Matrix Safety Guild WG
Charter
Overview
The Matrix Safety Guild is a space to facilitate communication between safety projects and encourage collaboration. The Guild encourages projects to share transparent updates in advance of upcoming work, in order to provide opportunity for early feedback and collaboration. The Guild provides space for contributors to discuss safety-sensitive problems that they have encountered. All members, including Foundation staff and representatives participate within the Guild as equal partners in mutual understanding and cooperation. This charter formalises the governance of the Guild to safe-guard the space.
Membership
Membership is maintained to foster a collaborative environment of mutual trust between contributors.
Eligibility
To be eligible, applicants must either:
- Contribute to an open source project in the Matrix ecosystem and be responsible for a safety-sensitive concern within that project.
- Be actively involved with the moderation of a community on the public Matrix network that has significant ties to, or contributes feedback to, a project that is a member of the Safety Guild.
Guild members may introduce other applicants to the gateway procedure when they can provide sufficient reasoning to the rest of the Guild and address any raised concerns.
Gateway Procedure
To join the Guild, first join the landing room and answer the following questions:
- Which project are you affiliated with? Can you please also link the repository url?
- Why are you interested in the Guild specifically?
This could be answered as follows:
Hi, I am applying to join the Safety Guild.
I contribute to the Draupnir project https://github.com/the-draupnir-project/Drapunir. I want to share the work I have been doing with other safety contributors, particularly on standardising admin APIs between homeserver implementations.
Application Review Process
On receipt of an application, the application is announced to other Guild members internally and members are prompted to raise concerns. They may ask follow-up questions or clarifications to the applicant. Guild members should acknowledge this notification with a thumbs-up emoji.
Chairs are responsible for ensuring enough feedback has been gathered before proceeding, including acknowledgements from active members.
After feedback has been gathered, and there are no concerns remaining, a chair accepts the application and invites the applicant to the space.
Removal Process
If trust has been violated, chairs are obligated to try to mediate the concern or remove contributors.
Confidentiality Notice
Within the announcements channel
Project updates made in the announcements channel are public information unless explicitly stated in the announcement.
Within the space
The Chatham House Rule applies within the Safety Guild space. The individual membership roster of the Working Group is not to be disclosed publicly in order to protect the privacy of contributors.
Security-sensitive or confidential details could intentionally or unintentionally be disclosed anywhere within the space as a result of discussion. These details may not even be explicitly noted as confidential or of security context. In these situations, members must maintain confidentiality in order not to undermine the mutual trust between Guild members.
Generally, members are expected to be considerate of the work of other projects and act responsibly with details discussed with them.
Chairs reserve the right to remove members from the Guild if it has been established that trust has been broken.
Responsibilities
Reporting
The Guild produces a report to inform the T&S Committee of Guild activities. The report is split into two parts: one informs the committee with a general summary of Guild activity, and another specifically highlights anything that may require committee attention.
The informational section summarises project updates and announcements, and any notable discussion undertaken within the Guild.
The attentive section is used to escalate discussion or make the committee aware of events. An example would be a new spam pattern within the community that is driving people away.
The Foundation
Amendments to the charter must be explicitly agreed by consensus of Safety Guild contributors. The sponsor and chairs are responsible for proposing amendments when changes are requested by the Foundation. Foundation staff or other representatives are not exempt from the membership process.
Decision Making
All decisions are made by proposing changes and eliminating raised concerns. The autonomy of decision-making lies with contributors.
Chairs
Chairs are highly trusted contributors responsible for maintaining the space. Chairs are selected by contributors in consensus. Chairs are responsible for ensuring continuity of the community. Chairs have final authority on a way forward in times of crisis.
Should chairs become vacant, it is the responsibility of Guild members to field volunteers and elect new chairs. Should the position of sponsor and both chairs become vacant or unaccountable, the Foundation's Trust & Safety Committee should organise replacements or amend the charter while respecting the membership process, autonomy, and consent of contributors. If this option has been exhausted, the Foundation should close the Working Group.
Members
Sponsor: Jade