Re: Code of Conduct plan

On Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 08:44:10AM +0200, Chris Travers wrote:
> The protection there is a culturally diverse code of conduct committee who can
> then understand the relationship between politics and culture.  And just to
> note, you can't solve problems of abuse by adopting mechanistically applied
> rules.
>
> Also a lot of the major commercial players have large teams in areas where
> there is a legal right to not face discrimination on the basis of political
> opinion.  So I don't see merely expressing an unpopular political opinion as
> something the code of conduct committee could ever find actionable, nor do I
> think political donations or membership in political or religious organizations
> etc would be easy to make actionable.

Well, we could all express our unpopular opinions on this channel and
give it a try. ;-) I think some have already, and nothing has happened
to them. With a CoC, I assume that will remain true.

> But I understand the sense of insecurity.  Had I not spent time working in Asia
> and Europe, my concerns would be far more along these lines.  As it is, I don't
> think the code of conduct committee will allow themselves to be used to cause
> continental splits in the community or to internationalize the politics of the
> US.

Agreed, and that is by design. If anything, the CoC team plus the core
team have even more diversity than the core team alone.

> I think the bigger issue is that our community *will* take flak and possibly be
> harmed if there is an expectation set that picking fights in this way over
> political opinions is accepted.  Because while I don't see the current
> community taking action on the basis of political views, I do see a problem
> more generally with how these fights get picked and would prefer to see some
> softening of language to protect the community in that case.  But again, I am
> probably being paranoid.

Well, before the CoC, anything could have happened since there were no
rules at all about how such problems were handled, or not handled.

There is a risk that if we adopt a CoC, and nothing happens, and the
committee does nothing, that they will feel like a failure, and get
involved when it was best they did nothing. I think the CoC tries to
address that, but nothing is perfect.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

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