Editorial: Announcing In the Library with the Lead Pipe’s Community Code of Conduct

by Ellie Collier and Editorial Board

The Editorial Board is pleased to announce In the Library with the Lead Pipe’s adoption of a Code of Conduct. By doing so, we hope to protect the members of our community from harassing behaviors in Lead Pipe spaces, including this website, our social media spaces, and any other Lead Pipe-sponsored spaces. As of today, everyone participating in Lead Pipe spaces is expected to comply with the Code of Conduct (copied below and also linked in the top navigation bar).

Reported violations of the Code of Conduct will be handled by members of the Lead Pipe Editorial Board. You can contact us at [email protected].

We encourage everyone who interacts with the Lead Pipe community—readers, editors, authors, commenters, and our friends and advisors—to familiarize themselves with the guidelines set forth in the Code of Conduct. We believe that clear, specific Codes of Conduct make communities safer and more welcoming, and are pleased to have one in place for In the Library with the Lead Pipe.

Summary

In the Library with the Lead Pipe intends to help improve communities, libraries, and professional organizations. Our goal is to explore new ideas and start conversations, to document our concerns and argue for solutions. In keeping with our community building values, we are dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, national origin, or economic status. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all Lead Pipe editors at all times, and to all conduct by all participants in any Lead Pipe sponsored spaces, including our website, mailing lists, and social media spaces, along with any other spaces that Lead Pipe hosts, both online and off. Some Lead Pipe-sponsored spaces may have additional guidelines in place, which will be made readily available to participants, who are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Lead Pipe Editorial Board.

Definitions

Harassment includes:

Comments that reinforce oppressive power dynamics related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, national origin, or economic status
Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment
Failure to use a person’s chosen name and pronouns (see https://www.glaad.org/reference/transgender)
Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images in public spaces
Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop
Threats of violence
Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
Deliberate intimidation
Stalking or following
Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes
Sustained disruption of discussion
Unwelcome sexual attention
Pattern of inappropriate contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse
Publication of non-harassing private communication without consent

Lead Pipe prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. The Lead Pipe Editorial Board will not act on complaints regarding:

‘Reverse’ -isms, including “reverse racism,” “reverse sexism,” and “cisphobia”
Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you”
Communicating in a “tone” you don’t find congenial
Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions.

Reporting

If you are being harassed by a member of the Lead Pipe community, if you notice that someone else is being harassed, or if you have any other concerns, please contact the Lead Pipe Editorial Board at [email protected]. If the person who is harassing you is on the Editorial Board, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can. We will follow the best practices as laid out in Geek Feminism’s Conference anti-harassment/Responding to reports.

This code of conduct applies to Lead Pipe sponsored spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of the Lead Pipe community outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take seriously all good-faith reports of harassment by Lead Pipe members, especially members of the Editorial Board. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The Lead Pipe Editorial Board reserves the right to exclude people from Lead Pipe spaces based on their past behavior, including behavior outside Lead Pipe spaces and behavior towards people who are not involved with Lead Pipe.

In order to protect volunteers from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response.

We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of Lead Pipe members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the Lead Pipe Editorial Board may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all Lead Pipe spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other Lead Pipe members or the general public.

Comment Policy

We appreciate and invite your comments and discussion about articles on In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Constructive criticism is one of our primary goals, and we applaud it in our readers. Comments that violate our Code of Conduct, disregard the article’s topic, or fail to add to the discussion will be deleted. We do not edit comments except by request of the poster.

All content posted on In the Library with the Lead Pipe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license including comments added to the articles. As such, all comments may be archived along with the articles they accompany for the purposes of the author’s record of publication.

License and attribution

This policy is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. It is public domain; no credit and no open licensing of your version is required.

This policy is based on the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Geek Feminism community.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Community_anti-harassment

Many thanks to members of the Geek Feminism community for creating the original Community anti-harassment/Policy and especially to Tim Chevalier and Mary Gardner for reviewing Lead Pipe’s code and announcement.