Re: Code of Conduct plan

On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 5:11 AM Craig Ringer <craig(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Sep 2018 at 23:11, James Keener <jim(at)jimkeener(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> And if you believe strongly that a given statement you may have made is
>>> not objectionable...you should be willing to defend it in an adjudication
>>> investigation.
>>
>>
>> So because someone doesn't like what I say in a venue 100% separate from
>> postgres, I have to subject myself, and waste my time, defending actions
>> in this (and potentially other groups who would also adopt overly broad
>> CoC) group.
>>
>
> (Usual disclaimer, I speak for myself not my employer here):
>
> My understanding is that that's really only a concern for "Big Stuff".
>
> If we have a committer who loudly and proudly goes to neo-nazi rallies or
> pickup artist / pro-rape meetups, then actually yes, I have a problem with
> that. That impacts my ability to work in the community, impacts everyone's
> ability to recruit people to work on Postgres, potentially makes people
> reluctant to engage with the community, etc.
>

There's a problem here though. Generally in Europe, one would not be able
to fire a person or even discriminate against him for such activity. So if
you kick someone out of the PostgreSQL community for doing such things in,
say, Germany but their employer cannot fire them for the same, then you
have a real problem if improving PostgreSQL is the basis of their
employment. EU antidiscrimination law includes political views and other
opinions so internationally that line is actually very hard to push in an
international project. So I think you'd have a problem where such
enforcement might actually lead to legal action by the employer, or the
individual kicked out, or both.

If one of my reports were to come out in favor of the holocaust or Stalin's
purges, etc. I would not be allowed to use that as grounds to fire that
employee, even in Germany. Now, if they communicated such aggressively at
work, I might.

This also highlights the problem of trying to enforce norms across global
projects. My view simply is that we cannot. There are probably some rare
cases even more extreme than this where enforcement globally might not be a
problem.

The goal of a code of conduct is to protect the community and this is
actually a hard problem which gets substantially harder as more cultures
and legal jurisdictions are included. However there is also a topic of
global fairness. Would we tolerate treating someone in, say, the US who
attended Neo-Nazi rallies worse than someone who attended right-wing
rallies in Europe?

So I think one has to go with least common denominator in these areas and
this is also why this really isn't that much of a problem. The CoC really
cannot be enforced in the way which a lot of people fear without serious
consequences for the community and so I trust it won't.

>
> Thankfully we don't.
>

Agreed on that.

>
> I'm not sure how to codify it more clearly, though, and to a large degree
> I think it's a case of presuming good intent and good will amongst all
> parties.
>

At the end, human judgment has to rule.

>
> It's clear that if the CoC leans too far, there'll certainly be no
> shortage of proud defenders of liberty and free speech coming out of the
> woodwork, right? (But remember, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from
> consequences, even in nations that codify the concept of freedom of speech
> at all. You shouldn't face Government sanction for it, but your peers can
> still ostracise you, you can still get fired, etc.)
>

One of the standard European values is freedom of political opinion and the
idea that there must be no economic consequences of merely having unpopular
political opinions. However there may be time/manner/place restrictions on
expressing those.

For example, Mozilla Corporation could ask Brendan Eich to leave because
they are an American corporation and this is solely about the American
leadership. Therefore they don't have to deal with European laws. I don't
think the same applies to us and certainly if they were to fire a developer
in Germany for more more abrasive political communications via facebook
etc. they would have a lawsuit on their hands.

The freedom to a) hold political ideas without consequence, and b)
communicate them civilly without consequence is something that I find many
people the US (and I assume Australia) find strange,

>
> One of the biggest drivers of plea-bargains for innocent people in the US
>> justice system is the expense of having to defend yourself. I find that to
>> be a travesty; why are we duplicating that at a smaller level?
>>
>
> Because the fact that it is at a smaller level makes it way less of a
> concern. No expensive lawyers. More likely we waste a lot of hot air. Like
> this mail, probably.
>
> There are intangible but very real (IMO) costs to being a community that
> welcomes an unhealthy and hostile communication style, harassment and
> personal attacks in the guise of technical argument, bullying defended as
> making sure you have the right stuff to survive in a "meritocracy", etc.
> Thankfully we are generally not such a community. But try asking a few
> women you know in the Postgres community - if you can find any! - how their
> experience at conferences has been. Then ask if maybe there are still a few
> things we could work on changing.
>
> I've found it quite confronting dealing with some of the more heated
> exchanges on hackers from some of our most prominent team members. I've
> sent the occasional gentle note to ask someone to chill and pause before
> replying, too. And I've deserved to receive one a couple of times, though I
> never have, as I'm far from free from blame here.
>

But that happens to everyone. Male, female, etc. And yes, such notes are
good.

I think you are right to point to harassment though. I have seen people in
this community resort to some really aggressive tactics with other members,
particularly off-list (and sometimes in person). The interactions on the
postgresql.org infrastructure have always been good except in a few cases.
That is the one really important reason for enforcement against off-list
actions. It is not (and can't be) about politics. It has to be about
personally directed campaigns of harassment.

>
> People love to point to LKML as the way it "must" be done to succeed in
> software. Yet slowly that community has also come to recognise that verbal
> abuse under the cloak of technical discussion is harmful to quality
> discussion and drives out good people, harming the community long term.
> Sure, not everything has to be super-diplomatic, but there's no excuse for
> verbal bullying and wilful use of verbal aggression either. As widely
> publicised, even Linus has recently recognised aspects of this, despite
> being the poster child of proponents of abusive leadership for decades.
>
> We don't have a culture like that. So in practice, I don't imagine the CoC
> will see much use. The real problematic stuff that happens in this
> community happens in conference halls and occasionally by private mail,
> usually in the face of a power imbalance that makes the recipient/victim
> reluctant to speak out. I hope a formal CoC will give them some hope
> they'll be heard if they do take the personal risk to speak up. I've seen
> so much victim blaming in tech that I'm not convinced most people
> experiencing problems will be willing to speak out anyway, but hopefully
> they'll be more so with a private and receptive group to talk to.
>

I will say also that where I have seen the most problems I would not speak
out in detail because I don't feel like they rise to a level where the CoC
should be involved.

>
> Let me be clear here, I'm no fan of trial by rabid mob. That's part of why
> something like the CoC and a backing body is important. Otherwise people
> are often forced to silently endure, or go loudly public. The latter tends
> to result in a big messy explosion that hurts the community, those saying
> they're victim(s) and the alleged perpetrator(s), no matter what the facts
> and outcomes. It also encourages people to jump on one comment and run way
> too far with it, instead of looking at patterns and giving people chances
> to fix their behaviour.
>
> I don't want us to have this:
> https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled-way-out-of-control/
> . Which is actually why I favour a CoC, one with a resolution process and
> encouragement toward some common sense. Every player in that story was an
> idiot, and while none deserved the abuse and harrassment that came their
> way, it's a shame it wan't handled by a complaint to a conference CoC group
> instead.
>
> I'd like the CoC to emphasise that while we don't want to restrain people
> from "calling out" egregious behaviour, going via the CoC team is often
> more likely to lead to constructive communication and positive change.
>

Agreed on this.

My objection to the additional wording is simply that a) I think it does
not tackle the problem it needs to tackle, and b) creates a claim which
covers a bunch of things that it really shouldn't. It's a serious bug and
I still hope it gets fixed before it causes problems.

>
> --
> Craig Ringer http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
> PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services
>

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