Drupal Community Working Group Annual Report: 2017-2018

Who Are We?

The Drupal Community Working Group (CWG) is responsible for promoting and upholding the Drupal Code of Conduct and maintaining a friendly and welcoming community for the Drupal project.

The CWG is an independent group chartered directly by Dries Buytaert in his capacity as project lead. The original members of the CWG were appointed by Dries in March of 2013. Since then, new CWG members have been selected by the group from the Drupal community, and then approved by Dries. The CWG is made up entirely of community volunteers, and does not currently have any funding, staff, legal representation, or outside resources.

The CWG’s current active membership is:

• George DeMet (United States): Joined CWG in March 2013, chair since March, 2016.
• Michael Anello (United States): Joined CWG in December 2015.
• Jordana Fung (Suriname): Joined CWG in May 2017.

Rachel Lawson (United Kingdom) was a member of the CWG from May through December 2017, when she started a new position as the Drupal Association’s Community Liaison.

Emma Karayiannis (United Kingdom) and Adam Hill (United Kingdom) have informed the CWG of their intention to formally step down from the CWG once replacements can be found for them; we are currently engaged in a search process to identify new members to fill their positions.

The CWG is also building a network of volunteer subject matter experts who we can reach out to for advice in situations that require specific expertise; e.g., cultural, legal, or mental health issues.

What Do We Do?

The CWG is tasked with maintaining a friendly and welcoming contributor community for the Drupal project. In addition to maintaining and upholding the Drupal Code of Conduct and working with other responsible entities within the Drupal ecosystem to ensure its enforcement, the CWG also helps community members resolve conflicts through an established process, acting as a point of escalation, mediation, and/or final arbitration for the Drupal community in case of intractable conflicts. We also provide resources, consultation and advice to community members upon request.

Other activities the CWG has engaged in in the past year include:

• Sharing experiences and best practices with representatives from other open source projects, both in a one-on-one setting and at various open source community events.
• Recognizing community leadership through the Aaron Winborn Award, which is presented annually to an individual who demonstrates personal integrity, kindness, and above-and-beyond commitment to the Drupal community.
• Helping to ensure the community’s voice is represented in the governance process. While the CWG’s charter does not allow it to make community-wide governance decisions, the CWG did work with other interested members of the community to help organize and facilitate a series of community governance meetings in the fall of 2017 following the results of a survey conducted by the Drupal Association. Results and takeaways from these meetings were also shared with the community-at-large.
• Organizing a Teamwork and Leadership Workshop at DrupalCon Nashville to explore teamwork, leadership, and followership in the context of the Drupal community. Our goal was to expand the base of people who can step into leadership positions in the Drupal community, and to help those who may already be in those positions be more effective. Takeaways from this event were also shared with the community-at-large.
• With input from the community, drafting and adopting a Code of Ethics for CWG members that clearly defines expectations for members around subjects such as confidentiality and conflicts of interest.

Incident Reports

The CWG receives incident reports from Drupal community members via its incident report form or via email.

• In 2017, the CWG received 43 official incident reports submitted.
• From January 1 through September 14, 2018, the CWG has received 33 official incident reports.

In addition, we regularly receive informal reports from community members, which are not included in the totals above. With informal reports, we often encourage the community member to file an official report as well to establish a written record of the incident and to ensure that they have as much agency as possible over how the issue is addressed.

The types of issues that the CWG has received in the last year include:

• Community members being disrespectful and rude in issue queues.
• Technical disagreements and frustrations that turn into personal attacks.
• Abusive language and harassment in Drupal Slack and IRC.
• Appeals of bans made by Drupal Slack moderators.
• Inappropriate language and content at community events.
• Harassment and trolling of community members on social media .
• Physical harassment of community members (both in and outside of community spaces).
• Ongoing issues involving specific community members with established patterns of behavior that are disruptive to others.
• Drupal trademark questions and issues (these are referred to Dries Buytaert, who is responsible for enforcing the Drupal trademark and logo policy).

The CWG also chose not to act on several reports it felt were being made in bad faith and/or in an attempt to harass or intimidate other community members. As per its charter, the CWG also does not respond to requests to take specific punitive action against members of the community. Our goal is to help people understand and take responsibility for the impact that their words and actions have on others.

The CWG relies primarily on its established conflict resolution process to address incident reports. Depending on the situation, this may involve one or more CWG members providing mediation between the parties in conflict or suggesting ways that they can resolve the issue themselves. For matters that may take an unusually long time to resolve, we provide all involved parties with regular status reports so they know that their issue is still being worked on.

In cases of a clear Code of Conduct violation, the CWG will take immediate steps as necessary to ensure the safety of others in the community up to and including recommending permanent or temporary bans from various Drupal community spaces, such as Slack, IRC, Drupal.org, or DrupalCon and other Drupal events.

Other outcomes may include:

• Discussion of the issue with involved parties to try to find a mutually acceptable and beneficial outcome.
• Asking one or more of the involved parties to apologize and/or take other actions to address the consequences of their behavior.
• Discussion of the issue with the involved parties, after which someone may choose to leave the community voluntarily.
• Asking someone to leave the community if they are not willing or able to address the consequences of their behavior.
• Recommending bans from various community spaces, including virtual spaces

In some cases, we may receive an after-the-fact report about a situation that has already been resolved, or where the person making the report has asked for no action to be taken. In those cases, we review the incident, decide whether further action is necessary, and keep it on file for reference in case something similar happens in the future.

While the CWG has in the past directly acted as code of conduct enforcement contacts for DrupalCon (which is run by the Drupal Association and has its own code of conduct distinct from that of the community), as of November 2017 those duties have been assumed by DrupalCon staff. The CWG and DrupalCon staff continue to coordinate with each other to ensure that reports are handled by the appropriate responsible body.

Sharing With the Community

The CWG publishes anonymized versions of its weekly minutes that are shared with the community via our public Google Drive folder. These minutes are also promoted via the CWG’s Twitter account @drupalcommunity.

In addition to the public minutes, the CWG also occasionally issues public statements regarding issues of importance to the broader community and beyond:

The CWG also maintains a public issue queue on Drupal.org. Following a series of community discussions in the spring of 2017, the CWG filed a series of issues in this queue to clarify points of confusion and address outstanding concerns about its role in the community.

The CWG also presents sessions at DrupalCon, as well as other camps and events. Sessions presented at DrupalCon in the last year include:

In addition, CWG members have also organized, spoken, and/or participated in Q&A sessions about the CWG at the following events:

• MidCamp (Chicago, IL)
• DrupalCamp Asheville (Asheville, NC)
• Twin Cities DrupalCamp (Minneapolis, MN)
• DrupalCamp Colorado (Denver, CO)
• FOSS Backstage (Munich, Germany)
• Community Leadership Summit (Portland, OR)
• Edinburgh Drupal User Group (Edinburgh, Scotland)
• Open Source North East (Newcastle upon Tyne, England)
• All Things Open (Raleigh, NC) - Upcoming

The CWG is also exploring ways it can make itself available more often to the community via real-time virtual channels such as Slack, Google Meet, or Zoom.

New Challenges

Online Harassment

The number of incidents that the CWG handles relating to online harassment, particularly on social media, has increased significantly in the last couple of years. Because this harassment is often perpetrated by individuals or groups of people posting from behind anonymous accounts, it is sometimes difficult for the CWG to positively identify those responsible and hold them accountable for their actions. This is compounded by the apparent lack of interest from leading social media companies in taking action against abusive accounts or addressing harassment that occurs on their platforms in any effective or meaningful way.

The Drupal community’s switch from IRC to Slack for much of its real-time communication has also provided another vector for harassment, particularly targeting people who participate in communities of interest that focus on topics such as diversity, inclusion, and women in Drupal. While it is possible to ban individual Slack accounts, it is fairly easy for perpetrators to create new ones, and because they are not always tied to Drupal.org IDs, it is sometimes difficult to identify who is responsible for them.

Sexual Harassment and Abuse

Following reports last year relating to sexual harassment in the Drupal community, the CWG understands that there are likely additional incidents that have occurred in the past that have gone unaddressed because we are unaware of them. While our code of conduct is clear that we do not tolerate abuse or harassment in our community, we also know that people don’t always feel safe reporting incidents or discussing their concerns openly. As a consequence, nothing is done about them, which undermines the effectiveness of our code of conduct and in turn leads to fewer reports and more incidents that go unaddressed.

It is our opinion as a group that open source communities across the board need better mechanisms and procedures for handling reports of sexual abuse, harassment, and/or assault. We also need to keep better records of incidents that have occurred, so that we can more quickly identify patterns of conduct and abuse, and better ways to recognize and address incidents across projects so that people who have engaged in harassment and abuse in one community aren’t able to repeat that behavior in another community.

Staffing and Resources

We need to ensure that the CWG is adequately staffed to assist with the increasing number of incident reports we receive each year. While several members have pursued relevant professional development and training opportunities at their own expense, the CWG currently has no direct access to funds or resources to pursue them as a group. As a volunteer community group chartered by the project lead, the CWG also currently operates without the benefit of legal protection or insurance coverage.

Initiatives for 2018/2019

Governance Changes

While the CWG is not allowed to make changes to its own charter, in early 2017 we explored a number of potential changes that we had intended to propose to Dries to help make our group more effective and better positioned to proactively address the needs of the Drupal community.

That work was put on hold following a series of community discussions that occurred in the spring of 2017.  Those conversations surfaced questions, suggestions, and concerns about the accountability, escalation points, and overall role of the CWG, many of which we documented and addressed in our public issue queue. While we were able to address many of the issues that were raised, some can only be addressed with changes to the CWG’s charter.

We fully support and appreciate the ongoing work of the Governance Task Force to update and reform Drupal community governance. While we understand that additional changes may occur pending the outcome of the overall governance reform process, we also feel that there are some changes related to the CWG that need to be made as soon as possible. These proposed changes are currently under review both internally as well as with Dries and other involved stakeholders, and will be shared with the community for review and comment prior to adoption.

Updating the Community’s Code of Conduct

The current Drupal community code of conduct was published in 2010 and is based on the Ubuntu code of conduct.  As per its charter, the CWG is responsible for “maintain[ing] the Conflict Resolution Process (CRP) and related documentation, including the Drupal Code of Conduct”. The CWG has made several changes to the code of conduct over the years, the most significant of which was the addition of the conflict resolution policy in 2014, much of which was inspired by work done within the Django community.

While Drupal was one of the first open source projects to adopt a code of conduct, many others have done so since, and there are a variety of models and best practices for open source community codes of conduct. Based on feedback that we have received over the past year, the CWG is working on an initiative to review and update Drupal’s community code of conduct with input and involvement from both the community-at-large as well as outside experts with code of conduct experience from other projects. Our goal is to introduce this initiative before the end of 2018.

Dealing with Banned Individuals

Some local event organizers have asked the CWG for better tools to ensure that they weren’t inadvertently providing a platform to people who have been banned from speaking at or attending other events due to code of conduct violations.  While the number of people who have been banned from attending DrupalCon and other Drupal events is very small, a comprehensive list of the identities of those individuals is currently known only to the CWG and the Drupal Association.

While the CWG does not generally publish the names of individuals who have been asked not to attend Drupal events, we do reserve the right to publish their names and the reasons for their ban if they do not abide by it.  While we believe that this is effective at deterring individuals from attending events they have been banned from, we also understand that it does not always provide other attendees and/or conference organizers with the tools they need to ensure a safe environment at their events.

Members of the CWG have discussed this issue with their counterparts in other communities, and it does not appear that there are consistently established best practices for handling these kinds of situations, particularly in communities as decentralized as Drupal. With the input of the community, we would like to establish clear and consistent guidelines for local event organizers.  

Community Workshops and Training

In 2016, the CWG conducted a survey and interviews of Drupal core contributors to identify sources of frustration during the Drupal 8 development cycle. One of our recommendations was for the project to focus more on developing skills like creative problem solving, conflict resolution, effective advocacy, and visioning in order to broaden understanding of Drupal’s community, its assets and its challenges.

Following the success of the teamwork and leadership workshop that the CWG led in collaboration with the Drupal Association at DrupalCon Nashville in 2018, the CWG is exploring opportunities for additional workshops and training at DrupalCon Seattle and other events.

Summary

Over the past few years, the Drupal project and community has grown rapidly, bringing a series of new and evolving challenges. Not only has the project grown progressively more complex with each major release, but the time between releases has increased and more is being asked of the developer community by customers and end-users.

We believe this is a significant contributing factor in the increase in the number of documented incidents of negative conflict, which left unaddressed may result in a decline in contributor productivity and morale. The work of the Community Working Group seeks not only to mitigate the impact of negative conflict, but also to provide the community with the tools and resources it needs to make the Drupal project a safer, more welcoming, and inclusive place.