On 1/5/16 1:03 PM, Sara Golemon wrote:
On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Kevin Smith <ke...@gohearsay.com> wrote:
Much of the argument in favor of a code of conduct seems to be centered around
the desire to send a message to the wider developer world that we’re a
welcoming community that doesn’t look kindly on poor treatment of others. If
that’s the goal, rather than the goal being to punish or censor people who
violate our own values, why do we need a response team with the power to ban?
If a person's treatment of others truly warrants banishment, then as Zeev noted
the RFC process is already perfectly suited for that. As far as I’m concerned,
the absolute greatest power the response team should be given is the power to
issue a censure. If sending a message is the goal, that’ll do it.
I'll chime in on this, since you and I had a quite pleasant and
productive conversation last night. I believe we agreed that the
original draft was over-focused on punitive measures and not enough on
low-impact mediation.
I imagine, because I love all you guys (and gals), that the volume of
traffic to a response team would be low to begin with. I further
imagine, since you're all such a great bunch of lads (and lasses),
that the vast majority of those complaints would be resolvable with
some gentle mediation. That's a good focus for the CoC, and I would
love to bring us to that point. (Sorry if you've already addressed
this Anthony, I haven't read your updates yet, it's been a busy
morning).
I said it in a prior email, but I'll repeat it. I see it like the
security@ list. A place to send issues that don't necessarily bear
airing in public. That's good for both the accuser AND the accused.
A tiny layer of discretion to ease what may be a tense issue.
I don't, however, agree that the response team should be entirely
toothless. As a *last resort*, a (no more than) 7 day ban to act as a
cooling off period isn't "vast sweeping powers", it's a band-aid for a
situation that's gotten out of control. A situation that demands the
wider community's attention, because it's become unacceptable. We can
define the limits of these powers (again I've said this in a previous
email).
Worried about abuse of temp-bans? Don't think a stringent requirement
of justification is enough? How about the accuser must suffer an
equal ban? By the time it's come to the point where action must be
taken, the problem has escalated to the point where privacy of the
accused won't be maintainable anyway (due to evidence requirements).
Turn the temp-ban into a cooling off period. Because honestly, do we
have mustache twirling ne'er-do-wells? Or do we have passionate people
who get worked up into a lather and sometimes cross a line?
As someone who has crossed that line more than once, I hope you'll
trust it's just the latter.
-Sara
I agree with Stas (previous email) that a bad CoC can backfire. I'd go
as far as saying that a bad CoC (either one that is so toothless as to
be a lie or one that is so draconian that everyone lives in fear of it)
is worse than no CoC at all. That is, I think, the point of this
discussion: Make sure that a CoC is adopted that is good and has a
positive impact, not bad with a negative impact.
Which is where I agree with Sara: A good CoC should be positive and
focused on conflict-resolution, not on punitive measures. So let's
build a good conflict-resolution-oriented CoC and process rather than a
ban-hammer-mechanism. Also, recall that this is not a for-all-time
definition. CoCs can and should evolve over time, as should the process
around them.
Disclosure: I've been through Drupal's Community CoC, the DrupalCon CoC,
and multiple rounds of CoC-esque discussion in a 20-year old online RPG
club I used to help run. I've been around this block more than once.
Reference material:
Drupal's Community CoC:
https://www.drupal.org/dcoc
was derived originally from the Ubuntu Community CoC:
http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct
The DrupalCon CoC was more contentious until it was rewritten to be more
positive-oriented (less "we don't" and more "we do"):
https://austin2014.drupal.org/code-of-conduct.html
The main author of the DrupalCon CoC, George DeMet, pointed me at the
Django CoC as another good model:
https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/
Sara, Stas, Anthony, are you open to talking with George? (Disclosure:
Besides being on the Drupal CWG, George is also my boss. <g>)
--
--Larry Garfield
--
PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
