In the past week I had two people separately tell me what they thought the Python Software Foundation Conduct WG did and both were wrong (and incidentally in the same way). As such, I wanted to clarify what exactly the WG does for people in case others also misunderstand what the group does.

I would say there are 4 things the Conduct WG actually does (in order from least to most frequent):

1. Maintain the PSF Code of Conduct (CoC)
2. Let PSF members know when they have gone against the CoC in a public space
3. Record disciplinary actions taken by groups associated with the PSF
4. Provide conduct advice to Python groups

Let's talk about what each of these mean.

Maintain the CoC

In September 2019 the CoC was rewritten from a two paragraph "don't be mean" CoC to a more professional one. That rewrite actually is what led to the establishment of the Conduct WG in the first place. Since then, the Conduct WG is in charge of making any changes as necessary to the document. But ever since the rewrite was completed, it is rarely touched.

Let PSF members know when they have gone against the CoC publicly

Becoming a member of the PSF requires that you "agree to the community Code of Conduct". As such, if you are found to be running afoul of the CoC publicly where you also declare your PSF membership, then the Conduct WG will reach out to you and kindly let you know what you did wrong and to please not do that (technically you could get referred to the PSF board to have your membership revoked if you did something really bad, but I'm not aware of that ever happening).

But there are two key details about this work of the WG that I think people don't realize that are important. One is the Conduct WG does not go out on the internet looking for members who have done something that's in violation of the CoC. What happens instead is people report to the WG when they have seen a PSF member behave poorly in public while promoting their PSF membership (and this tends to be Fellows more than the general members).

Two, this is (so far) only an issue if you promote the fact that you're a PSF member. What you do in your life outside of Python is none of the WG's concern, but if you, e,g., call out your PSF affiliation on your profile on X and then post something that goes against the CoC, then that's a problem as that then reflects poorly on the PSF and the rest of the membership. Now, if someone were to very publicly come out as a member of some heinous organization even without talking about Python then that might be enough to warrant the Conduct WG saying something to the PSF board (and this probably applies more to Fellows than general members), but I haven't seen that happen.

Record CoC violations

If someone violates the CoC, some groups report them to the Conduct WG and we record who violated the CoC, how they violated, and what action was taken. The reason for this is to see if someone is jumping from group to group, causing conduct issues, but in a way that the larger pattern isn't being noticed by individual groups. But to be honest, not many groups report things (it is one more thing to do after dealing with a conduct issue which is exhausting on its own), and typically people who run afoul of the CoC where a pattern would be big enough to cause concern usually do it enough in one place as well, so the misconduct is noticed regardless.

Provide advice

The most common thing the Conduct WG does, by far, is provide advice to other groups who ask us for said advice based on the WG's training and expertise. This can range from, "can you double-check our logic and reaction as a neutral 3rd-party?" to, "can you provide a recommendation on how to handle this situation?"

While this might be the thing the Conduct WG does the most, it also seems to be the most misunderstood. For instance, much like with emailing PSF members when they have violated the CoC publicly while promoting their PSF membership, the Conduct WG does not go out looking for people causing trouble. This is entirely driven by people coming to the WG with a problem. The closest thing I can think of the Conduct WG doing in terms of proactively reaching out is some group that got a grant from the PSF Grants WG did something wrong around the CoC that was reported to the Conduct WG that warrants us notifying the Grants WG of the problem. But the Conduct WG isn't snooping around the internet looking for places to give advice.

I have also heard folks say the Conduct WG "demanded" something, or "made" something happen. That is simply not true. The Conduct WG has no power to compel some group to do something (i.e. things like moderation and enforcement is handled by the folks who come to the Conduct WG asking for advice). As an example, let's say the Python steering council came to the Conduct WG asking for advice (and that could be as open-ended as "what do you recommend?" to "we are thinking of doing this; does that seem reasonable to you?"). The Conduct WG would provide the advice requested, and that's the end of it. The Conduct WG advised in this hypothetical, it didn't require anything. The SC can choose to enact the advice, modify it in some way, or flat-out ignore it; the Conduct WG cannot make the SC do anything (heck, the SC isn't even under the PSF's jurisdiction, but that's not an important detail here, just something else I have heard people get wrong). And this inability to compel a group to do something even extends to groups that come to the Conduct WG for advice even if they are affiliated with the PSF. Going back to the Grants WG example, we can't make the Grants WG pull someone's grant or deny future grants, we can just let them know what we think. We can refer an issue to the PSF board, but we can't compel the board to do anything (e.g., if we warn a PSF member about their public conduct, we can't make them stop being a PSF member for it, the most we can do is inform the PSF board about what someone has done and potentially offer advice).

Having said all of that, anecdotally it seems that most groups that request a recommendation from the Conduct WG enact those recommendations. So you could say the Conduct WG was involved in some action that was taken based on the WG's recommendation, but you certainly cannot assign full blame on the WG for the actions taken by other groups either.