Re: Code of Conduct plan - Mailing list pgsql-general
| From | Chris Travers |
|---|---|
| Subject | Re: Code of Conduct plan |
| Date | |
| Msg-id | CAKt_ZfudZFMrM+tdgU5Ew0HzQ1ORuV1r_FVWv9jaXy+J7KyXbA@mail.gmail.com Whole thread Raw |
| In response to | Re: Code of Conduct plan (Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org>) |
| List | pgsql-general |
On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 4:14 PM Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> wrote:
On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 3:08 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:On 09/14/2018 01:31 AM, Chris Travers wrote:I apologize for the glacial slowness with which this has all been moving.
The core team has now agreed to some revisions to the draft CoC based on
the comments in this thread; see
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
(That's the updated text, but you can use the diff tool on the page
history tab to see the changes from the previous draft.)I really have to object to this addition:"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)."That covers things like public twitter messages over live political controversies which might not be personally directed. At least if one is going to go that route, one ought to *also* include a safe harbor for non-personally-directed discussions of philosophy, social issues, and politics. Otherwise, I think this is asking for trouble. See, for example, what happened with Opalgate and how this could be seen to encourage use of this to silence political controversies unrelated to PostgreSQL.
I think this is a complicated issue. On the one hand, postgresql.org has no business telling people how to act outside of postgresql.org. Full stop.I'm going to regret jumping in here, but...I disagree. If a community member decides to join forums for other software and then strongly promotes PostgreSQL to the point that they become abusive or offensive to people making other software choices, then they are clearly bringing the project into disrepute and we should have every right to sanction them by preventing them participating in our project in whatever ways are deemed appropriate.
Actually, the easier case here is not being abusive to MySQL users, as the code of conduct really doesn't clearly cover that anyway. The easier case is where two people have a feud and one person carries on a harassment campaign over various forms of social media. The current problem is:
1. The current code of conduct is not clear as to whether terms of service/community standards of, say, Reddit, supersede or not, and
2. The community has to act (even if it is includes behavior at a conference which has its own code of conduct)
So I think the addition is both over inclusive and under inclusive. It is over inclusive because it invites a certain group of (mostly American) people to pick fights (not saying this is all Americans). And it is under inclusive because there are cases where the code of conduct *should* be employed when behavior includes behavior at events which might have their own codes of conduct.
On the other side, consider someone carrying on a low-grade harassment campaign against another community member at a series of conferences where each conference may not amount to a real actionable concern but where the pattern as a whole might. There's the under inclusive bit.
So I don't like this clause because I think it invites problems and doesn't solve issues.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.
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