Incident Report: Deputy Asked to Step Away from Official Roles

After Hugh posted one incident report a few days ago, I feel bad to share another report now. Please, bear with me.

A few of the key elements working as a deputy in Community Team are respectful communication and helping to grow the local or global WordPress community. Deputies represent WordPress, and we grant a high level of trust to them from the beginning – at the same time, we also set some expectations. The Community Deputy Agreement outlines those expectations, and every deputy has signed the agreement.

A few experienced community team deputies have been meditating the issues between one local community and one community team deputy for almost a year. Unfortunately, that hasn’t resolved all conflicts, and some months ago, the situation resulted in a formal complaint about the behavior of the deputy in question. The complaint described the deputy communicating and behaving in a divisive, disrespectful manner with others in the local community as well as undermining community team goals by behaving as a gatekeeper in the local community.

A review board was formed, and it requested more information from the deputy in question, members of the local community, and other deputies who have been working with the deputy. The review board found that comprehensive additional information validated the claims in the original complaint. The deputy in question has undermined the community team goals by acting as a gatekeeper, and communicating and behaving towards the local community members in a disrespectful and deceptive manner.

During the mediation done previously, the deputy and representatives of the local community had agreed on certain things (refraining from gatekeeping behavior for example) to make the situation better. The review board found that the deputy has not followed through on this agreement. The deputy has also continued non-collaborative behavior, even after they were informed about the complaint and review process.

Based on the original complaint and comprehensive additional information, the review board had multiple lengthy and challenging discussions, not least because this is the first time the community team has faced this kind of problem.

In this case, the review board concluded that the deputy in question needs to step away from the deputy role. In addition to that, the person was asked to step away from the organizer role and refrain from speaking and volunteering in official WordPress events for a minimum of 12 months. This decision is severe, but the review board believes it to be the only way to allow the local community to revitalize fully. If the person wishes to be part of official WordPress events in any role other than attendee after the 12 months, they can apply for an official role at that time.

The review board included Andrea Middleton (@andreamiddleton), Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph), Francesca Marano (@francina), Hugh Lashbrooke (@hlashbrooke), Kevin Cristiano (@kcristiano) and Timi Wahalahti (@sippis). Andrea facilitated the work of the review board but refrained from voting on the matter. Thank you all who shared information with us and helped the board come to this difficult decision, we hope that the local community can be revitalized and function more healthily going forward.

Edited after publication for grammar/typos by @chanthaboune. 23:53 UTC, Wed, Aug 28. The content was unchanged.

Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#wpdiversity) on Aug 28, 2019

Attending: @jillbinder @cguntur @miriamgoldman @rahuldsarker

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1567011603003800

Agenda

1. Reports of what you’re working on, with colours:
   – Green: on plan. No help needed.
   – Yellow: not on plan but I have a strategy to get there
   – Red: not on plan, no plan to get there, I’m lost!
2. Our two workshops, Sat, Oct 26 and Sun, Oct 27, both at
10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm UTC
for 2.5 hours.
3. Mention in the media recently
4. What I’m working on

Reports

What are you working on? How is it going? Do you have any obstacles?

  • Green: on plan. No help needed.
  • Yellow: not on plan but I have a strategy to get there
  • Red: not on plan, no plan to get there, I’m lost!

@cguntur (working on our Speaker Mentorship program)
I am currently working on contacting Jeremy and getting the resources page ready

I am on yellow. I contacted Jeremy about the speaker mentor and about his availability. I haven’t heard back from him.

Yellow on the resources page as well. I will probably have it ready by Monday.

@miriamgoldman (leading our Train the Trainers, running trainings, editing our video, and more)

Green: Held a training last week, went well, got more interactions. Also am editing our current video to streamline what we have.

Yellow: Following up with prospective trainers – I got hit by the busy train at work and just haven’t had the time to do this. Following Labour Day things will be better.

Green: Adding some new prompts to our Trainer script – will be sharing with Jill and Angela once ready.

@rahuldsarker (Translations team, running a small test of a translation in Bengali)
Communities with the local translation team for Bengali translation for the training materials.

@angelasjin (Train the Trainer)
I handled a few HS emails, and have a training scheduled for next week, but again, so takers so far!

Our two workshops, Sat, Oct 26 and Sun, Oct 27

Just a reminder that I’m running the full workshop for our team so that everyone can understand what we’re doing plus I’m recording it to use for future Trainings.

Sat, Oct 26 and Sun, Oct 27
10am PT / 1pm ET / 5pm UTC
for 2.5 hours.

Mention in the media recently

We got a mention from @pollyplummer regarding the PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. Central Europe Conference Cancelation:
https://wptavern.com/php-central-europe-conference-canceled-due-to-lack-of-speaker-diversity
Thank you, Sarah!

What I’m working on

I have only been working 3 days since our last meeting, thanks to having a vacation. (I recommend those!)

In that time I’ve been focusing entirely on our Building A Diverse Speaker Roster document and working on the diversity WCUS Workshop. (Both of those items are related to each other.)

Thanks for being here and thanks for all you’re doing!

End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1567013563038800

#wpdiversity

New Deputy Handbook page outlining a deputy review procedure

A few months ago, the Global Community Team received a formal complaint about the behavior of a community team deputy. This was a dismaying first, and required a new response procedure. The deputy in this case has been informed that an investigation is underway, and has been asked to refrain from actively participating as a deputy in this program until the review panel has reached a decision and informed all parties. An incident report will be published in the next week or so, with information about the resolution of that complaint. 

In the meantime, I’ve documented the procedure in a new Deputy Handbook page, with some clear information about what kind of behavior might result in someone being asked to step away from the community deputy role.

If you enjoy creating and reviewing procedures, please feel free to suggest ways to improve the current practice. If you would simply like to know what kind of behavior might result in a contributor being asked to stop volunteering as a deputy, I’ll save you a click and list the reasons below. I hope the list is straightforward, and doesn’t include any surprises. This should line up with the content of the agreement that all deputies are asked to sign before taking on the role.

Reasons a contributor might be asked to step away from their role as a deputy:

  1. Malfeasance, which may include attempted or actual fraud, or other intentional action that injures or seeks to injure an individual or group, while carrying out the responsibilities of a deputy. 
  2. Failure to meet community team expectations for a deputy, even after the deputy has been asked to change a behavior. “Deal-breaker” behavior includes:
    • Anything that does not match the expectations on the Representing WordPress handbook page.
    • Communicating with contributors (including community organizers, speakers, sponsors, volunteers) and fellow community team members in a demeaning, disrespectful, or deceptive way.
    • Breaking confidentiality of the community team email inbox, incident investigation and resolution process, or other sensitive/personally identifiable information accessed while performing the duties of a deputy.
    • Recommending that organizers or contributors work in a way that intentionally defrauds the community team or undermines community team goals.

As you can see, there are expectations for deputies that go beyond the expectations for local meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. and WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizers. This is because the community team deputy role requires increased trust due to its particular responsibilities and access to private information. Deputies are frequently asked to guide other contributors in their work, and therefore are expected to communicate and behave in a respectful, collaborative, and genuine way, so they can effectively work with community members and other deputies.

If you think anything in this list is confusing or surprising, or you have any suggestions for ways to improve the response procedure for cases like this, please share your feedback in a comment on this post.

Call for Volunteers: 2020 Global Sponsorship Working Group

Do you love looking at spreadsheets, balance sheets, PNLs, and budget projections? Do you really know your way around a sponsorship deck? If the answer to either (or both!) of these questions is, “YES!” then you might be interested in joining the 2020 global sponsorship working group.

The WordPress Global Sponsorship Program (born in 2013 as the Multi-Event Sponsorship Program), provides financial support to WordPress community events around the world. It’s time to analyze the program yet again and come up with a proposal for the 2020 edition.

We’d like to post a proposal for the 2020 Global Sponsorship Program no later than 20 November 2019, hoping to be able to send it to sponsors by 25 November. I’d like to gather a group of 5–7 people to work on this short project.

Time commitment: 2–4 hours of independent program analysis time plus two 1-hour video conference meetings, all between 7–15 November.

Experience required: accounting experience with organizations with an annual gross income of $5M+ AND/OR experience analyzing/reviewing multiple sponsorship decks per year. WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. fundraising experience is also strongly preferred.

If you have skills/experience and the interest/time, please comment on this post! We’ll announce the working group members by 21 October, and I’ll reach out by 23 October to group members to schedule the two video meetings. #global-sponsorship

Incident Report: Misappropriation of WordCamp Funds

A key element in the Community Team’s program is trust. Organisers are granted a high level of trust from the start – both in terms of responsibility with representing WordPress to their local community, as well as with their event finances. Despite the potential risks involved, in this program, we work from a place of trust rather than requiring everyone to prove themselves first.

A few months ago, the Community Team received an incident report alleging that a local WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organiser had been mishandling the funds that had been sent in the form of the Global Community Sponsorship Grant. A response team investigated, working with local community members, to discover more facts. In the end, based on the lead organiser’s inability to account for approximately US$ 7,000, the response team concluded that the organiser had used the funds for their own purposes. As a result of this, the WordCamp could not take place, and the following actions were taken to prevent further fraudulent behaviour by this person. 

Ultimately, the organiser who was responsible for the missing funds has been asked to pay back the money that they were unable to account for. If they do not follow the repayment schedule, the theft will be reported to local legal authorities. As a further result, this organiser has been asked to permanently refrain from taking part in any official WordPress event as a speaker, sponsor, organiser, or volunteer, and, for a 12-month period, from attending any official WordPress events. This decision’s severity reflects the finding that the organiser knowingly appropriated WordCamp funds for their personal use.

Going forward, members of the meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. group will be invited to apply to organise meetup events, with future WordCamp plans on hold until new organisers have gained some experience, and the community has recovered from this breach of trust. The meetup group will continue to function like normal and a WordCamp in the area will still be possible once the local community has found some stability.

This case may also change the way that Global Sponsorship Grants are administered and tracked in the future, to reduce future financial risk to the central organization. 

Hugh Lashbrooke and Rocio Valdivia lead the response team on this case, with support and oversight from Andrea Middleton, and a great deal of assistance from local community members who will not be named here in order to preserve the confidentiality of the case and protect them from any direct reprisals. Thank you to all the deputies and community members who took time to assist with this investigation and to help the team come to a reasonable outcome that protects the local community while continuing to foster the growth that we are all working towards.

X-post: Feature and maintenance update for WordCamp.org: July 16 – August 23 2019 edition

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: Feature and maintenance update for WordCamp.org: July 16 – August 23 2019 edition

WordPress meetup organizer newsletter: August 2019

Hello WordPress MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers!

Welcome to another meetup organizer newsletter full of news, information, and inspiration for your local meetup.

Newsletter contents:

  • Diverse Speaker Training Workshops
  • Organizer Best Practices: How to address panic
  • New event format from the Perth WordPress Meetup
  • Reminders

Diverse Speaker Training Workshops

As organizers, have you ever had challenges getting women and people from other underrepresented groups in tech to speak at your meetups and WordCamps?

Check out the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training workshop (#wpdiversity): https://make.wordpress.org/training/speaker-training

Check out their new Intro video (2 min) that explains what this workshop is all about!

This is now up on their page, along with:

  • A new description
  • Updated results
  • The new four step process for meetups to take to run the workshop

Check it out here: http://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

Upcoming training timings:
– Sept 4 at 11am-1pm UTC

Sign up at http://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

Organizer Best Practices: How to address panic

As an organizer of community events, you might run into situations when you need to address panic. This post on the WordPress Community blog, looks at important ways to recognize stressed behaviours and 4 steps to address panic.

There are also listed ways to get in touch with the WordPress Global Community Team, who are very likely to have through their combined experience, would be able to help you in the best ways possible.

This is part of the on-going Organizer Best Practices series of discussions on the WordPress Community team blog.

New event format from Perth WordPress Meetup

The Perth (Western Australia) meetup decided to change up the format of their regular meetup, and they have had some great feedback about it.

Based on the feedback they received, they found members who were developers found some talks not technical enough, and for members who were users they were sometimes too technical.

So for every topic they organizer a meetup around they added a second talk. Their format now is

– Technical Talk
– Networking
– User Talk
– Q & A with ‘the panel’

This is also a great example of using feedback from attendees to iterate on meetup formats.

Reminders

That’s it for now — chat with you next time!

Your friends on the Community Team

make.wordpress.org/community

#newsletter #meetup

WordCamp blocks are live!

After a round of beta testing, four of our WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. blocks are now available on all WordCamp.org sites!

The four blocks are:

  • Speakers
  • Sessions
  • Sponsors
  • Organizers

Each of these blocks is an enhanced replacement of a WordCamp shortcodeShortcode A shortcode is a placeholder used within a WordPress post, page, or widget to insert a form or function generated by a plugin in a specific location on your site.. Most of the same functionality is available in these new blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. forms, along with many new options, while the block editor UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. makes customization much easier than wrangling shortcode parameters.

Documentation for the new blocks can be found on the WordCamp Organizer Handbook.

Going forward, newly created WordCamp sites will use the blocks in their default content. Existing WordCamp sites will still use the shortcodes, however, so no sites should have broken layouts as a result of this change.

A fifth shortcode replacement block, for WordCamp schedules, is still in development. In addition to providing a block editor UI for customizing the output of a camp’s schedule, the new Schedule block will change the HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. markup of the schedule to be CSS-grid-based instead of table-based. Stay tuned for more updates about this block.

Thanks to all the folks who worked to make these blocks happen: @coreymckrill, @vedjain, @iandunn, @ryelle, @melchoyce, @karmatosed, @andreamiddleton. Also thanks to everyone who gave us feedback during scoping and betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. testing!

X-post: Community team update – 15-08-2019

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/updates: Community team update – 15-08-2019

Proposal: Speaker feedback tool

In the past, the only ways we have gathered feedback from WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. attendees about a speaker session was to use a survey/poll or collect feedback at the event via paper forms.

There are a few problems with these approaches:

  1. Surveys are sent out after the event and therefore don’t usually have good response rates.
  2. The more time that has passed since an attendee has seen a session, the less detail they might remember, which makes the feedback less precise.
  3. The default survey does not collect very much detail about session content and presentation delivery.
  4. Feedback shared in hard copy isn’t easy to share with speakers (so they can grow their skills) or track (so the organizers can compare year to year).

This is a proposal that we build a special speaker-feedback tool to collect attendee feedback that solves those problems.

Goals of the tool:

  • Collect feedback for individual sessions during the event.
  • Provide easy access to feedback to the WordCamp organizers and speakers.

Where could it live?

  • The feedback tool could be accessed at an easy-to-remember URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org, like <year.cityname.wordcamp.org/feedback>
  • The schedule page could have a ‘Feedback’ button on each displayed session.

Possible requirements worth some discussion:

  1. Because anonymous feedback is more likely to include abuse, should the feedback tool require users to be logged in?
  2. Should there be an automated way to report abuse to the Community Team?
  3. Would it be helpful for organizers to be able to edit the text-based feedback, so as to remove abuse, slang terms, confusing content, and/or to correct spellings before sharing with speakers?
  4. Should there be a way for the feedback to be made public, and if so, should it show up anywhere other than in the comments on each individual Session?
  5. Should there be a way to export the feedback, and should feedback be included in a requested privacy export?

Feedback Formats

Feedback could be given in a few different ways – either on their own or as a combination:

Emojis

  • Pros: Simple, standardized way of showing how an attendee felt about a talk. Encourages positive feedback.
  • Cons: Could come at the expense if useful critical feedback.

Ratings

  • Pros: Can be provided quickly. Usually allows for more accurate sentiment toward speaker sessions.
  • Cons: Can be easily skewed either way. Lower ratings without proper feedback are not very useful.

Free text

  • Pros: Would encourage attendees to be more thoughtful. Should provide more actionable feedback for speakers.
  • Cons: Some attendees will not be willing to provide more lengthy feedback, or they may take a longer time to submit it.

Mockups

Here are some very early speculative mockups thanks to @karmatosed

Version One

Version Two

Possible Future Additions

  • Feedback content could be added as “testimonials” for sessions
  • Allow speakers to add feedback to their WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ profiles
  • Add feedback to WordPress.tv sessions
  • Recommend other talks to attend (or watch on WordPress.tv) after giving feedback

Questions and Feedback

  1. What formats of feedback should we provide (emojis, ratings, text, etc.)?
  2. Do we encourage only positive feedback?
  3. Should responders be logged into WordPress.org in order to leave feedback?

#proposal #tools