Procedures for Reporting Code of Conduct Incidents

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If you believe someone has violated the Code of Conduct, we encourage you to report it. If you are unsure whether the incident is a violation, or whether the space where it happened is covered by the Code of Conduct, we encourage you to still report it. We are fine with receiving reports where we decide to take no action for the sake of creating a safer space.

General reporting procedure

The best way to contact the Code of Conduct team is by email at [email protected] which is monitored by the Code of Conduct team (Tania, Lynn, Mariatta, Inessa, Ana Cecilia, Micaela, Maria Jose, and Cheuk).

In case of a conflict of interest, you can individually contact:

Report Data

When reporting an incident, please include as much information as possible, including:

  • Your contact info (so we can get in touch with you if we need to follow up)
  • Date and time of the incident
  • Location of incident
  • Whether the incident is ongoing
  • Description of the incident
  • Identifying information of the reported person: name, screen name (Slack, Hubilo, etc.), physical appearance, height, clothing, voice accent, identifying information such as company name, or other information displayed on the conference platform.
  • Additional circumstances surrounding the incident
  • Other people involved in or witnesses to the incident and their contact information or description

Confidentiality

All reports will be kept confidential. When we discuss incidents with people who are reported, we will anonymize details as much as we can to protect reporter privacy.

However, some incidents happen in one-on-one interactions, and even if the details are anonymized, the reported person may be able to guess who made the report. If you have concerns about retaliation or your personal safety, please note those in your report. We still encourage you to report, so that we can support you while keeping our conference attendees safe. In some cases, we can compile several anonymized reports into a pattern of behavior, and take action on that pattern.

In some cases, we may determine that a public statement will need to be made. If that’s the case, the identities of all individuals involved and reporters will remain confidential unless those individuals instruct us otherwise.

Report handling procedure

When you make a report to an incident responder, they will gather information about the incident according to the Procedure For Incident Response.

After an incident responder takes the report, they will immediately consult with the CoC team, unless there is a conflict of interest, in which case any non-interested parties will be contacted.

If the incident is ongoing and needs to be immediately addressed, any lead incident responder may take appropriate action to ensure the safety of everyone involved. If the situation requires it, this may take the form of a referral to an appropriate non-PyLadiesCon agency, including the local police. The CoC team is not equipped to handle emergency situations.

If the incident is less urgent, the report will be discussed by the CoC team, who will meet to determine an appropriate response. Examples of possible incident responses are outlined in the Procedure For Incident Response.

Before the conference, the CoC team review the outlined procedures. After the conference, all CoC team members will attend a debriefing session with the CoC team chair to discuss all incidents and determine any necessary follow-up actions.

Following up with reporters

Within one week of an incident report, a member of the CoC team will follow up with the person who made the report and provided their contact information. The follow-up may include:

  • An acknowledgment that the Code of Conduct team discussed the situation
  • Whether or not the report was determined to be a violation of the Code of Conduct
  • What actions (if any) were taken to correct the reported behavior

In some cases, the CoC team members may need to ask additional questions about the incident in order to identify the reported person.

Conflicts of interest

If an incident responder has a conflict of interest for a report, they will recuse themselves from the discussion and handling of the incident. The incident documentation will not be available to them, and they will excuse themselves from any conversations involving handling the incident.

Should more than two members of the CoC lead responders need to recuse themselves, another PyLadiesCon organizer will step in as a temporary lead incident responder.

License

This Code of Conduct is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Attribution