Immediate and frequent communication with accused and complainants in all cases

The CWG reviews new issues that have been reported at its weekly meeting, and assigns someone to respond at that time, though we may choose to respond sooner to urgent issues. The first step is to acknowledge the report and ask for additional information if needed. At that point, we would also reach out to other involved parties to get their perspective. Once we have heard from all of the involved parties, the CWG will then review the matter and work with the involved parties to try to reach a resolution.

While it is not unusual for this process to take several weeks, it is important to keep in mind that the CWG typically only gets involved in matters that the parties are unable to resolve on their own. For matters that may take an unusually long time to resolve, we have discussed providing all involved parties with weekly status reports so they know that their issue is still being worked on.

I was also thinking about this one last night, and it seems that one part of our process that could use clarification is anonymous reporting.

Our incident report form and email template asks people making reports to identify who they are, their relationship to incident being reported, and contact information. We do this because the first step of our conflict resolution process is to address the perceived conflict directly with those involved, and without knowing who they are, that's not possible.

To my knowledge, the CWG has only ever fielded one anonymous incident report, and that was one that concerned a sitting member of the CWG. Beyond that, however, it would seem that being able to provide immediate and frequent communication between the parties (which is what we want to do) would also mean that we couldn't field anonymous reports.

All of this makes sense, and we certainly want people to feel safe reporting CoC issues without fear of repercussion from anyone (including members of the CWG).

The unstated concern I wanted to address with my comment in #8 is with people using the cloak of anonymity as a way to harass or threaten others and/or "brigading" the CWG with anonymous or pseudoanonymous reports from outside the community.

What would be ideal is a way for people to be able to file reports in a safe way that preserves their confidentiality, yet allows the CWG to keep tin contact with everyone involved so that we can better understand the issues at play, follow our conflict resolution process as much as possible, and follow up on any potential resolution.

Assuming that the CWG continues to accept anonymous reports, what's the best way to ensure that we can continue to communicate with the reporter and support our conflict resolution process as much as possible?

How can we prevent bad actors from trying to take advantage of anonymity to threaten others, or incite groups of outsiders to file large numbers of anonymous reports as a form of harassment?

Moving to "Needs review" to solicit additional suggestions and feedback.

Revisiting this issue after two years. In that time, we have fielded several reports from anonymous reporters both through our contact form and via anonymous emails. To make it easier for people to file anonymous reports, we've made several changes to our policies and process, including:

• Updating our incident report form to let people know what individuals will receive reports made to the CWG, and given people an option to report issues that may not require action at this time, but that the Community Working Group should be aware of for its records.
• Updating our conflict resolution process to make it clear that the CWG reserves the right not to act on reports it feels are being made in bad faith and/or in an attempt to harass or intimidate other community members (addressing the concern I shared in #8 above).
• In addition, the CWG's revised charter makes it clear that the group’s primary responsibility is for the overall health of the community, not just resolving interpersonal conflicts, which means we can consider how a situation may impact others in the community, not just those individuals directly involved.

In cases where the CWG receives anonymous reports, we have had most success when those reports point to information that can be corroborated, whether that's pointing to something viewable online or referring us to others who may have awareness of the issue in question.

Given all that, I'm going to move this to RTBC, and unless anyone has any other questions or concerns that need to be addressed, move it to Fixed in a couple of weeks.