Re: Code of Conduct plan

On Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 4:47 AM James Keener <jim(at)jimkeener(dot)com> wrote:

>
>
> The preceding's pretty simple. An attacker goes after an individual,
>> presumably without provocation and/or asymetrically. The attacked
>> person is on this mailing list. IMHO this attacker must choose between
>> continuing his attacks, and belonging to the Postgres community.
>>
>> What's tougher is the person who attacks groups of people.
>>
>>
> The preceding's pretty simple. An "attacker" voices their political
> opinions
> or other unorthodoxy or unpopular stance, but in no way directs it at the
> postgres user base or on a postgres list. The "attacked"
> person is on this mailing list. IMHO this "attacker" must choose between
> continuing to voice their opinion, and belonging to the Postgres community.
>

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.

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.

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.

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

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