Lets remove gossip from Julia stewardship

I can understand that it’s frustrating to be told that some person or persons have complained about your behavior without being given the details of the complaint. Communications to Julia Stewards are, however, strictly confidential for very good reasons—people must feel safe to report harassment and threatening behavior. This is simply not a legal proceeding: you do not have a right to face your accuser and the stakes are low—the most severe punishment Julia Stewards can impose is a ban from Julia forums which can be appealed after at most six months.

While I cannot talk about any specific complaints, I can present some general rules that everyone should abide by when communicating with other members of the Julia community:

  • Be civil and polite when messaging people publicly or privately
  • Do not send threatening, harassing or intimidating messages
  • Do not send people messages with profanities directed at them
  • If someone has asked you to stop messaging them, stop
  • Do not keep sending messages to people who have not replied to earlier messages—consider this an implicit request to stop
  • Do not send unsolicited messages to express your disapproval of a person or their employer

These rules always apply to communications through Julia forums like Discourse, GitHub, Slack or Zulip. However, they also apply to messages sent by other means to people that you know primarily through the Julia community. If, for example, someone emails another community member in a manner that violates these rules and it is reported to the Julia Stewards, it may lead to official action even though we cannot prevent anyone from sending emails.

If you follow these rules—which I would hope I didn’t have to spell out, but here we are—then you should be fine.

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