4 Enforcement Manual#

This is the enforcement manual followed by the Turing Way project research team. It’s used when we respond to an issue to make sure we’re consistent and fair. Enforcement of the Code of Conduct should be respectful and not include any harassing behaviours.

4.1 The Code of Conduct Committee#

The Code of Conduct committee is:

As the community grows, we will seek to build a larger committee including members outside of the core development team.

4.2 Urgent Situations: Acting Unilaterally#

If the incident involves physical danger, or involves a threat to anyone’s safety (such as threats of violence), any member of the community may – and should – act unilaterally to protect the safety of any community member. This can include contacting law enforcement (or other local personnel) and speaking on behalf of the Turing Way team.

If the act is ongoing, any community member may act immediately, before reaching consensus, to diffuse the situation. In ongoing situations, any member may at their discretion employ any of the tools available in this enforcement manual, including bans and blocks online, or removal from a physical space.

In situations where an individual community member acts unilaterally, they must inform Kirstie Whitaker as soon as possible, and report their actions for review within 24 hours.

4.3 Less-Urgent Situations#

Upon receiving a report of an incident, the CoC committee will review the incident and determine, to the best of their ability:

  • whether this is an ongoing situation

  • whether there is a threat to anyone’s physical safety

  • what happened

  • whether this event constitutes a Code of Conduct violation

  • who, if anyone, was the bad actor

This information will be collected either in person or in writing. The CoC committee will provide a written summary of the information surrounding the incident. All participants will be anonymised in the summary report, referred to as “Community Member 1”, “Community Member 2”, or “Research Team Member 1”. The “de-anonymising key” will be kept in a separate file and only accessed to link repeated reports against the same person over time.

The CoC committee will aim to have a resolution agreed upon within one week. In the event that a resolution can’t be determined in that time, a member of the CoC committee will respond to the reporter(s) with an update and projected timeline for resolution.

4.4 Resolutions#

The CoC committee will seek to agree on a resolution by consensus of all members investigating the report in question. If the committee cannot reach consensus and deadlocks for over a week, Dr Whitaker, as lead investigator of the Turing Way project, will break the tie. If Dr Whitaker is unable to take part in the discussion due to a conflict of interest, Dr Ben Murton, as an external member of the CoC committee, will make the decision.

Possible responses may include:

  • A mediated conversation or agreement between the impacted community members.

  • A request for a verbal or written apology, public or private, from a community member.

  • A public announcement clarifying community responsibilities under the Code of Conduct.

  • Nothing, if the issue reported is not a violation or outside of the scope of this Code of Conduct.

  • A private in-person conversation between a member of the research team and the individual(s) involved. In this case, the person who has the conversation will provide a written summary for record keeping.

  • A private written reprimand from a member of the research team to the individual(s) involved. In this case, the research team member will deliver that reprimand to the individual(s) over email, cc’ing Kirstie Whitaker for record keeping.

  • A public announcement of an incident, ideally in the same venue that the violation occurred (such as on the listserv for a listserv violation; and GitHub for a GitHub violation). The committee may choose to publish this message elsewhere for posterity.

  • An imposed “time out” from online spaces. Kirstie Whitaker will communicate this “time out” to the individual(s) involved.

  • A permanent or temporary ban from some or all Turing Way project spaces (like on GitHub, online calls or in-person events). The research team will maintain records of all such bans so that they may be reviewed in the future, extended to a Code of Conduct safety team as it is built, or otherwise maintained. If a member of the community is removed from an event they will not be reimbursed for any part of the event that they miss.

Once a resolution is agreed upon, but before it is enacted, a member of the CoC committee will contact the original reporter and any other affected parties and explain the proposed resolution. The CoC committee member will ask if this resolution is acceptable, and must note feedback for the record. However, the CoC committee is not required to act on this feedback.

4.5 Conflicts of Interest#

In the event of any conflict of interest such that Dr Whitaker is not able to evaluate or enforce the reported violation, Ben Murton will take Kirstie’s place.