Re: Code of Conduct

On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 5:28 AM Dave Page <dpage(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
>
> The PostgreSQL Core team are pleased to announce that following a long consultation process, the project’s Code of Conduct (CoC) has now been finalised and published at https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/coc/.
>
> Please take time to read and understand the CoC, which is intended to ensure that PostgreSQL remains an open and enjoyable project for anyone to join and participate in.
>
> A Code of Conduct Committee has been formed to handle any complaints. This consists of the following volunteers:
>
> - Stacey Haysler (Chair)
> - Lætitia Avrot
> - Vik Fearing
> - Jonathan Katz
> - Ilya Kosmodemiansky
>
> We would like to extend our thanks and gratitude to Stacey Haysler for her patience and expertise in helping develop the Code of Conduct, forming the committee and guiding the work to completion.

My thanks to all who participated.

FWIW, my view is that a CoC shares one very important characteristic
with coding style guides: it's not as important what the details are
as that you have one and everyone pays attention to it. I was in an
early PGCon meeting on the topic, and offered some opinions early in
the process, so many of you may remember that my view was to keep it
short and simple -- a wide net with broad mesh, and trust that with
competent application nothing would slip through.

My biggest concern about the current document is that it is hard to
make it from start to end, reading every word. To check my
(admittedly subjective) impression, I put it through the free
"Readability Test Tool" at
https://www.webpagefx.com/tools/read-able/check.php (pasting the
document itself into the "TEST BY DIRECT INPUT" tab so that page
menus, footers, etc. were not included in the score), and got this:

"""
Test Results:
Your text has an average grade level of about 16. It should be easily
understood by 21 to 22 year olds.
"""

Now, on the whole that doesn't sound too bad, since the audience
should be mature and educated enough to deal with that, but it does
suggest that it might be a bit of a burden on some for whom English is
not their first language (unless we have translations?).

Further detail:

"""
Readability Indices

Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease 32.2
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level 15.2
Gunning Fog Score 18.3
SMOG Index 13.9
Coleman Liau Index 14.8
Automated Readability Index 16

Text Statistics

No. of sentences 65
No. of words 1681
No. of complex words 379
Percent of complex words 22.55%
Average words per sentence 25.86
Average syllables per word 1.75
"""

Note that the page mentions that the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease score
is based on a 0-100 scale. A high score means the text is easier to
read. Low scores suggest the text is complicated to understand. A
value between 60 and 80 should be easy for a 12 to 15 year old to
understand. Our score was 32.2.

Perhaps in next year's review we could try to ease this a little.

In the meantime, I was very happy to see the so many new faces at
PostgresOpen SV 2018; maybe it's just a happy coincidence, but if this
effort had anything to do with drawing in more people, it was well
worth the effort!

Kevin Grittner

--
Kevin Grittner
VMware vCenter Server
https://www.vmware.com/