Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time?

A couple thoughts rather late to the discussion from a more international
perspective.

I remember a lecture I saw by a comparative law professor (the lecture was
about why many Danes are unhappy with the EU pressures on their tradition
of law and the general lack of subsidiarity in the EU) who described the
difference between the Danish and the American system as "Make love not
codes." The pun here is that "love" is the plural form of the word for law
in Danish. Scandinavian laws tend to be short and rely on human judgment
by judges rather than precedent and complexity like the American system or
the equivalents in the civil law/Continental systems. Without bringing up
those political issues, I think the approach to decentralization is a good
one for many projects.

I think this might give us a happy middle ground. Something very basic,
very brief which sets forth principles of the community but doesn't amount
to real rule-making and respects the general decentralized nature of the
project.

We have a highly decentralized community and an approach needs to reflect
that. I think therefore it is important to keep things brief and vague on
details but specific in shared principles.

I would also be concerned that someone who is overly worried about not
having a code of conduct might be interested in lawyering about it.
Another concern may be "is there a place for me in the project?" and I
think that can be answered differently.

So with these thoughts, how about something more like:

I: Be Respectful and Collaborative

We are a global project and expect that people from a wide variety of
backgrounds and viewpoints will work together. Personal attacks are not
appreciated, and the same goes for attacks on the basis of nationality,
culture, or other factors of inter- and intra-cultural identity.

At the same time, understand that people often cannot see across different
perspectives and may unintentionally say things that cause offense. It is
also a matter of respect and collaboration not to make these into issues.

II: Be Responsible

If you have taken on responsibility in a community project and are unable
to continue, please step down gracefully and help facilitate others taking
your place. This includes being around to facilitate knowledge transfer
and much more.

III: Respect the Commons

We are all here to build an outstanding open source project or set of such
projects. Act in a way which furthers the commons generally, as a
custodian of what we have inherited from the efforts of others, and
borrowed from the future.

In the event of serious problems, the core committee or those they
designate, or the maintainers of other affiliated projects (in their
domains) may be called upon to mediate or even address issues (particularly
in the case of serious and repeated problems). However, the community is
expected to operate in a way which prevents this from becoming necessary by
adhering to the principles above even in the process of addressing
disputes..

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 11:13 PM, Regina Obe <lr(at)pcorp(dot)us> wrote:

>
> Regina Obe wrote:
> >
> > If we do write a CoC, can we give it a different acronym.
>
> > Notwithstanding the most regrettable childhood trauma, this request is
> exactly the kind of ridiculousness that the Political Correctness nonsense
> associated with CoCs that we should be worried about in the aftermath of
> proposed adoption.
>
> > Complaining that the acronym "CoC" is anything remotely like the thing
> the work "cock" means is, well, cockamamie
>
> > It's like someone becoming upset over the work "niggardly" as a racist
> epithet. In fact that word and the one you are thinking of are completely
> unrelated: entirely different etymology. Nothing in common except, on the
> one hand, as you imagine the acronym might be pronounced, and on the other
> because there are six similar letters.
>
> Exactly. That's why I added that section:
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> USE OF TRIGGER TERMS
>
> We have long standing terms like Master/Slave that may trigger some past
> trauma for some people.
> While we do consider people's feelings, we weigh that against the effort
> of changing long understood terminology and the psychological trauma
> such changes would cause for the large majority of people who are not as
> sensitive to the usage.
> As such we entertain change requests for naming of new features more than
> we do of renaming old features.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> First of all you have no proof whether I was raped or not, so you don't
> know if I'm just playing the "Poor woman was raped, give her a break" card
> or if my sad luck story is genuine.
> In the end it's irrelevant, because as Josh apologetically explained to
> me - Coc is standard in our vernacular so would cause more damage to
> others if we change it.
>
> I have to learn to cope with my suffering when someone says Coc and it's
> not your problem that I was raped and I have traumatic memories everytime
> I hear someone say "We have a Coc. I think that should make you feel
> safer."
>
> Josh did the right thing. If we had this Coc -- Josh could just point at
> this section and say
>
> "I feel your pain, but according to our Code of Conduct, we can't change
> it."
>
> Thanks,
> Regina
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

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