Hi All, To help move forward I think its worth sending an email to clarify a few things following up from last week. Firstly I strongly believe that the CoC should apply in all our communication channels, events and spaces. While this is an email from myself rather then an official statement from the board, from our discussions in the last week I know that the rest of the board feels the same way. One thing that some people may not be aware of is that I have been long term moderator of our main #opensuse irc channel for many years. For historical reasons and partly due to the move away from freenode #opensuse-chat hasn't had moderators active until recently. It also hadn't had anyone explicitly making the people in that channel aware that the CoC should be followed in this space. Recently the board was made aware that there was some issues on IRC and that maybe it needed more moderation. As a part of that process given that I am A an IRC moderator and B a board member I offered to watch #opensuse closely and report back, then sometime later #opensuse-chat was mentioned as also having issues so I started watching there as well. The mail thread that started this issue was a response to a board meeting minutes where as a followup to these previous reported issues I hadn't seen anything. A side note to this is that I do some development on the IRC Client I use, this means occasionally I am disconnected or loose some messages. Generally this should be ok as it happens most often while I am sleeping and we should have enough moderator coverage to cover all timezones. Unfortunately I was later made aware that I did miss some instances both firstly when my client was down and secondly before I was asked to join #opensuse-chat. As soon as I was made aware of these instances I immediately took action in my capacity as an IRC moderator (rather then as a board member). Having said that given this issue was generating significant attention I also informed the board in case they felt further or alternative action should be taken. One of the reasons for working this way is that as a IRC Moderator I can act immediately where as due to timezone differences it may take up to 24 hrs for us to reach a consensus. Further to that the process that IRC moderators tend to follow is generally far more ad hoc then some other moderation platforms and has traditionally escalated to the board rather then anywhere else in difficult cases. A significant part of this is probably due to the fact that IRC moderators weren't included in some of the other moderation unification that has happened over recent years. As a result my actions may have had the appearance to some as the board acting over the top of moderators which was not the case. Finally the openSUSE Community is one of many diverse views and I have many of my own that I am glad I feel comfortable sharing and discuss at times on the project mailing list, with the aim of making the project stronger. At the end of the day regardless of what my personal opinion is when I am acting as a moderator I will do my best to act in the way that I believe the broader community would expect me to. Also on the odd occasion that I am acting on behalf of the board I will always only do so once I have the board's consensus and I will make it clear to everyone that I am acting on behalf of the board. PS. As a general rule of thumb every email that you see to an openSUSE list from a board member should be treated as an email from that board member and as such is their opinion not the opinion of the board unless it is clearly marked as a statement on behalf of the board. In the interest of openness and for the best decision making sometimes the board will have discussions on the project mailing list to get a greater range of views opinions and feedback. Which is why just as in meetings we may sometimes disagree with each other on mailing lists this may happen as well. PPS. I am traveling this week and may not be able to reply to this email as promptly as I would like. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B