Moderation and Defense of our Matrix Community

Our Mission

The Ubuntu Matrix homeserver is meant to reflect the values of the Ubuntu Community. It should be an open, transparent and welcoming environment to everyone from across the globe.

We believe a welcoming and diverse community should look like a patchwork quilt of different ideas and beliefs across all kinds of people working toward a common purpose. The spirit of this mission is codified in the Ubuntu Code of Conduct and our Diversity policy, which applies to all official rooms on the Ubuntu Matrix homeserver and clarifies the underlying intention of all roles.

We have two types of people who help us achieve this goal.

• Defenders operate across all public rooms and fight clear cases of spam and abuse by newly interacting accounts.
• Moderators take care of individual rooms, helping foster welcoming and collaborative environments while managing conflict resolution and handling poor conduct.

The remainder of this document explains these roles in more detail.

"Defenders" fight abuse^🔗

Defenders fight clear abuse and spam. They operate across all public Ubuntu Matrix rooms.

Speed and coverage are important to this role as it deals with the vast majority of issues which are blatant abuses of the service by newly interacting accounts.

Expectations^🔗

• Handling abusers of the service in a dispassionate and professional way.
• Deferring all situations that aren’t certain.
• Being a high trust individual for the level of privileges being granted.

Scope^🔗

• Defenders may only act on newly interacting accounts on the Ubuntu Homeserver (by rough estimate of the Defender).
• If any situation is uncertain it should be passed to the Moderators of that room (see: How do I find a Moderator?).
• Interpretation of events by a room owner or Moderator always take priority over a Defender.

Examples of Abuse^🔗

• Spamming
• Advertisement
• Extremely disrupting behavior

How do I become a Defender?^🔗

Defenders are appointed by the Matrix Council. Room owners can make recommendations to the Matrix Council, but only Ubuntu Members and Canonical employees are currently eligible.

When our tooling improves so that Defenders need less permissions, we can open the role up to more people.

How do I contact a Defender?^🔗

Defenders can be contacted in this Matrix room: #matrix-ops:ubuntu.com . In order to draw defenders attention you can add this in your message !defenders

"Moderators" foster the community^🔗

Moderators are appointed by room owners to help achieve the aspirations of their room while keeping it a distinctly Ubuntu place.

Some rooms may have mechanical expectations such as strict Q&A where others may be open to varying types and degrees of banter.

Thoughtfulness, flexibility and humility are important to this role.

Expectations^🔗

• Leading through example.
• Fostering longterm successful room environments.
• Detaching from situations when feeling pressured to act.
• Willingness to seek guidance.
• Performing intervention only when absolutely necessary.

Scope^🔗

• Moderators operate within the rooms they’re entrusted by the room owners.

Example Cases^🔗

• Guiding people on how the room operates.
• Helping facilitate room aspirations such as writing documentation, creating polls and performing leadership to acheive the owner’s vision.
• Fostering the the spirit of Ubuntu through example.

How do I become a Moderator?^🔗

Room owners will select individuals from the activate participants of their room who they think might make a good Moderator. Owners are encouraged to have an onboarding processes with a trial period before granting room privileges.

How do I find a Moderator?^🔗

As privileges aren’t always visible over the IRC bridge, each room is required to list their Moderators in the room description. Failing that Moderators will often have visible privilege levels by their name.

Are room owners also Moderators?^🔗

Not necessarily. Although room owners are ultimately responsible for ensuring their room is well-moderated, they’re not required to do the moderation themselves. They can appoint other people to become moderators.

Are room moderators also Defenders?^🔗

Moderators are a fallback if no Defenders are available. However, moderators should only perform this duty when it doesn’t interfere or impeded on the time required to perform their best Moderator work.

Policies^🔗

Room descriptions^🔗

Room descriptions should contain a link to the Ubuntu CoC and a list of room Moderators to contact in case of an issue.

Non-interaction policy^🔗

Newly interacting accounts that are abusing the service through methods like spam, advertisement and nefarious motives are strictly to be ignored.

Engagement is valuable to these accounts and interacting with them adds unnecessary load to the maintenance of Ubuntu Homeserver and its Defenders.