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

From Chris Travers
Subject Re: Code of Conduct plan
Date
Msg-id CAKt_ZfvxBe5EOVqM+ve9y8avrkFabvq0f4pLCoGkSjo4NL0y9w@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Code of Conduct plan  ("Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>)
Responses Re: Code of Conduct plan  (Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>)
Re: Code of Conduct plan  (Dimitri Maziuk <dmaziuk@bmrb.wisc.edu>)
Re: Code of Conduct plan  (Dimitri Maziuk <dmaziuk@bmrb.wisc.edu>)
Re: Code of Conduct plan  (Dimitri Maziuk <dmaziuk@bmrb.wisc.edu>)
List pgsql-general


On Mon, Sep 17, 2018 at 5:28 PM Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
On 09/17/2018 08:11 AM, Dmitri Maziuk wrote:
On Sun, 16 Sep 2018 12:52:34 +0000
Martin Mueller <martinmueller@northwestern.edu> wrote:

... The overreach is dubious on both practical and theoretical grounds. "Stick to your knitting " or the KISS principle seem good advice in this context. 
Moderated mailing lists ain't been broken all these years, therefore they need fixing. Obviously.

Folks,

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)."

Exactly.  And actually the first sentence is not new.  The second one is a real problem though.  I am going to try one last time at an additional alternative.

" 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 of conduct covers all interaction between community members on the postgresql.org infrastructure.  Conduct outside the postgresql.org infrastructure may call the Code of Conduct committee to act as long as the interaction (or interaction pattern) is community-related, other parties are unable to act, and the Code of Conduct committee determines that it is in the best interest of the community to apply this Code of Conduct."

This solves a number of important problems.

1.  It provides a backstop (as Tom Lane suggested was needed) against a conference refusing to enforce their own code of conduct in a way the community finds acceptable while the current wording does not provide any backstop as long as there is a code of conduct for a conference.
2.  It provides a significant barrier to applying the code of conduct to, say, political posts on, say, Twitter.
3.  It preserves the ability of the Code of Conduct Committee to act in the case where someone takes a pattern of harassment off-list and off-infrastructure.  And it avoids arguing whether Facebook's Community Standards constitute "another Code of Conduct that takes precedence."

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...

Fascinating that this would, on its face, not apply to a harassment campaign carried out over twitter, but it would apply to a few comments made over drinks at a bar. 

JD
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Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

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