Re: Code of Conduct plan - Mailing list pgsql-general

> On Sep 17, 2018, at 4:57 PM, Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 17 Sep 2018 08:27:48 -0700
> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> At this point it is important to accept that the CoC is happening. We
>> aren't going to stop that. The goal now is to insure a CoC that is
>> equitable for all community members and that has appropriate
>> accountability. At hand it appears that major concern is the CoC
>> trying to be authoritative outside of community channels. As well as
>> wording that is a bit far reaching. Specifically I think people's
>> main concern is these two sentences:
>>
>> "To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community
>> interaction and participation in the project’s work and the community
>> at large. This Code is meant to cover all interaction between
>> community members, whether or not it takes place within
>> postgresql.org infrastructure, so long as there is not another Code
>> of Conduct that takes precedence (such as a conference's Code of
>> Conduct)."
>>
>> If we can constructively provide feedback about those two sentences,
>> great (or constructive feedback on other areas of the CoC). If we
>> can't then this thread needs to stop. It has become unproductive.
>>
>> My feedback is that those two sentences provide an overarching
>> authority that .Org does not have the right to enforce and that it is
>> also largely redundant because we allow that the idea that if another
>> CoC exists, then ours doesn't apply. Well every single major
>> collaboration channel we would be concerned with (including something
>> like Blogger) has its own CoC within its Terms of use. That
>> effectively neuters the PostgreSQL CoC within places like Slack,
>> Facebook, Twitter etc...
>
> The perfect is the enemy of the good. Whatever CoC is decided upon, it
> will be updated later. If it's easier, for now, to pass it with
> enforcement WITHIN the Postgres community, why not do that? If, later
> on, we get instances of people retaliating, in other venues, for
> positions taken in Postgres, that can be handled when it comes up.

I'll note that a fairly common situation with mailing lists I've seen is people
taking an on-list disagreement off-list and being offensive there. I've not
had that happen to me personally on the pgsql-* lists, but I have had it
happen on other technical mailing lists. That harassment would be "outside
of community channels".

A CoC that doesn't cover that situation (or it's equivalent on IRC) isn't
going to be particularly easy to apply.

Whether the CoC can be applied or not isn't necessarily the most important
thing about it - it's more a statement of beliefs - but if the situation comes
up where someone is behaving unacceptably via IRC or email and "we"
say that we aren't interested in helping, or our hands are tied, because
"off-list" communication isn't covered by the CoC that's likely to lead to
a loud and public mess.

Cheers,
  Steve