The Community Advocates team will contribute to enforce the GitLab Code of Conduct on GitLab.com, to ensure we keep a positive, welcoming and inclusive environment for everyone to contribute.
Currently, the Advocates team will engage in moderation if there is a discussion (generally on an issue or on a Merge Request) that requires urgent or a significant volume of moderation.
Moderation process
Advocates should always use the GitLab Conduct GitLab account when moderating instead of their personal accounts to provide anonymity while moderating. The login information can be found in the Marketing vault in 1Password.
As a general practice, comments will not be deleted
If a comment is deemed to violate the Code of Conduct, its content will be redacted
The redacted text will be based on one of the templates to justify the motivation for moderating the comment
Before starting the moderation process, a confidential issue will be created on the Community Advocacy project, to keep a track record of comments which have been edited out
During the moderation process, the original content of each comment considered to violate the CoC will be moved over as a thread on the confidential issue. Threads allow for discussion around the comment and feedback from topic or language experts
Threads opened on the confidential issue should include a link to the original public comment, the GitLab user name of the commenter, and the original comment (see templates).
Comments where the violation is unclear, or comments not in English will be marked for review on a subsequent moderation pass. Native language speakers in the GitLab team can help translate messages if necessary.
If a discussion is deemed to become too toxic to enable participation, it might be locked or made confidential.
Notification
As a further refinement, the e-mails sent to conduct@gitlab.com will be added to the Community Advocates' Zendesk instance on the next iteration of this process.
Collaboration with the Abuse Operations team
As part of their charter, the Abuse Operations team will often detect and hand over CoC violations to the Community Advocates team. Generally discussions on a particular case will happen on a confidential issue, but we can also contact the Abuse Operations team members directly.
Templates
Please use these templates to replace public comments that violate the CoC.
Thread on confidential moderation issue
You can use this template to move over the original public comment's content to the private issue opened for moderation.
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/<project>/issues/<issue number>#note_239807447
@username
> (username's original comment)
Clear CoC violation
Use this template where the comment is a CoC violation
*This comment has been removed for violating the following rule in our [GitLab Code of Conduct](https://about.gitlab.com/community/contribute/code-of-conduct), which is against Rule 3 in our [Terms of Service](https://about.gitlab.com/terms/).*
> Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks.
*Continuing to disregard our Code of Conduct will result in a ban of this account. For more information, please reach out to [conduct@gitlab.com](mailto:conduct@gitlab.com).*
Needs review
Use this template where the comment needs further discussion to understand whether it is a CoC violation. You can discuss it with the other Advocates and ultimately decide whether the comment needs to be moderated or moved back to the original location.
Under Review
*This comment is currently under review for potential violation of the [GitLab Code of Conduct](https://about.gitlab.com/community/contribute/code-of-conduct).*
*For more information, please reach out to [conduct@gitlab.com](mailto:conduct@gitlab.com).*
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