions for reporting violations, can be found at https://github.com/executablebooks/.github/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md