Code of conduct

Rationale

The current goal of Translate Science is to maintain a community of interest that supports initiatives improving multilingual open science. We believe our communities of contributors should be as diverse, inclusive, and accessible as possible. Contributions from everyone who shares our goals are welcome; however we recognize the intentional and unintentional harms that can arise from interactions with others and the generation of certain content.

Accordingly, all members of Translate Science, as well as guests and visitors, are expected to show respect and courtesy to each other in all interactions, whether at online meetings, in person meetups, or in other contexts. Content created by Translate Science is expected to reflect our values

To make sure that everyone has a common understanding of “show respect and courtesy to each other,” and to protect our community we have adopted the following code of conduct. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list of parameters but rather to give a snapshot of how we strive to interact in our shared spaces as well as indicate how participants may invoke the Code of Conduct to ensure safety. Email info@translatescience.org with any comments or suggestions of additional items that you would like to see represented here. The code of conduct is enforced by the Translate Science core contributors.

Scope

This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces (eg, wiki, our online meeting rooms, blog, etc), and also applies when an individual is officially representing the Translate Science community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event.

Expected behaviour

All members of Translate Science, as well as guests and visitors are responsible for their own behaviour.

In all Translate Science projects, spaces and events, behaviour will be founded in respect, collegiality, solidarity and good citizenship. This applies to all contributors and participants in their interaction with all contributors and participants, without expectations based on age, mental or physical disabilities, physical appearance, national, religious, ethnic and cultural background, caste, social class, language fluency, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex or career field. Nor will we make exceptions based on standing, skills or accomplishments in Translate Science projects.

Mutual respect

We expect everyone who engages with Translate Science to show respect for others. In communicating with people, whether in online or offline environments, we will treat each other with mutual respect.

This includes but is not limited to:

• Practice empathy. Listen and try to understand what people of different backgrounds want to tell you. Be ready to challenge and adapt your own understanding, expectations and behaviour.
• Assume good faith, and engage in constructive feedback; your contributions should improve the quality of the project or work. Provide and receive feedback kindly and in good faith. Criticism should be delivered in a sensitive and constructive manner. All should assume unless evidence otherwise exists that others are here to collaboratively improve the projects, but this should not be used to justify statements with a harmful impact.
• Respect the way that contributors name and describe themselves. People may use specific terms to describe themselves. As a sign of respect, use these terms when communicating with or about these people, where linguistically or technically feasible. Examples include:
  • Ethnic groups may use a specific name to describe themselves, rather than the name historically used by others;
  • People may have names that use letters, sounds, or words from their language which may be unfamiliar to you;
  • People who identify with a certain sexual orientation or gender identity using distinct names or pronouns;
  • People having a particular physical or mental disability may use particular terms to describe themselves
• During in-person meetings, we will be welcoming to everyone and we will be mindful and respectful of each others’ preferences, boundaries, sensibilities, traditions and requirements.

Civility, collegiality, mutual support and good citizenship

We strive towards the following behaviours:

• Civility is politeness in behaviour and speech amongst people, including strangers. However, please note that norms around politeness vary around the world so please approach interactions in good faith. Consider and communicate how differing norms may impact politeness.
• Collegiality is the friendly support that people engaged in a common effort extend to each other.
• Mutual support and good citizenship means taking active responsibility for ensuring that the Translate Science projects are productive, pleasant and safe spaces.

Unacceptable behavior

The following types of behavior are unacceptable in Translate Science spaces, both online and in-person, and constitute code of conduct violations. These are not comprehensive descriptions of unacceptable behaviour.

Abusive behavior

• Harassment—including offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion, as well as sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual or romantic attention.
• Threats—threatening someone physically or verbally. For example, threatening to publicize sensitive information about someone’s personal life.
• Abuse of power, privilege, or influence—occurs when someone in a real or perceived position of power, privilege, or influence engages in disrespectful, cruel, and/or violent behaviour towards other people. For example, using one's position and reputation to intimidate others or maliciously causing someone to doubt their own perceptions, senses, or understanding with the objective to win an argument or force someone to behave the way you want

Unwelcoming behavior

• Blatant -isms—saying things that are explicitly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. For example, arguing that some people are less intelligent because of their gender, race or religion. Subtle-isms and small mistakes made in conversation are not code of conduct violations. However, repeating something after it has been pointed out to you that you broke a social rule, or antagonizing or arguing with someone who has pointed out your subtle -ism is considered unwelcoming behavior, and is not allowed.
• Maliciousness towards other participants—deliberately attempting to make others feel bad, name-calling, singling out others for derision or exclusion. For example, telling someone that they don’t belong in a Translate Science space.
• Being especially unpleasant—for example, if we’ve received reports from multiple people of annoying, rude, or especially distracting behavior.

Content vandalism and abuse of the projects

Deliberately introducing biased, false, inaccurate or inappropriate content, or hindering, impeding or otherwise hampering the creation (and/or maintenance) of content. This includes but is not limited to:

• The support or promotion of information that is inaccurate or false (misinformation), or intentionally deceptive (disinformation)
• The repeated arbitrary or unmotivated removal of any content without appropriate discussion or providing explanation
• Systematically manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view (also by means of unfaithful or deliberately false rendering of sources and altering the correct way of composing editorial content)
• Hate speech in any form, or discriminatory language aimed at vilifying, humiliating, inciting hatred against individuals or groups on the basis of who they are or their personal beliefs
• The use of symbols, images, categories, tags or other kinds of content that are intimidating or harmful to others outside of the context of encyclopedic, informational use. This includes imposing schemes on content intended to marginalize or ostracize.

Reporting

If you see a violation of our code of conduct, please report it to the Translate Science core contributors. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly. All community leaders are obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.

Where and how to report

Please report all code of conduct violations using by emailing info@translatescience.org. If you would rather discuss the matter over a video chat 1 on 1 indicate this in your email.

In your report, please include:

• Your name—this is incredibly helpful for us to be able to follow up with you, and ask questions to better understand the situation. Please know that we might not be able to take action without knowing who you are.
• A detailed description of what happened
  • If the violation happened online, please link to or send us the relevant text.
  • If the violation happened in person, please detail what exactly the other person said or did. In order to take action, we need to know the concrete actions that someone took.
• Where and when the incident happened
• Any other relevant context. Do you have examples of a pattern of similar behavior from this person before? Do you have a relationship with this person outside of Translate Science?
• If/how you’ve already responded—this lets us know the current state of the situation.

Confidentiality

We will keep all reports confidential, except if we've discussed with you and agreed otherwise. 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, and do not want us to share the details of your report with anyone (including the perpetrator) please let us know explicitly in your report. Unfortunately, in that situation we will not be able to take any action.

Incident report process

The incident report will be discussed by the core contributors in a closed meeting. In case of severe reports, we may deviate from these guidelines based on an assessment of the situation at hand. This meeting must start within 2 hours after the report has been taken if it is an ongoing event; otherwise within 72 hours after taking the report. If the report pertains to an acute situation (e.g., racist remarks by workshop leader), core contributors may take immediate action. In the meeting, we will discuss the behavior, its reported impact, how public the behavior was, and the reported person's previous incidents and outcomes (if any). Anyone with a conflict of interest may not be part of this meeting.

Based on the assessment, a proposal will be made that allows the reported person to stay in the community if accepted. The larger the impact of the behavior, the more demanding the proposal must be for the reported; the more public the behavior, the more public the response. Proposals must include the reported person taking responsibility for the behavior's impact, and must provide a commitment to prevent repeating similar situations. The consequences of rejecting the proposal by the reported person will be deliberated as well. These consequences must be specific and more demanding than the proposal, given that the unwillingness to take responsibility is something this community does not welcome.

Subsequently, we will reach out to the reported person with a description of the incident, the proposal, and consequences of rejecting it. Both are non-negotiable and non-dependent on declarations of intent.

What if you have been reported?

People make mistakes and we as space-coordinators recognize that. Whether people choose to take responsibility for their impact and address their behavior accordingly, is what is key in this community.

Depending on the impact and the scale of public knowledge of the mistake, we will propose a way for you to stay in our events and spaces, if reasonably possible. We will also clearly state what will happen if you do not accept that proposal. These are non-negotiable at this stage. Until you have reached a decision upon being presented with the proposal, you are not allowed to participate in any Translate Science events and spaces for the protection of the reporter's mental health and privacy.

Attribution

Parts of it are based on the Recurse Center Code of Conduct, the Code of Conduct for Individual Members of the Internet Society, the Research Equals Code of Conduct, the CSCCE Community Participation Guidelines, and the Wikimedia Foundation Universal Code of Conduct.

The Recurse Center CoC, and the Research Equals Code of Conduct are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero - Public Domain (CC0) license. The CSCCE Community Participation Guidelines is available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. The Wikimedia Foundation Universal Code of Conduct is available under the Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) License.