Carbon Language community transparency report through 2024-03-31

[CelineausBerlin]

The Carbon community works to be welcoming and kind among itself and to others,
with a deep commitment to psychological safety, and we want to ensure that
doesn’t change as we grow and evolve. To that end, we have a few ground rules
that we ask all community members to adhere to:

• be welcoming,
• be friendly and patient,
• be considerate,
• be kind,
• be careful in the words that we choose,
• when we disagree, try to understand why, and
• recognize when progress has stopped, and take a step back.

The following summary is intended to help the community understand what kinds of
Code of Conduct incidents were brought to our attention lately, and how we
dealt with them.

Publishing such transparency reports on a regular basis is helping us track
progress and hold ourselves accountable to high standards of community culture.

Summary

While we started the year 2024 focussing more on our toolchain, moderation work
has been light. It looks like our communication culture standards are well
understood among our community so far, and discussions are remaining peaceful
and constructive for the most part. We are really proud of our focussed and
diligent online community!
We are now approaching 5,000 people signed up on our Discord server and nearly
150 contributors on GitHub.

With another contributor joining our moderation team there are now 12 people in
our moderation and conduct team, including our community lead who serves as
their guide, trainer and coach. Our moderation and conduct team is contributing
from 3 different continents.

Our AutoMod bots are automatically catching the use of some harmful language
and spam, which helps us focus on the educational and conversational part of
our moderation role.
Last quarter, we added some keywords to the list of automatically detected spam.

AutoMod bot work has ramped up quite a bit in the first quarter of 2024, with 44
messages automatically flagged, and 5 other conduct related incidents were
documented in that same period.

Please note that some incidents may have escaped our attention. You can help us
keep our spaces welcoming and fostering a spirit of collaboration, and report
any situation that may require our intervention:
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/trunk/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Our interventions from 2024-01-01 through 2024-03-31

In Q1 2024, the moderation book club finished reading an essay on how moral
stances and political views are developed, and how differences in morality and
ideology profiles may explain persisting conflicts and debates.
We currently have not decided what book we’d like to read together next. The
club will be on hiatus under further notice.

These are the conduct incidents that were brought to our attention in the last
quarter:

• “Be careful in the words that we choose and be kind to others. Do not
  use insults or put downs. Harassment and other exclusionary behaviors aren’t
  acceptable.”
  Carbon community Code of Conduct, version from 2024-04-23

  1 user was banned after harassing a team member via private channels.

• “Be kind. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is
  no excuse for poor behavior and hurtful words. We might all experience some
  frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a
  personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel
  threatened is not a productive one. Members of our community should be
  kind when dealing with other members as well as with people outside the
  Carbon community.”
  Carbon community Code of Conduct, version from 2024-04-23

  3 users were warned after posting disruptive and insulting comments.

• Other interventions

  With spam ramping up on our Discord server a bit, we started reporting
  spammer accounts to Discord as well.

Closing observations

The intensity and type of our manual moderation work has been similar in Q1 2024
than in Q4 2023, while AutoMod bot activity was more about blocking spam than
before.
Our conduct team is also thinking about possible adjustments to our member
rotation model in the future.
We’ll keep watching and providing support when needed, and are hoping for
more contributions while keeping the atmosphere friendly and kind.

Thank you very much for your contributions, good spirits and see you around!

The Carbon Code of Conduct team, 2024-04-23