Community Working Group Update and Q&A

all right I think we're started the

button has been pressed all right hi

there welcome to the community working

group QA I'm George - Matt this is why

introduce yourself Mike Mike Mike so we

are we are we are two of the currently

for members of the community working

group so basically what we're going to

do today is I've got a few slides here

it's just kind of who we are what we do

what we've been working on what we're

going to be working on next and then but

we really want the bulk of this session

to be just freewheeling Q&A questions

and answers so yeah once again I'm

George

that's Mike our other two members are

jus da Fung she's from cernium in South

America

Alex burrows our newest members we just

joined in November he is from the UK and

the little thing down there we are

always looking for new members for the

group in addition to four of us up here

we also have a number of what we call

subject matter experts or SMEs who we

consult with on a sort of as needed

basis for additional advice on issues

that might require specialized knowledge

so this would be for example you know

legal issues regional culture language

you know so we have an SME who's based

out of India we have an SME who's based

out of Switzerland right austria austria

so he knows german so yes and but but

once again we are always looking for

good folks so if you you know know

someone or even interested yourself they

think after hearing everything we have

to say this is really something you want

to sign up for this is really this is

not a normal part of the brain

we found contributes in the triple

community this is yes the exact other

side of the braces this is right this is

not the technical stuff this is the

people stuff

and amazingly enough people are are

sometimes more complicated than code so

what do we do essentially the the kind

of primary duties that we have we

resolved helped resolve conflicts

between community members this can take

the form of mediation arbitration other

kinds of forms of conflict resolution

we are responsible for upholding the

Drupal code of conduct that's the

community code of conduct that you find

out a lot org and upholding maintaining

that every year we recognize community

leadership through the air and wing

boards so these are previous Erin

wind-borne Award recipient so we provide

even if you like don't have a specific

conflict or an issue we're always

available to provide resources

consultation and advice to the community

you know that can be a like hey on the

Drupal camp and I've got some questions

or concerns meetup group you know some

women slack Edmonds we do a lot of work

with the slack admins because that can

sometimes be in a fun place and but

we're available to provide that

assistance we also talked about a tional

a from time to have people from open

other open source projects so last year

I went to a couple of events one in in

Berlin and one Portland where there were

kind of other people who are involved

with sort of open source community

governments and community management

kind of shared with

you know best practices experiences

we've had calls with people one of the

kind of higher level things you know I

would love to see is if open source

projects would work closer together on

having sort of more clear and consistent

you know sort of codes of conduct and

enforcement mechanisms I think did we

have a lot to learn from each other I

think all too often we kind of you know

reinvent the wheel on our own to what

Georgia said they're always in for new

members because we find ourselves number

one there's a lot of we're gonna put the

public minutes up just so you can see

what's been going on the past week so

we're well we much of our time is spent

doing reactive things yeah we'd love to

do more proactive like to provide more

resources through the community and more

not just for the community but open

source yeah to what Georgia said the

idea of kind of like you know

interacting with other working groups

from other open source communities we

think would be really valuable not just

from our standpoint but from others stem

prints as well then just on a little

side note to that we've seen that as far

as the Drupal community is conserve work

we're probably a bit farther ahead than

most of the other open-source

communities we a lot of them look to us

which is it's good but scary well yeah I

mean one of the things that's

interesting about about Drupal compared

to many other open-source projects it's

just the kind of sheer size of our

contributor base so you know you can run

the numbers in a different way but

there's roughly at least 50,000 sort of

active contributors to the project at

any given time and so we're huge in

terms of contributor base and unlike

many other open-source projects

which have you know are governed by you

know a company like a Google or

Microsoft or whatever or by a foundation

like Linux Foundation and you know then

these entities come in and like sort of

have rules and structures and governance

that they impose on the projects that

are part of their communities

we're completely independent so you know

especially for a lot of you know a lot

of other projects that are just trying

to figure this out

you know we've got we've got a lot of

experience to share I should have

mentioned as well before the thing about

us we're all volunteers on the group so

you know we do have as I'll talk about a

little bit later we do have now very

recently some more opportunities for

sort of formalized support but beyond

that we're pretty much doing this on our

own lately so this is kind of like very

much in the last year back is Drupal con

Nashville we organized a teamwork and

leadership workshop that was Adam

Goodman who's a chair of the Drupal

Association board he was actually here

yesterday doing a roundtable for some of

the sponsors and what we did is we had

know what 50 60 folks from the community

both kind of people who are trying and

emerging leaders in the community from

all over the world were at who were at

Drupal con Nashville gotten together

for a couple hours and kind of just

really talked at a very high level about

some some of the ideas to get a kind of

shared common sense of what leadership

and and teamwork is like so that was I

think what we consider kind of a base

level experience for folks but this is

the kind of proactive thing that might

be signed now before we developed a code

of ethics for up for ourselves the cdbg

members to clearly define sort of our

expectations you know both for us and

and and so the community can understand

how we do things like confidentiality

conflicts of interest this was one of

the things that it kind of come out of

some of the governance suggestions that

we've been surfaced in the last couple

years in the community so we were pretty

happy to be able to do that we also

again as part of those governance sort

of changes and ideas that came up we

made some fairly significant changes to

our Charter so community working group

was founded back in 2013 and as it

originally existed we reported directly

to Drees as to have the project so you

know essentially the role the community

working group was to handle a lot of the

kinds of community issues that

previously greaves have been responsible

for handling personally so that's that's

why we kind of reported to him in the

structure there also at the time wasn't

really sufficiently mature governance

that there really was anyone else we

could report to but now there is

so we now report to a review panel which

consists of the two community elected da

board members plus a representative from

a different open source project so

someone who is not like an active

part of the Drupal community so that's

where you heard some of the banter with

Ryan before Ryan is one of the three

members of our review panel and so for

any issues so that what the review panel

is responsible for is if there is a

decision that the community working

group makes that someone wants to appeal

they would be able to appeal it to this

review panel which can then choose

whether or not they want to hear the

matter and whether they're going to

uphold or you know change the decision

that was made the review panel is also

responsible for approving any new

members they can add it to the community

working group so essentially the way

that we operate is that we say hey we'd

like to add some new members here's

someone we would like to add to the

group because we know them we vetted

them we think they'd be a really good

fit maybe help fill a gap that we might

have in our group and previously in the

past Rhys would have to sign off on that

person now it's the responsibility of

the review panel the other changes that

writer also created to find term terms

and term limits for cwg members so now

it's two three year terms

up to two to three year terms well

previously been kind of indefinite we

also made it a little bit more explicit

adjusted some of the language to make it

clear that the cw's responsibilities

include not just you know conflict

resolution and mediation but also

proactive measures to promote community

health the advantage of this is that you

know we now are considered from a

governance perspective to have an

affiliation with the Drupal Association

even though we mostly operate

independently of the Drupal Association

so we don't report to end a for anyone

like that but it does mean that one for

any matters that we're dealing with we

kind of fall under the legal

Rella the da okay someone has a real

problem and wants to sue someone they

won't they won't come after us

personally which is nice

and the other thing is that we also

gives us the opportunity to tapped into

Drupal Association resources so on a

recent issue you know we had some we had

to we had some questions we wanted to

validate our approach we were taking

with a particular issue we were able to

reach out to and talk with the Drupal

associations lawyer who is able to

validate our approach and give us some

good advice so one thing but the review

panel not everything that we deal with

ends up with us having to make a

decision that's true our goal yes to not

have to make a decision right right our

goal is to if there's an issue is to

have issue resolved in a manner that we

don't have to make a decision so

essentially you're right with what we

want is or to give community members the

information tools the resources to

resolve the issue themselves so that we

don't have to come in and say you're

right you're wrong like Vigo the great

pains to avoid that which is why if

anybody pays attention to our minutes a

lot of our shoes go on for a long time

yeah - we're looking for that way result

on up conversations and trying to make

it so that we do not have to yeah

they'll make a decision now right so

that that's in terms of like community

member conflict how I approach it to be

really clear if this is a clear code of

conduct violation someone is harassing

someone at an event or on social media

or whatever we are really really we will

take immediate action

the media decision so right what are we

up to next so yeah I mentioned we had a

national I'm in Seattle

so we're actually doing another workshop

in Seattle a couple weeks this is going

to be a group communications workshop

it's going to be a much smaller more

focused group of people who or they have

and really the ideas we're going to try

and one of the things we've noticed in a

lot of the issues that have come up is

that people people are kind of talking

past each other so we want to lay the

groundwork a framework for people

particularly different groups in the

community to be able to talk with each

other on sort of the same level and be

talking engaging with each other instead

of talking past each other

identify any ways that we're trying a

relationship be a better service

community talk about legal resources

there's other opportunities as well

helping cam and event organizers develop

code of conduct enforcement resources

very often when stuff comes up it's very

often in the context of I'm gonna talk

about that in the next session yeah

we're gonna organize recession so we can

save that for the next session

yes our community code of conduct has

not really been updated substantially in

many many years so we're gonna start the

process of reviewing and updating that I

will probably start by sending out a

survey to folks to kind of start get the

ball rolling and get some ideas and then

continuing to expand our membership

they're experts particularly to provide

more international perspectives so give

it very quickly we updated we share our

public minutes via Google Docs and it's

promoted via Twitter a Drupal community

we if there's something that's of

interest to the community will

occasionally post public statement again

we'll talk about that at a Twitter

account we release annual ish report to

release one last fall that covered both

the last year and a half we have a

public issue queue up your blood work or

feedback or questions and you know we do

sessions like this as well so yeah so

that's the slides the schpeel and now

what are your questions let me put up

the minutes you won't hey make sure I

get the right ones

sure so I've been working in the

WordPress space with the community and

they actually reached out to me to ask

what the CWG was and they are looking

for its

advice yes we might have heard from

someone there's a there's an issue

happening in the WordPress yes we

finding they they don't have the tools

right so so yes yeah so I think I think

we are from what I understand of that

particular issue and sorry I have to be

vague because it's not really public all

right even though it's impacting a lot

of people yeah it sounds like pretty

thorny one so yeah I think you know

hopefully we'll have the opportunity to

reach out and talk with folks from

WordPress you know they also have an

interesting you know they have automatic

which you know if he has a lot of

influence in that community and you know

so I know they've been also getting

support and resources there but yeah I

think we can there's a good opportunity

for us to help out as well yeah I think

that's actually in our minutes as far as

we're gonna reach out to them yeah I

don't think we need the community in a

minute so so what community yeah all

right Mike you you you you banter while

I was up for these minutes go out here

and like say provocative things smell

okay here's a list of things not to say

that so we find that we have a lot a

poor group of folks who we meet every

week

gosh that almost every meeting was

actually today but George not being here

never skipped it this week and we're

pretty good about posting public minutes

because we understand that a lot of what

we do and if you look at our processes

you know we basically say if you come to

us it's you know it's in confidence

but we're no police or duty so it's it

was a fine line there so we try to

surface as much as we can without them

personally personally identifiable

information in a way and share it in a

way that hopefully we can all learn and

not repeat you know the same mistakes

that we passed so they did you want me

to scroll through make the font a little

bit bigger so I'll just go through

another sunrise interrupt me any time if

you have a question about anything up

here interrupt me at any time that's

what I make at this week's no real so

don't mean it

the office of this direction is traffic

saying this is basically we're still

kind of getting how her getting used to

our new relationship of the Drupal

Association trying to figure out how

best to leverage that relationship

that item that I've highlighted that's

actually rains it's identifying the

third member of the review panel so as

part of that right so so the the my

understanding is the board as a whole is

going to appoint that member and you

guys are going through a search process

authority problem that came out of the

company's stuff and this one is that no

one no comfortables Driss being a sole

point of escalation yeah we weren't so

we thought long and hard about what do

we do you know and we felt like it would

be best if it was it was based on folks

that the community selected yeah so

that's why you saw it well me how to

community elected board members let's

start with those two and the other thing

that's very valuable to us sonication is

an outside unit right so being able to

bring in someone from another open

source project as the third remember

that review panel things kind of fell

into place nicely and it's new it's not

officially active that's remember we

have very high hopes for it

alluding to this but this come out of

the derivatives if in a number of

addition so watch Brad so one thing that

was really consistent in all of the

conversations that occurred over the

last two years was that was that there

needed to be there needed to be more

sort of community accountability right

for the community working group and for

escalations out of the community working

group and so the specific like solution

was actually something we had been

starting to work on you know and and and

then we we floated this idea you know

with the drupal association because we

wanted it to be you know we still wanted

to keep and preserve the things that

make us effective but we we also knew

that we needed to have that that

community accountability and and so we

this and with very very but it took a

while because strategies for effective

and inclusive group communication yep

it's small many two thousand people so

the invite

will participate with yes so we moved it

up

in some some formal fashion right so

part of our due diligence has been to

not over talk to this person but also

talk to the people that were affected by

this person right it's not it's not

process yep so left as in was asked we

we have someone yeah we have someone

this is this actually goes back several

years now they had you know essentially

you know a pattern of behavior right and

this pattern of behavior had resulted in

a lot of working group complaints so we

tried to engage with that person they

chose to quit rather than engage with us

at that time they have since gone

through some personal growth and

reflection and feel that they are ready

to come back but understand that you

know we're not just gonna write there's

we're if there's a process to go through

and so you know so they approached us

about this and we said okay you

understand right that we're gonna

actually have to talk to the people with

whom you know you had issues in the past

and get their perspectives well we

talked with those people and they had

some good feedback but were generally

receptive you know under certain

conditions and constraints and so it's

okay so now we're gonna we're gonna see

if if there's we're gonna communicate

those conditions and constraints to the

community member and see if they're

willing to come back the still

interesting come back into this terms I

mean I'm I'm actually really optimistic

about this one's imma turn this is this

is a which is which is rare

yeah and it's interesting because we

with all issues but I should say the

vast majority we are always very

concerned with what's the path back

what's the path yeah like we literally

will shut the door and say leave and

never come back

and we always want don't believe didn't

change it's not easy it's a pretty high

bar for us to prove to us that it's not

just a bar for us I mean it is a bar for

the community I mean you know people

people need to be be accountable for the

impact that their words and actions had

on other people right so you know if

someone has been you know you know

there's some things you can do that you

know it's like well yes we can give you

a path back but it's it's something it's

not just us right you don't have to

prove like because you know we're not

gonna let someone back in if it's gonna

be a problem for a lot of other people

some of these other ones come fall in

the same category of just you know

inappropriate behavior slap channels or

issue queues or other places and things

that have been simmering for a time and

maybe of reach the point where someone

said lucky enough we need to know

they're not clear-cut for us right

because we have to start talking to

everybody involved and trying to find

works for everybody in we don't block

we've never been known to make some

acquisitions about stuff like this well

make it's not decision if there's a

clear some jerk you're in timeout until

you talk to us yeah right

if you you know if we put you in timeout

and you from soccer or whatever it's

really it's you know chill out and then

that's time let's figure out a solution

let's figure out where the issue lies

before it so I want to skip to get this

one actually and and so this is one of

those cases where we had someone who we

had heard concerns about their behavior

and but there wasn't anything that was

like there was some things that were

definitely concerning but not

particularly actionable so it's like

this person is like we have first family

this person what are you talking about

you're talking okay this one okay this

person is loud and like has too much to

drink at events and like says

inappropriate things right like we know

that firsthand and then it's that then

we heard like second and third hands

that like maybe there was some more

serious issues as well right it was very

directed the people who were coming to

us were very direct in saying I don't

want to be around this person right

inappropriate yeah I don't feel sick but

we have a couple conversations with them

and they said they said they said they

they would try and do better and and

then they went to an event and what did

they do they drank too much they were

inappropriate and they were asked to

leave if they were banned from the event

then subsequent to that we started

receiving other reports from other

people that corroborated on a first and

secondhand level some of the more

concerning things were like okay this is

a we're gonna take action here and and

we put in place a kind of a permanent

ban so you know basically we said it's

like look you can't go to Drupal events

you can't hold positions of leadership

in a community we're not going to make a

public announcement about that other

than this right where I could say who

you are you know but if you if you don't

abide by that then you know we're we

have we're gonna reach out to people and

tell them why we made this decision and

so I think they are gonna abide by our

decision you know and you know we'll

check in with them in a year see how

they're doing but you know that doesn't

mean that the band is over in a year

it's just you know but this is one of

those things where we can't take action

so yes that is time up isn't it okay so

if anyone has there's 20 minutes till

the next session well so I want to be

respectful of other people coming in so

melting one one question if you have one

yeah and then we'll we'll wrap up I was

just gonna be

- awareness of virginity where people

and these kind of channels for

complaints as well how's that effect

that's wrong yeah I could it's every

year it goes on and every year it goes

up because there's more people in the

community there's more vectors for

harassment

to be honest social media and slack are

like two of our largest growing sources

of harassment and they're more aware

that there's a group I think yes and as

a result we are we are becoming aware of

patterns of behavior that may not have

been apparent before like people who

have been saying and doing you know

inappropriate things for a long time and

and and now it's like okay now it's been

escalated us and we can actually do

something about it so all right so I'm

pleased you know anyone who might be

interested we are always willing to

listen if someone comes to us and say

look I'm interested in helping with the

proactive stuff or not this type of

stuff you know we're willing to listen

to me you want to make sure that we you

know stay pretty diverse yes you know

we've got we want to be red white guys

from America right here another white

guy in England you know we definitely

are focused on increasing the diversity

of our group

feel like that you know more

perspectives better from our perspective

but please know if you know anyone who

might be good fit and have some in our

way yeah I mean or someone who's willing

to do a lot of emotional labor because

that's what this involves thank you

[Applause]