The Composr CMS Constitution

We, the members of the Composr CMS community, in order to establish the rights and responsibilities of its core developers, its community, its Board members, and governance of Composr CMS, hereby ordain and establish this Constitution for Composr CMS.

Article I - Rights and Privileges

Article I outlines the rights and the privileges granted of all Composr members.

Section I - Rights

All members of the Composr CMS community shall be granted these rights:

• the right to download and use the Composr CMS software free of charge, subject to the license agreement of Composr CMS;
• the right to view and modify the full source code of Composr CMS, subject to the license agreement of Composr CMS;
• the right to fork the Composr CMS project, subject to the license agreement of Composr CMS;
• the right to receive attribution for any and all contributions made to the Composr CMS code or to the issue tracker, subject to the license agreement of Composr CMS; and
• the right to exchange their site points to other members for any reason which does not otherwise violate this Constitution, including for monetary gain, and even if the member is banned.

These rights shall not be infringed.

Section II - Privileges

All members of the Composr CMS community shall be granted these privileges, which may be revoked if abused:

• the privilege to collaborate on the official Composr CMS website (composr.app), including but not limited to receiving support from others, discussing ideas, voting on decisions for the community, sharing personal customizations / addons / themes, improving documentation, and offering professional development services which directly relate to Composr CMS, subject to the terms of this Constitution;
• the privilege to report bugs, features, and suggestions to the official tracker (https://composr.app/tracker/);
• the privilege to submit merge requests to the official Composr CMS GitLab (https://gitlab.com/composr-foundation/composr); and
• the privilege to vote on measures as explained in Article III.

Article II - Responsibilities

Article II outlines the responsibilities of all Composr members to maintain their privileges. Some of these have been adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 2.1, available at https://www.contributo…/2/1/code_of_conduct.html.

Section I - Responsibilities

All members of the Composr CMS community, including members of the Board, shall acknowledge and adhere to their responsibility…

• to read and indicate agreement or disagreement with any and all future changes to the Constitution, which will be reasonably communicated by the members of the Board, prior to engagement and re-engagement within Composr CMS spaces;
• to contribute to the Composr ecosystem, if they can, in any way(s) they can, when using the software, to support its continued growth and longevity*;
• to monitor the official forum for voting on measures, and to participate in voting**;
• to register and use only one account on composr.app per physical person;
• to demonstrate empathy and kindness to all;
• to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences;
• to give and gracefully receive constructive criticism and feedback;
• to accept accountability for any and all mistakes made, to learn from them, to provide apologies and restitution to those impacted, and to come up with an actionable plan to avoid those same mistakes in the future;
• to approach suggestions and feedback with the mindset of what is best for the overall community opposed to any given individual;
• to earn or give rewards and incentives (e.g. points) with honesty and integrity (e.g. having actively contributed or exchanged something);
• to refrain from posting any content, engaging in any behaviour, or using any language that is sexual or violent;
• to refrain from spamming, trolling, or personally attacking others;
• to refrain from harassing anyone especially after being told no / to stop;
• to refrain from impersonating others;
• to refrain from uploading or doing anything which could cause harm to the website, the server running the website, or the devices of anyone who views or downloads our content;
• to act lawfully and refrain from (including encouraging) criminal activity in accordance with U.S. Law and the Laws of the States of Virginia and Ohio;
• to refrain from publishing any private or personally identifiable information of others, unless said information was already publicly shared by said person, or said person has granted prior documented consent to share it;
• to otherwise act with civility and respect; and
• to report when someone is violating these responsibilities through the applicable "Report this" links or "Report" buttons, or through support@composr.app when using a report link / button is not available.

*Not actively contributing will not result in any enforcement actions (contributions are voluntary). However, those who actively contribute receive more privileges, voting power, and rewards.

**Not actively enforced, but it is encouraged for members to participate in the decision-making processes of the community.

Section II - Board / Moderator Responsibilities

The members of the Board and the moderators acknowledge their responsibility to enforce the Constitution in the Composr community within reason. They acknowledge their responsibility to uphold the safety, security, integrity, and enjoyment of the Composr platform while avoiding unnecessary use of punitive discipline where mediation would have likely sufficed.

The members of the Board and the moderators acknowledge their responsibility to provide ample clarification to the expectations of the Composr community at large and to the enforcement actions taken against violations (if any actions were taken).

The members of the Board and the moderators acknowledge their responsibility to use the moderation and/or administrative tools available to them responsibly. They shall not use these tools with malicious intent and shall only use these tools for the purpose of fulfilling their duties (e.g. taking action on a likely violation of the Constitution).

Section III - Acknowledgements

All members acknowledge that the members of the Board and/or the moderators of the Composr community may enforce these responsibilities and the Constitution as a whole at their discretion with whatever punitive actions they deem reasonable.

All members acknowledge the members of the Board and/or the moderators may intervene at any time when they deem it necessary to maintain a level of quality and enjoyment within the Composr community.

All members acknowledge the members of the Board may read/access private content, including Private Topics, at any time, for the purpose of investigating a likely violation of the Constitution.

All members acknowledge their responsibilities under this Constitution shall apply to them in all community spaces of Composr CMS (not just this website) and when representing the Composr CMS community at large (such as being an appointed representative at an event).

Section IV - Enforcement

The members of the Board and the moderators may take any of the following actions as they see fit when a member fails to uphold their responsibilities:

• Correction
  A member of the Board or a moderator may issue an informal and corrective message (e.g. gently telling a member to stop doing what they're doing via a Private Topic or a whisper). These have no impact on account standing.
• Formal warning
  A member of the Board or a moderator may issue a formal warning against the account of a violating member. A formal warning is issued through a Private Topic and contains an explanation of the violation and the actions taken. Formal warnings have a negative impact on a member's account standing and may carry with them other actions as explained in this section.
• Charge of points
  A member of the Board or a moderator may deduct (charge) points from a member's balance and from their rank points as a punitive action. This reduces a member's capacity to use points for rewards, giving to others, or promotion to higher ranks. It also reduces their voting power (see Article III - Governance). The amount of points charged is at the discretion of the member of the Board or the moderator, but typically more points will be charged when more had to be done to undo the damage caused by the violation.
  Additionally, if a violation involved the inappropriate earning of points (e.g. abusing the points system), those earned points may be reversed.
• Bad karma
  A member of the Board or a moderator may assign bad karma to a violating member's profile as a public indication of distrust (karma is visible by all members on each other's forum posts and profile). The amount of bad karma assigned is at the discretion of the member of the Board or the moderator, but typically the larger the negative impact on the community, the more bad karma will be assigned.
  Additionally, if a violation involved the inappropriate earning of karma (e.g. abusing the karma system), that karma may be reversed.
• Content removal
  A member of the Board or a moderator may delete some or all of the violating content at their discretion. This is to ensure that the content does not cause further harm. Members have no right to receive copies of the content which was deleted once it has been deleted; consider it permanently gone. Additionally, any points earned from the content which was removed will also be reversed (both from the balance and from rank points).
• Restrictions
  A member of the Board or a moderator may place temporary restrictions on the permissions or privileges of the member's account. This could include being prohibited from posting in a topic for a period of time, making any topics or posts in a forum for a period of time, accessing certain areas of the site, or being able to perform certain actions. These actions help prevent the member from causing further harm in specific problematic areas of the site.
• Probation
  A member of the Board or a moderator may place a member's account on probation for a temporary period of time. When in probation, a member loses all of the usergroup and rank benefits they had until probation expires. Additionally, any and all content they submit must be approved by a member of the Board or a moderator before it becomes visible. Members in probation also cannot vote on measures in Article III. This helps prevent the member from causing further harm in cases where the member has been significantly problematic.
• Submission ban
  Where the members of the Board and the moderators feel a member cannot responsibly submit content in good faith, they may issue an arbitrary "submission ban". This permanently prevents the member from being able to submit anything on the site. But they may still be able to log in and use the site.
• Account / IP ban
  Where the members of the Board and the moderators feel a member is, at large, detrimental to the Composr community, they may ban the member and/or their IP address. Where a member's account is banned, they can no-longer log in to the site (but may view it as a guest providing their IP address was not banned). Where a member's IP address is banned, they cannot access the website at all anymore from that address.
• Report to spam blocklists
  Where a user severely spammed the site, the members of the Board and the moderators may report their username, e-mail address, and/or IP address to public spam blocklists. This may prevent them from registering on other sites which utilise these blocklists.
• Report to webmasters
  Where a user spammed the site with links to other sites, the members of the Board and the moderators may alert the webmasters of those sites and tell them to cease all business with the user in question. The alert may also include copies of the spam which were submitted to the site.
• Report to law enforcement
  Where the actions of a member were criminal in nature, the members of the Board and the moderators may report them to law enforcement for further investigation. The members of the Board and the moderators shall cooperate in full with the investigation and prosecute the charges to the maximum extent of the law.

Section V - Transparency

The members of the Board and the moderators shall make available on every member's profile a "Standing" tab. This tab, visible only to the member who owns the account and to staff, shall outline in detail the current account standing of the member. It shall include any active punitive actions in place (and for how much longer) and a list of formal warnings against their account (along with their reason, actions taken, and a link to the relevant Private Topic).

The members of the Board and the moderators shall make publicly available, for transparency, a graph of the number of warnings issued over a period of time, the number of reports received over a period of time, and a break-down of the warnings issued by violation category.

The members of the Board and the moderators are under no obligation to provide further information about these incidences beyond these graphs except when a vote is being conducted to appeal a member's ban (Article III, Section IV).

Article III - Governance

Article III outlines the procedures in which this Constitution, and the Composr community at large, shall be governed.

Section I - Model

All legislation within the Composr community shall follow the core principles of a Democratic Republic. The public can, at any time, vote to remove or add members to the Board, who then oversee the management of the Composr CMS community. Except otherwise outlined in the Constitution, members of the Board then make decisions on behalf of the community (but the community can still vote to veto something or have something changed).

All Composr development shall follow the core principles of the Bazaar model.

Section II - Board

Legislation shall be guided by the members of the Board, who may draft decisions and guide the direction in which the Composr community shall take. The members of the Board alone may not put into effect any measure or decision that will consequently alter the Composr Constitution or the members of the Board without completing an official vote from the members and satisfying the necessary requirements as defined in section VI for ratifying a measure.

Members of the board are not to be considered superior to any members of the community, and only wield the authority granted to them by the Constitution. Hierarchy is only introduced to the extent necessary for practical purposes and is not a badge of honor or mark of prestige. It is unconstitutional to grant any member (especially members of the Board) seniority.

Section III - Voting Power

All members within the Composr community who have established an account on the official website (composr.app) are to be granted voting power. Voting power is defined as the amount of weight the member has on a weighted poll, particularly polls to vote on measures. A member shall be granted more voting power the more points they have earned since registering a composr.app account (rank points, although there are exceptions such as charged points from warnings which can take away from rank points).

A member has a voting power equal to the cubic root of their rank points (or 0 if they have 0 or less rank points). For example, if a member has 2,500 rank points, their voting power is about 13.572, which means their vote on a weighted poll influences its results 13.572 times as much as someone with a voting power of 1.

Section IV - Voting Requirements

Where a Board member or the community wishes to introduce a change, addition, or removal in legislation or in the Constitution, or where the community wishes to nominate a member for the Board or remove a member from the Board, a vote on that motion must be conducted.

A vote must be conducted for the appeal of a member's ban if multiple other members express legitimate concern about the member having been banned. And said member must have their ban appealed if the measure passes.

A vote must be conducted should a member propose the appeal of a decision made by a member of the Board; this includes moderation decisions.

A vote may be conducted to delegate authority to the members of the Board, or to any named group or individual, and does not require a change to the Constitution.

Effective after the first stable release of Composr CMS version 11, a vote must be conducted for the implementation of feature requests listed on the tracker, or for feature changes to the https://composr.app homesite, except if one or more of the following conditions apply:

• The change is small and would be implemented as a patch release
• The change pertains to a non-bundled addon / theme (except if bundling a non-bundled addon, or un-bundling a bundled addon)
  • In this case, the author of the addon has full governing jurisdiction over their addon and not the Composr community at large
• The change pertains to the tutorials (except when changing a Composr standard, e.g. the codebook)
• The feature request has been sponsored via points or financial donations, and a sponsorship amount has been listed on the issue by a core developer, and the total amount of sponsorships satisfies the sponsorship amount listed on the issue

A vote may be conducted for other reasons, such as issues or suggestions raised by the Composr community, but it is not required unless requested by the person who brought it up.

• Votes shall be conducted as topics with a weighted poll in the measures forum.
• The first post in each topic shall clearly and concisely explain the measure on which members are voting. All details necessary for the measure are to be included in the first post; anything that was not included shall be deemed not a part of the measure to be voted on (e.g. there are no assumptions).
• Each topic shall include a weighted poll where members can vote on the measure. The poll options shall reflect the measure.
• Votes shall be "yay" or "nay", where "yay" is to implement the measure, and "nay" is to do nothing (maintain the status quo). Where a measure cannot yet effectively narrow the issue down to "yay" or "nay", unofficial straw-polls shall be conducted outside of the official voting forum to narrow down a measure to a single choice. Then, an official "yay" or "nay" vote shall be conducted on implementing the final choice.
• Votes and their results shall be kept hidden until voting closes. The ability to forfeit a vote to see the results shall be denied. The ability to change one's vote after having already voted shall be denied. And only website members (not Guests) shall be allowed to vote.
• Where a measure governs the addition or removal of a member to or from the Board, the involved member shall abstain from voting out of Conflict of Interest.
• The measure text (first post) shall not express any language that would reasonably suggest bias (e.g. calls to action); it shall remain neutral and factual.
• The initial post and poll shall not be edited in any way, shape, or form, once voting has officially been opened. If a significant error is later discovered, the vote shall be closed and re-opened in a new topic / measure. Arbitrary errors shall not be 'discovered' with the intent on disrupting the voting process.
• For measures regarding Composr development or disciplinary appeals, the voting period shall be one week. For all other measures, the voting period shall be two weeks.

Section V - Closure

Once voting has closed, the Board member shall reveal the results publicly to the community by editing the poll and setting its results to public. The measure, or similar measures, shall not be proposed for a re-vote or opened again for at least 3 months following the closing of the votes.

Section VI - Requirements to Ratify

A measure must receive a simple majority (more than 50%) on the "yay" option to pass and be ratified, except for constitutional amendments (excluding Article II Section I) which require a supermajority (more than 2/3) on the "yay" option. This requirement is in no respects to the number of members who vote.

Section VII - Constitutionality

No vote shall be conducted on matters regarding the following as they are deemed, by the definition of this section, unconstitutional:

• Anything that violates the rights of members as defined in Article I Section I
  The rights defined in this Constitution are absolute and cannot be infringed.
• Biased voter restrictions
  While voting is a privilege and not a right, it is unconstitutional to place biased voting restrictions on any members of the Composr community or on any measures. The following are the only constitutional methods of restricting votes:
  
  • members losing their privilege to vote on any and all measures (e.g. being banned from the site), not just specific measures
  • measures being closed for voting from any and all members at once, not just select members (exception: where a measure directly involves a member, it is permitted to restrict the involved member from voting out of Conflict of Interest, but the member must still be allowed to comment about the measure)
  • voting power and rank points affect all members equally; the voting power equation shall not differ between members for any reason, and the methods of earning or losing rank points shall also be consistent for all members equally
• Unrealistic expectations (requests that are not actionable nor measurable)
  But reasonable effort must be made by the members of the Board to propose alternative measures which break the problematic measure down into realistic, actionable and measurable phases
• Demands of labour on others
  No one is entitled to free labour, and no one shall ever be required to provide free labour or support.
• Positions of seniority
  Everyone is equally bound by the Constitution, in full, regardless of their history with, or roles in, Composr.

Article IV - Amendments

Amendment I - Transition Clause

This clause and its terms shall take precedence over the rest of the Constitution as applicable until 1st January, 2026. On that date, this Clause shall be deemed dissolved.

Until the given date, the following terms shall apply as the Composr community transitions from compo.sr over to composr.app, and from the sponsorship support model over to the Bazaar model / the terms of this Constitution:

• A Transition Board shall assume temporary responsibilities of the members of the Board until official members of the Board are voted in, and the Transition Clause expires. Should a Board not be voted in before the Clause expires, then there will be no Board until one is voted in by the community. The Transition Board shall consist of the following members:
  • Christopher Graham
  • Patrick Schmalstig
• The governance of this Constitution shall only be loosely enforced during the Transition Clause.
• The Constitution may be amended at any time without a vote, but a final version must be voted in before the Transition Clause expires. Should the Clause expire without a final version of the Constitution being voted in, then no Constitution shall apply until one is voted in.
• Voting of a final Constitution and members of the Board shall be conducted according to the terms of the Constitution as written at the time voting takes place.