Recently, our moderators made the decision to remove the word “queer” from a user’s introduction post here on Discourse. In the moderator discussion with this user, the moderators also advised the user to remove a trans pride flag from their profile pic. This was a mistake and we apologize for that. We have updated our posting guidelines and guidance on politics in the Ubuntu community to better reflect our diversity policy.
Ubuntu’s diversity policy is meant to ensure individuals can be honest about their identity without being censored or discriminated against. Stating your identity in an introductory post or having a flag in your profile picture is allowed under that policy. While we avoid discussing politics in our project, people are still free to show their identities.
For context: flags and identification have always been allowed on Ubuntu’s main platforms. However, a few months ago, the Ubuntu Forums community merged with our Discourse community after being apart for quite a long time. During the merger, we simply adopted the Forums posting guidelines without a thorough review by the Community Council. We didn’t spot that the Forum had a stricter policy on politics and explicitly disallowed flags. Adding to that issue was a generational difference in the meaning of “queer”, and whether or not it’s still considered a slur. Now that we discovered this difference, we’ll undertake a larger review of the posting guidelines and moderation policies to ensure they align with our diversity policy.
This was a well-meaning mistake that was not intended to single out an individual group or identity. This was simply a misunderstanding of the meaning of certain words and our policy on politics. All individuals are welcome to be their authentic selves!
About the timeline
We’ve received some questions about the lack of response from the community council, so we wanted to give a short description of the timeline.
On Friday, the moderator team contacted the community council for guidance with this case. They identified that their policy hurt this person and asked us how to proceed. Shortly after, the community council received a separate CoC violation complaint from this individual. The community council then asked the mod team to compile all communications, and the council started investigating the matter. The community council also responded to the individual that we were investigating the matter in accordance with our CoC enforcement guide.
During the weekend, the council investigated the matter, reached agreement that this was a mistake that should be rectified, and created a proposal for updated rules and guidance on politics and identity in our community. By Sunday evening CET, we had an agreement on an updated policy and a response to the moderators. Since I’m in charge of the investigation and it was late for me, I went to bed and planned to send the replies out on Monday. However, by the time I woke up, this issue had already exploded publicly. During the night, another council member already sent an initial apology to the person in private. Today, I’ve been busy all day with updating our public policy guides, updating the moderator team, and writing this public message, next to my day job. We generally don’t communicate publicly about CoC enforcement cases, but given this blew up publicly, we wanted to provide everyone with an update this way.
Note that both the community council and most moderators are volunteers not employed by Canonical. For more information on the governance of the Ubuntu project see Project Governance | Ubuntu