Governance Documents

Documents regarding governance procedures, rules, and guidelines.

Steward Code of Conduct

Ported from the original document on Feb. 9, 2025.

Our Pledge

We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, sexual identity and orientation, any other born or inherent characteristics.

We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

Scope

The Steward Code of Conduct applies within all League governance spaces, and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include communications in open League infrastructure (including but not limited to Coordination, Consensus, and Broadcast), and in publicly visible conversations relating to matters of League governance. Behaviour outside of League governance is covered by the League Community Code, not this document.

Our Standards

Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our community include:

Examples of unacceptable behavior include:

These standards apply to any use of League centralized governance communications infrastructure, and to publicly accessible words and actions related to League governance concerns. Publicly accessible, in this case, means in avenues that may be viewed by any given person without permission or prior notice, and with or without login in venues that allow account approval for the general public.

Enforcement Responsibilities

The Conduct Working Group is a body of Stewards who have demonstrated the ability to approach and resolve conflict in a professional fashion, without lashing out or acting in anger. Approval of members of the Conduct Working Group is by consensus vote of active Stewards, given the responsibility placed upon them. The CWG must consist of 3 or more Stewards, preferably an odd number; in the event of a tie due to an unfilled position or recusal, decision responsibility will fall to the Stewards as a whole, excluding any directly involved parties.

The Stewards as a whole, and the Conduct Working Group in specific, are responsible for clarifying and enforcing our standards of acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any behavior that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.

The Stewards and Conduct Working Group have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to the Steward Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate.

As with the League Community Code, this document is to be interpreted by the rules laid out in the League Interpretation Code. To stress, this includes interpreting it based on the following, in descending order of priority:

  1. The spirit of its contents and the underlying values which produced said contents, considered in light of how those values and that spirit have evolved during the League’s existence.

  2. Avoiding blatantly unreasonable conclusions and outcomes.

  3. The plain and ordinary meaning of the text of the Referring Document, in light of the differing backgrounds from which its drafters and editors have come and not in a manner which enables pedantry, obfuscation, or obstructionism.

  4. The above bases of interpretation as applied to all other Binding Documents to the extent that such is necessary to unambiguously interpret this document.

Enforcement

Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported to the Conduct Working Group responsible for enforcement at conduct@websiteleague.org. 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. Discussion of a report is to be conducted in a limited-access Coordination channel.

Members of the Conduct Working Group must ensure they investigate reports with the goal of ensuring that League collaborative spaces remain a safe and healthy environment. Any investigation must be conducted with a goal of conflict resolution and mutual understanding, and approached with as much kindness and respect toward all involved parties as possible, except in the case of clear and obvious malice.

Any member of the Conduct Working Group who finds they cannot maintain a calm and levelheaded approach must recuse themselves from the case at hand. Members of the Conduct Working Group may force a recusal of another party via a simple majority vote.

Anyone in the Conduct Working Group involved in a conflict under investigation, or with close personal ties to parties in a conduct under investigation that may affect their impartiality, must recuse themselves. In the event a conflict involves a majority of the Conduct Working Group, responsibility falls upon the body of active Stewards as a whole.

The Stewards as a whole are to make the best effort possible in appointing minorities to the CWG. In the event that a conflict involves a minority issue where no members of the Conduct Working Group are a member of that minority, the Conduct Working Group must seek outside advice.

Enforcement Guidelines

Community leaders will follow these Community Impact Guidelines in determining the consequences for any action they deem in violation of the Steward Code of Conduct:

1. Correction

Community Impact: Use of inappropriate language or other behavior deemed unprofessional or unwelcome in the community.

Consequence: A private, written warning from the Conduct Working Group, providing clarity around the nature of the violation and an explanation of why the behavior was inappropriate. A public apology may be requested. In the event of a conflict within the body of Stewards, involved parties may be requested to take part in a mediation or conflict resolution procedure.

2. Warning

Community Impact: A violation through a single incident or series of actions.

Consequence: A warning with consequences for continued behavior. No interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Steward Code of Conduct, for a specified period of time. This includes avoiding interactions in community spaces as well as external channels like social media. Violating these terms may lead to a temporary or permanent ban.

3. Cooling-off period

Community impact: A single incident or series of incidents that show that a Steward is either under extreme stress, or is suffering extreme stress due to their role as a Steward, in a way that impacts their own or others' ability to healthily and productively accomplish their work as a Steward.

Consequence: An enforced break from the responsibilities of Stewardship. This should be utilized in cases where someone has demonstrated a track record of useful work, but whose condition has changed in such a way as to be unhealthy for them or others should their participation continue in that fashion. The Steward is placed on the roll of inactive Stewards for a period ranging from days to months, at CWG discretion, and is expected to adhere to this. In the event the Steward in question has assumed responsibility for a critical task or role, they must make this clear and that responsibility must be passed to others for the duration.

This must be approved by a two-thirds vote from the body of active Stewards.

Call it an enforced vacation.

4. Dismissal from Stewardship

Community Impact: An egregious incident or a pattern of behavior which demonstrates an inability or unwillingness to productively and calmly resolve interpersonal conflict in their role as a Steward, or which interferes with the ability of the Stewards to run the Website League in a healthy and productive fashion.

Consequence: The steward is removed from League stewardship, without prejudice; if they wish to rejoin the Stewards in the future, the ordinary Stewardship nomination and vote process applies. The responsibilities of the removed Steward must be assigned to other Stewards.

This must be approved by a two-thirds vote from the body of active Stewards.

5. Temporary Ban

Community Impact: A serious violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior.

Consequence: A temporary ban from any sort of interaction or public communication with the community for a specified period of time. No public or private interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Steward Code of Conduct, is allowed during this period. Violating these terms may lead to a permanent ban.

This may be applied as an emergency measure to halt extreme and obvious misbehavior while the Conduct Working Group (or other responsible group) conducts an investigation.

6. Permanent Ban

Community Impact: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of minority groups and members of same.

Consequence: A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction with League governance, including all infrastructure. This may also be accompanied by a League-wide ban, as implemented by individual site staff. This must be approved by consensus vote of active Stewards.

Attribution

This Code of Conduct is a modified version of the Contributor Covenant, version 2.1, available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct.html.

Community Impact Guidelines were inspired by Mozilla's code of conduct enforcement ladder.

For answers to common questions about this code of conduct, see the FAQ at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq. Translations are available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/translations.

Responsibilities and Processes for Website League Keyholders

Ported from the original document on Dec. 13, 2024.

Last updated: 2024-12-13

Rationale

To facilitate collaboration between Stewards, as well as to ensure all users have visibility into the workings of the Website League, the League operates a set of central, self-hosted services. The nature of these services requires a heightened level of trust in people that are given full administrative access to them, as a bad actor could use that access for a variety of malicious purposes (changing access permissions for various users, exfiltrating user data stored on central infrastructure such as emails, messages (both public and private), etc.).

In mitigating this risk, we introduce the concept of a “Keyholder” role. Keyholders are designated Stewards who have full administrative access to central infrastructure services, and are tasked with ensuring that infrastructure remains operational, secured, and up to date. The set of Keyholders should ideally remain limited to minimize the attack surface of central infrastructure, and Keyholder status should only be granted to people who can be trusted with its sensitive nature.

While Keyholders are trusted with access to more of the Website League’s infrastructure, this should not elevate them beyond the status of any other Steward in governance. The purpose of the Keyholder role is to ensure smooth operation of central League services, and to minimize the attack surface of those services by granting access to as few people as possible. Keyholders are not to be viewed as “above” Stewards in any sense, and Keyholders must not abuse their elevated access to attempt to subvert, disrupt, or overrule League governance processes.

Current Keyholders

This list reflects the current state of who is granted Keyholder status. If, at any time, Keyholder status has been granted or revoked from any person, this section of the proposal is to be amended to reflect those changes.

The current list of people granted Keyholder status is as follows:

Audit Log

Any changes made to the list of Keyholders must be logged here, as an amendment to this proposal, for transparency.

Duties

Keyholders have a set of duties and expectations that they must follow as part of their role. These duties are as follows:

Processes

To ensure central infrastructure operates smoothly, and Keyholders remain aware of how to carry out their duties, there are a set of processes that Keyholders should follow.

Access

Keyholders require elevated permissions and access to various central infrastructure services to perform their duties. The additional access granted to Keyholders is as follows:

Membership

Any Steward can be nominated to be a Keyholder through a proposal on Consensus. The process for nominating a Keyholder is the same as our process for nominating Stewards. Keep in mind that a very high level of trust is required for Keyholders, and as such, Keyholders should only be nominated if more Keyholders are desired, and if the nominee has demonstrated a high level of trustworthiness within the Website League already. Only existing Stewards are eligible to be nominated as Keyholders, to ensure that Keyholders are held accountable to the Stewardship body through the same mechanisms as all other Stewards.

At any time, a Keyholder may decide to temporarily relieve themselves of their duties for whatever reason, such as changes in personal circumstances leading them to be unable to adequately perform their duties as a Keyholder. In this event, access to all services listed under the Access section must be temporarily disabled, and a note is to be recorded in the Audit Log section of this document. At any time, they may choose to return to Keyholder duties, in which case an active Keyholder should re-enable all their Keyholder access and record another note in the Audit log.

Keyholders can also be removed from the role for the following reasons: