Thread: Code of Conduct plan

Community members:

A number of people have contacted the Core Team about taking action
regarding a Code of Conduct (CoC) for the project. After some
discussion, the plan we have come up with is below.

**Please do not reply-all to this email, as we do not wish to generate
additional list traffic regarding CoCs**

1. The Core Team will appoint an exploration committee which will look
at various proposals (including the one drafted on pgsql-general) for
CoCs and discuss them. This committee will include both major community
members and less central folks who have hands-on experience with CoCs
and community management issues.  If you know of PostgreSQL community
members who have relevant experience, please nominate them by emailing
the core team: pgsql-core@postgresql.org.

2. We will also hire a professional consultant to advise the committee
on CoC development, adoption, training, and enforcement.  Again, if
community members have a consultant to recommend, please email the core
team.

3. This committee will post a draft CoC or possibly a selection of draft
CoCs by or before late April for community comment.  Likely the
committee will be publishing drafts more frequently, but that will be up
to them to work out.

4. At the pgCon Community Unconference, and again at pgconf.EU, we will
have sessions where people can discuss and provide feedback about
proposed (or adopted) CoCs.  Possibly we will have CoC-related trainings
as well.

5. Once a draft is agreed upon, it will be circulated to our various
sub-communities for comment.

6. A "final" CoC will be endorsed by the committee and the Core Team
shortly after pgConf.EU, unless there is sufficently strong consensus to
adopt one before then.

Yes, we realize this is a long timeline.  The PostgreSQL Project has
never been about implementing things in a hurry; our practice has always
been to take all of the time required to develop the right feature the
right way.  Adopting a CoC is no different; if anything, we need to take
*more* time in order to get input from community members who do not
speak up frequently or assertively.

In the meantime, our policy remains: if you have experienced harassment
or feel that you are being treated unfairly by other project members,
email the Core Team and we will investigate your complaint and take
appropriate action.

Also, we want to thank Josh Drake for raising the CoC issue and getting
it off the TODO list and into process, and devising an initial "seed"
CoC.  Such things are all too easy to keep postponing.

Again, Please DO NOT comment on this plan on-list; one of the pieces of
feedback we have received loud and clear is that many community members
are unhappy with the amount of list traffic devoted to the subject of
CoCs.  As such, if you have comments on the plan above, please email the
core team instead of replying on-list, or wait for the committee and
address comments to them.

--Josh Berkus
  PostgreSQL Core Team

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
> 1. The Core Team will appoint an exploration committee which will look
> at various proposals (including the one drafted on pgsql-general) for
> CoCs and discuss them.

To follow up on this ...

The Core Team are pleased to announce that Stacey Haysler has accepted
our invitation to chair the exploratory committee on a Postgres Code of
Conduct.  Stacey is very well qualified to do this, since she is a well
known member of the Postgres community and has had an extended career in
human resources, including creation and implementation of
anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

Stacey will be reaching out to potential committee members over the next
few days or weeks.  Once the committee is assembled, they will devise
some way (possibly a new mailing list, though I don't want to pre-judge
it) for the wider community to have input into the discussions.
In the meantime, we ask that people continue to refrain from flooding
pgsql-general or other existing PG lists with CoC-related threads.
There will be a time and a place for those discussions, but not yet.

If you have interest or concerns about this process, you can contact
Stacey at shayslerpgx@gmail.com or the Core Team at
pgsql-core@postgresql.org.

            regards, tom lane

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

            regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

            regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

            regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
> 
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
> but shortly.
> 
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem. 
Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into 
disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside 
the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled 
where they occur not here.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
conduct. "
Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com
> 
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
> 
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
> but shortly.
> 
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem. 
Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into 
disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside 
the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled 
where they occur not here.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
conduct. "
Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com
> 
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
> 
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
> but shortly.
> 
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem. 
Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into 
disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside 
the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled 
where they occur not here.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
conduct. "
Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com
> 
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
> Is there some archive of the discussion that brought on this effort and the
> considerations of the committee itself? I wish I had seen the earlier
> announcements in 2016 as I would have definitely participated.

If you poke around in our mailing list archives for early 2016 (Jan/Feb),
you'll find a number of threads about it.  Mostly on the -general list,
IIRC.

> Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
> the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
> participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
> brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
> place?

I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016.  It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC.  I don't think any useful purpose will be
served by re-litigating that point.

            regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:
> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community...
>
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments...

I really like that this was included: "Any allegations that prove not to be substantiated...will be 
viewed as a serious community offense and a violation of this Code of Conduct."

Good attempt to prevent the CoC being used as vindictive weaponry.

I also like that you kept is short.

-- B

On 06/03/2018 02:47 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
>> Is there some archive of the discussion that brought on this effort and the
>> considerations of the committee itself? I wish I had seen the earlier
>> announcements in 2016 as I would have definitely participated.
> 
> If you poke around in our mailing list archives for early 2016 (Jan/Feb),
> you'll find a number of threads about it.  Mostly on the -general list,
> IIRC.
> 
>> Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
>> the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
>> participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
>> brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
>> place?
> 
> I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
> Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
> them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
> You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
> happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
> that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.
> 
> In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
> length in 2016.  It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
> the community wants a CoC.  I don't think any useful purpose will be

Since there was never a community vote taken I am not sure how it was 
determined there was a majority in favor. From what I remember of the 
online discussion the opinion was evenly split on the need for a CoC.

> served by re-litigating that point.
> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On 06/03/2018 04:54 PM, Berend Tober wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
>> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community...
>>
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments...
>
> I really like that this was included: "Any allegations that prove not to 
> be substantiated...will be viewed as a serious community offense and a 
> violation of this Code of Conduct."
>
> Good attempt to prevent the CoC being used as vindictive weaponry.

But a futile attempt: "A lie can travel half way around the world while the 
truth is putting on its shoes."


-- 
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

On 04/06/18 07:32, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
>> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
>> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
>> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
>> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
>> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
>> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
>>
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>>
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
>> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
>> coc@postgresql.org.
>>
>> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced 
>> separately,
>> but shortly.
>>
>> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a 
>> result
>> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
>> July 1 2018.
>
> My comments:
>
> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of 
> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>
> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project 
> into disrepute, ..."
> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen 
> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be 
> handled where they occur not here.
>
> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
> conduct. "
> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
> these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
> have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
> behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.
I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to 
someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that 
particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their 
knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied 
-- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" 
could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever 
I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that 
doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of 
the history of slavery.

I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my 
first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a 
technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they 
implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if 
I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

There are a lot of words and phrases that are okay in some cultures, but 
may be offensive in others -- even within the ame country.

Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government 
Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very 
Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds 
were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene.  
The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the 
thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most 
Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

You should look at the hoohaa over what Linus Torvalds says.  I've read 
several of his posts and seen videos were he has been less than polite.  
But I know when he is coming from.  If Linus was rude to me, I would be 
chuffed, because than I'd know I was good enough for him to reply to me, 
but that either I could have done better or that Linus was wrong.  For 
example see the email exchange with the infamous Sarah Sharp 
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/407.  At the 2015 Australian Linux 
Conference, I watched as Sarah harangued Linus for over twenty minutes, 
Linus kept calm and polite throughout.

So common words and phrases could be offensive to some people. Sometimes 
people just need to let of stream.

You could end up with people being excessively polite to show their 
displeasure.  Come across the expression "icely polite" -- it was a way 
of showing contempt while denying the victim any excuse for a deadly 
duel!  Which would lead to the issue that people wouldn't always know if 
the politeness was real, or if it was intended to show disdain.

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!


Cheers,
Gavin

>
>>
>>             regards, tom lane
>>
>> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com
>>
>>
>
>

On 04/06/18 07:32, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
>> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
>> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
>> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
>> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
>> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
>> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
>>
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>>
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
>> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
>> coc@postgresql.org.
>>
>> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced 
>> separately,
>> but shortly.
>>
>> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a 
>> result
>> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
>> July 1 2018.
>
> My comments:
>
> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of 
> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>
> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project 
> into disrepute, ..."
> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen 
> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be 
> handled where they occur not here.
>
> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
> conduct. "
> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
> these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
> have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
> behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.
I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to 
someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that 
particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their 
knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied 
-- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" 
could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever 
I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that 
doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of 
the history of slavery.

I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my 
first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a 
technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they 
implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if 
I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

There are a lot of words and phrases that are okay in some cultures, but 
may be offensive in others -- even within the ame country.

Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government 
Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very 
Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds 
were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene.  
The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the 
thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most 
Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

You should look at the hoohaa over what Linus Torvalds says.  I've read 
several of his posts and seen videos were he has been less than polite.  
But I know when he is coming from.  If Linus was rude to me, I would be 
chuffed, because than I'd know I was good enough for him to reply to me, 
but that either I could have done better or that Linus was wrong.  For 
example see the email exchange with the infamous Sarah Sharp 
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/407.  At the 2015 Australian Linux 
Conference, I watched as Sarah harangued Linus for over twenty minutes, 
Linus kept calm and polite throughout.

So common words and phrases could be offensive to some people. Sometimes 
people just need to let of stream.

You could end up with people being excessively polite to show their 
displeasure.  Come across the expression "icely polite" -- it was a way 
of showing contempt while denying the victim any excuse for a deadly 
duel!  Which would lead to the issue that people wouldn't always know if 
the politeness was real, or if it was intended to show disdain.

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!


Cheers,
Gavin

>
>>
>>             regards, tom lane
>>
>> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com
>>
>>
>
>

On 04/06/18 07:32, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
>> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
>> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
>> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
>> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
>> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
>> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
>>
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>>
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
>> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
>> coc@postgresql.org.
>>
>> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced 
>> separately,
>> but shortly.
>>
>> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a 
>> result
>> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
>> July 1 2018.
>
> My comments:
>
> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of 
> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>
> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project 
> into disrepute, ..."
> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen 
> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be 
> handled where they occur not here.
>
> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
> conduct. "
> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
> these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
> have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
> behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.
I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to 
someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that 
particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their 
knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied 
-- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" 
could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever 
I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that 
doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of 
the history of slavery.

I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my 
first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a 
technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they 
implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if 
I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

There are a lot of words and phrases that are okay in some cultures, but 
may be offensive in others -- even within the ame country.

Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government 
Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very 
Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds 
were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene.  
The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the 
thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most 
Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

You should look at the hoohaa over what Linus Torvalds says.  I've read 
several of his posts and seen videos were he has been less than polite.  
But I know when he is coming from.  If Linus was rude to me, I would be 
chuffed, because than I'd know I was good enough for him to reply to me, 
but that either I could have done better or that Linus was wrong.  For 
example see the email exchange with the infamous Sarah Sharp 
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/407.  At the 2015 Australian Linux 
Conference, I watched as Sarah harangued Linus for over twenty minutes, 
Linus kept calm and polite throughout.

So common words and phrases could be offensive to some people. Sometimes 
people just need to let of stream.

You could end up with people being excessively polite to show their 
displeasure.  Come across the expression "icely polite" -- it was a way 
of showing contempt while denying the victim any excuse for a deadly 
duel!  Which would lead to the issue that people wouldn't always know if 
the politeness was real, or if it was intended to show disdain.

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!


Cheers,
Gavin

>
>>
>>             regards, tom lane
>>
>> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com
>>
>>
>
>

Some people are not paying attention and are sending code-of-conduct comments to 
all lists, not just pgsql-general, but -hackers and -advocacy too.

I've seen 3 of these so far today.

This is a reminder to please send the comments to pgsql-general only.

-- Darren Duncan

On 2018-06-03 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.

Some people are not paying attention and are sending code-of-conduct comments to 
all lists, not just pgsql-general, but -hackers and -advocacy too.

I've seen 3 of these so far today.

This is a reminder to please send the comments to pgsql-general only.

-- Darren Duncan

On 2018-06-03 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.

Some people are not paying attention and are sending code-of-conduct comments to 
all lists, not just pgsql-general, but -hackers and -advocacy too.

I've seen 3 of these so far today.

This is a reminder to please send the comments to pgsql-general only.

-- Darren Duncan

On 2018-06-03 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.

> On Jun 3, 2018, at 7:08 PM, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:
>
> On 04/06/18 07:32, Adrian Klaver wrote:
>> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
>>> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
>>> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
>>> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
>>> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
>>> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
>>> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
>>>
>>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>>>
>>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>>> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
>>> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
>>> coc@postgresql.org.
>>>
>>> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
>>> but shortly.
>>>
>>> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
>>> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
>>> July 1 2018.
>>
>> My comments:
>>
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so
seebelow. 
>>
>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute, ..."
>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside the community. Those if they are actually an
issueshould be handled where they occur not here. 
>>
>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered offensive by fellow members and must refrain
fromengaging in such conduct. " 
>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people these days. I have found that it is enough to
disagreewith someone to have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed behavior is called out
indetail in the paragraphs above it. 
>

[truncated]

> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!

I believe the main goal of the CoC is the opposite: it’s to ensure that
people do feel welcome to participate in the PostgreSQL community and
that if they are unfortunately subject to an incident that they have a safe
means of reporting it versus codifying what is “correct."

There is also  a committee around the CoC and why there will be multiple
individuals on the committee, so that way any complaints can be fairly
researched, discussed, and resolved. There are also several checks and
balances with the enforcement of the CoC that should help ensure that any
complaints are handled as fairly as possible.

Anyway, a big +1 to the effort of everyone who worked on the CoC for
the past several years. From feedback in other forums through the years,
I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident.

Jonathan

On Sun, 03 Jun 2018 17:47:58 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:

>Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
>
>> Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
>> the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
>> participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
>> brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
>> place?
>
>I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
>Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
>them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
>You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
>happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
>that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

Unfortunately, conduct codes generally aren't worth the paper they are
written on.  People who are inclined to behave badly towards others in
the 1st place will do so regardless of any code or any consequences of
violating the code.

The only thing a conduct code really accomplishes is to make some
subset of the signers feel good about themselves.  Actions are more
important than words.

YMMV.


>In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
>length in 2016.  It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
>the community wants a CoC.  I don't think any useful purpose will be
>served by re-litigating that point.
>
>            regards, tom lane

I remember that thread, but I don't remember any vote being taken. And
the participants in the thread were self-selected for interest in the
topic, so any consensus there is not necessarily reflective of the
community at large.


I am completely in favor of civil discourse and behavior, but I am not
in favor of unenforcible red tape.


Just my 2 cents.
George

On Sun, 03 Jun 2018 17:47:58 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:

>Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
>
>> Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
>> the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
>> participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
>> brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
>> place?
>
>I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
>Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
>them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
>You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
>happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
>that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

Unfortunately, conduct codes generally aren't worth the paper they are
written on.  People who are inclined to behave badly towards others in
the 1st place will do so regardless of any code or any consequences of
violating the code.

The only thing a conduct code really accomplishes is to make some
subset of the signers feel good about themselves.  Actions are more
important than words.

>In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
>length in 2016.  It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
>the community wants a CoC.  I don't think any useful purpose will be
>served by re-litigating that point.
>
>                       regards, tom lane

I remember that thread, but I don't remember any vote being taken. And
the participants in the thread were self-selected for interest in the
topic, so any consensus there is not necessarily reflective of the
community at large.

I am completely in favor of civil discourse and behavior, but I am not
in favor of unenforcible red tape.

On 06/03/2018 09:21 PM, David G. Johnston wrote:
> On Sunday, June 3, 2018, George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net 
> <mailto:gneuner2@comcast.net>> wrote:

> 
> 
> That's pretty much par for the public dynamic of this community.  And, 
> as noted above, such a policy doesn't need the community at-large's 
> approval: it's a document that constrains those that wrote it.

If that is the case then it is of no real use as only a handful of 
people wrote it. Otherwise could you explain what you mean?

> 
>     I am completely in favor of civil discourse and behavior, but I am not
>     in favor of unenforcible red tape.
> 
> 
> The core team does have enforcement tools at its disposal.  They are at 
> least being open about the circumstances and extents under which they 
> would leverage those tools.
> 
> David J.
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
>     I did go back and read through the 2016 content rather thoroughly. But
> where has all the discussion been going on for the last two years?

It's been private, mostly either (a) the exploration committee responding
to comments that were received at PGCon 2016 [1] or privately, or (b) the
core team arguing among ourselves whether we were prepared to support the
draft yet.  I'm embarrassed to admit that a whole lot of the delay has
been due to (b).  Core did finally resolve our differences in in-person
meetings at PGCon 2018, which is why you're seeing this now rather than
some other time.

Anyway, the core discussions certainly aren't going to be made public,
and I doubt that Stacey has any intention of publishing the exploration
committee's private mail either.  If you compare the current draft to
what was available in 2016, I don't think you'll find any differences
that are so substantive as to require public defense.  We tried to make
the wording simpler and less intimidating, but that's about it.

            regards, tom lane

[1] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Coc_qa_pgcon2016

On Sun, 3 Jun 2018 at 22:47, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
> length in 2016.  It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
> the community wants a CoC.  I don't think any useful purpose will be
> served by re-litigating that point.

This is somewhat at odds with your message here.

https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/18630.1454960447%40sss.pgh.pa.us

It's rather disappointing that discussion was effectively silenced
based on the implication that there would be time for further
discussions before the implementation stage, only to have consultation
deferred until late on in the implementation itself.

If we're going to move on from that (as I assume), as to the content
of the CoC itself, can I echo others' comments that

>  engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute,

is far too open to interpretation.

Geoff

On 06/03/2018 05:57 PM, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:

> Anyway, a big +1 to the effort of everyone who worked on the CoC for
> the past several years. From feedback in other forums through the years,
> I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
> helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
> avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident.

This is the #1 reason for a Code of Conduct.

JD



-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/03/2018 07:57 PM, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:
[snip]
> Anyway, a big +1 to the effort of everyone who worked on the CoC for
> the past several years. From feedback in other forums through the years,
> I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
> helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
> avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident.

How will New Users know that the CoC exists, much less read it? Will there 
be a click-through "you must read and accept the CoC before being allowed to 
join a mailing list"?  What about the people already on the mailing list?


-- 
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

I just want to chime in and thank all those who worked on this Code of Conduct. It's well thought out, and I'm personally very glad to see it. I think this just makes our community and its work stronger. I strongly support it being put into effect.

Evan Macbeth

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 2:29 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

                        regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

--

Evan Macbeth - Director of Support - Crunchy Data

+1 443-421-0343 - evan.macbeth@crunchydata.com 

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.

Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly 
moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an openly 
inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about this:

I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about 
participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's 
mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The 
following minor modification would work:

"To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community 
interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."

There is no language that protects different political or social views. 
In today's climate it is important especially as we are a worldwide 
project. Something simple like the following should be enough:

"Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to 
age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political affiliation, 
social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

JD

-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.

Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly 
moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an openly 
inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about this:

I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about 
participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's 
mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The 
following minor modification would work:

"To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community 
interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."

There is no language that protects different political or social views. 
In today's climate it is important especially as we are a worldwide 
project. Something simple like the following should be enough:

"Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to 
age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political affiliation, 
social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

JD

-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.

Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly 
moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an openly 
inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about this:

I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about 
participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's 
mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The 
following minor modification would work:

"To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community 
interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."

There is no language that protects different political or social views. 
In today's climate it is important especially as we are a worldwide 
project. Something simple like the following should be enough:

"Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to 
age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political affiliation, 
social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

JD

-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

>> My comments:
>>
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of 
>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>>
>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project 
>> into disrepute, ..."
>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen 
>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be 
>> handled where they occur not here.

This is good point. There are those who would think that one has 
performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a similar 
sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case. This based on 
the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.

It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that 
committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo 
chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.

>>
>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
>> conduct. "

>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
>> these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
>> have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
>> behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

"considered offensive by fellow members"

Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:

> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to 
> someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that 
> particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their 
> knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied 
> -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" 
> could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever 

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive. 
Which is correct?

> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that 
> doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of 
> the history of slavery.

The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use the 
terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.

> 
> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my 
> first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a 
> technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they 
> implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if 
> I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of 
acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults). 
Knowing your audience is important.

> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government 
> Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very 
> Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds 
> were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene. 
> The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the 
> thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most 
> Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word c**t is 
part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and highly 
frowned upon.

> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
> 

Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't say 
it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has problems 
but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions rational.

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

>> My comments:
>>
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of 
>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>>
>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project 
>> into disrepute, ..."
>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen 
>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be 
>> handled where they occur not here.

This is good point. There are those who would think that one has 
performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a similar 
sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case. This based on 
the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.

It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that 
committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo 
chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.

>>
>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
>> conduct. "

>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
>> these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
>> have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
>> behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

"considered offensive by fellow members"

Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:

> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to 
> someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that 
> particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their 
> knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied 
> -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" 
> could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever 

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive. 
Which is correct?

> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that 
> doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of 
> the history of slavery.

The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use the 
terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.

> 
> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my 
> first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a 
> technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they 
> implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if 
> I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of 
acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults). 
Knowing your audience is important.

> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government 
> Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very 
> Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds 
> were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene. 
> The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the 
> thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most 
> Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word c**t is 
part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and highly 
frowned upon.

> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
> 

Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't say 
it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has problems 
but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions rational.

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

>> My comments:
>>
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of 
>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>>
>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project 
>> into disrepute, ..."
>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen 
>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be 
>> handled where they occur not here.

This is good point. There are those who would think that one has 
performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a similar 
sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case. This based on 
the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.

It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that 
committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo 
chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.

>>
>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
>> conduct. "

>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
>> these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
>> have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
>> behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

"considered offensive by fellow members"

Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:

> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to 
> someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that 
> particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their 
> knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied 
> -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" 
> could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever 

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive. 
Which is correct?

> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that 
> doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of 
> the history of slavery.

The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use the 
terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.

> 
> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my 
> first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a 
> technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they 
> implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if 
> I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of 
acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults). 
Knowing your audience is important.

> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government 
> Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very 
> Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds 
> were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene. 
> The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the 
> thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most 
> Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word c**t is 
part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and highly 
frowned upon.

> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
> 

Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't say 
it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has problems 
but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions rational.

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/04/2018 09:44 AM, Ron wrote:
> If there's been so much Bad Behavior that's so Weakened the Community, 
> then someone's done an excellent job of hiding that Bad Behavior.

The inner circle of any community is very good at protecting itself and 
exerting authority without representation or recourse due to a single 
ideology of protectionism of one's status or potential public blow back 
at said community.

JD



-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/04/2018 06:33 AM, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:

> 
>      I did go back and read through the 2016 content rather thoroughly. 
> But where has all the discussion been going on for the last two years? 
> Am I to understand that this effort has been going on in an entirely 
> undocumented manner? I find that difficult to fathom such a thing 
> happening in this community so I'm sure my understanding is mistaken. 
> Where can we see the details of what was considered and what drove the 
> committee to its apparently final proposal?

The -core committee has been taking a more direct approach to policies 
within the community without the traditional community input. This is 
both good and bad. Discussions of a policy nature are inherently 
political and thus opening it to the wider community can be a large 
distraction to the purpose of the community.

The downside is that some policies are now coming down via fiat or at 
least very little actual discourse on need, direction or purpose.

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

El 2018-06-04 12:52, Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> 
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>> 
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
>> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
>> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly
> moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an
> openly inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about
> this:
> 
> I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about
> participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's
> mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The
> following minor modification would work:
> 
> "To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community
> interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."
> 
> There is no language that protects different political or social
> views. In today's climate it is important especially as we are a
> worldwide project. Something simple like the following should be
> enough:
> 
> "Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to
> age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political
> affiliation, social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

i don't know, because a check "Your agree ours rules", may enough.

Categorize, we will can have different interpretation.
> JD

El 2018-06-04 12:52, Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> 
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>> 
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
>> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
>> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly
> moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an
> openly inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about
> this:
> 
> I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about
> participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's
> mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The
> following minor modification would work:
> 
> "To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community
> interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."
> 
> There is no language that protects different political or social
> views. In today's climate it is important especially as we are a
> worldwide project. Something simple like the following should be
> enough:
> 
> "Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to
> age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political
> affiliation, social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

i don't know, because a check "Your agree ours rules", may enough.

Categorize, we will can have different interpretation.
> JD

El 2018-06-04 12:52, Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> 
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>> 
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
>> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
>> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly
> moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an
> openly inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about
> this:
> 
> I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about
> participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's
> mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The
> following minor modification would work:
> 
> "To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community
> interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."
> 
> There is no language that protects different political or social
> views. In today's climate it is important especially as we are a
> worldwide project. Something simple like the following should be
> enough:
> 
> "Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to
> age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political
> affiliation, social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

i don't know, because a check "Your agree ours rules", may enough.

Categorize, we will can have different interpretation.
> JD

On 4 Jun 2018, at 17:59, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
<snip>
>> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the
sensethat I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their knickers in a twist
(notice,that in this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a
twist"could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever  
>
> "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive. Which is correct?

Like most things, it depends on context. ;)


>> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that doesn't want people to use the term master, like
inan MSc, because of the history of slavery. 
>
> The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use the terms Master and Slave in reference to
replicationanymore. 
>
>> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure
successof resolving a technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm
notseriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object! 
>
> Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of acceptance that we are all adults here (or should
actlike adults). Knowing your audience is important. 
>
>> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures
thatare very Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek
people,who found the gestures obscene. The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the thumb with
thenext finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive. 
>
> Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the
wordis taboo and highly frowned upon. 

Yes.  Us Aussie's often use the word "cunt".  Again, depends on context. :)

Personally... I don't think I've used it more than 5 times in total, in the years I've been in the UK.

Those times I did, it was _definitely_ not in a politically correct fashion.  Nor online. YMMV.


>> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
>
> Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it
here".That too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions rational. 

Possibly a weird viewpoint, but I personally have a different way of looking at the CoC thing.

From my observations of people so far, it seems like there are two main GROUPings (pun intended :>)
of people:

* Those who like and want rules for everything.  "For without rules how will people know what to do?"
* Those who don't like nor want rules for everything.  "Stop trying to control me!  Let me work out an optimal approach
myself!"

It's a scale thing, not black and white.

Personally, I'm somewhere near the middle (it varies slightly over time).

My point being, that when some threshold of "too many rules" is reached the people in the Community
who _don't_ like excess rules will leave.  Conversely, people who _need_ rules in order to feel
comfortable will start to stick around.

Neither group is intrinsically right nor wrong.  They just operate internally differently, and
have different needs.

Adding a CoC will change the quantity-of-fules mix _slightly_, depending on how in-your-face people
are with it.

Our Community will naturally adjust it's makeup over time to reflect this change.

Mentioning the above, as I hope we're going into this "eyes wide open". ;)

+ Justin

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On 4 Jun 2018, at 18:24, Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> wrote:
<snip>
> Adding a CoC will change the quantity-of-fules mix _slightly_, depending on how in-your-face people
> are with it.

s/quantity-of-fules/quantity-of-rules/

Interesting typo though. :)

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.

> Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly
> moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an openly
> inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about this:

> I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about
> participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's
> mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain.

Actually, it's intentional that we are not saying that.  The idea is
that any interaction between PG community members is subject to the CoC,
whether it takes place in postgresql.org infrastructure or not, so long as
there is not another CoC that takes precedence (such as a conference's
CoC).  The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
act.

IIRC, the earliest drafts did have language about like what you suggest
here, but we took it out after the FreeBSD case was pointed out.

> There is no language that protects different political or social views.
> In today's climate it is important especially as we are a worldwide
> project. Something simple like the following should be enough:
> "Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to
> age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political affiliation,
> social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

We've gone back and forth on how long the "examples of personal
characteristics" list ought to be; it was longer before, and some folks
didn't like that.  (For onlookers who don't feel like checking the current
draft, JD has added "political affiliation" and "social class" to the
present text.  The May 2016 draft had seventeen entries and was
undoubtedly way too far in the other direction.)  In the end, since it's
just examples anyway, I'm inclined to keep it short.  We can and will
tweak the text in future if actual problems arise and somebody argues
that their hurtful conduct wasn't proscribed.

In the end, whether reasonable things happen is going to depend on
the reasonableness of the CoC committee members.  That's part of the
reason that we've set it up so that that committee is distinct from,
but answerable to, the core team.  Core will take action if the CoC
committee is seen to be getting out of hand --- though I think that
that's very unlikely to happen.

            regards, tom lane

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CA59563A-A97B-4FFC-A414-9888392F541B@justatheory.com
(The linked-to discussion unfortunately seems to be 404 now, so I'm
relying on David's summary.)

On 05/06/18 06:41, Jason Petersen wrote:
>> On Jun 4, 2018, at 10:59 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com 
>> <mailto:jd@commandprompt.com>> wrote:
>>
>> "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly 
>> offensive. Which is correct?
>
> I don’t think it’s offensive but it plainly fails your “if you 
> wouldn’t say it to a client, don’t say it here” test.
>
> Generally we so-called “snowflakes” aren’t the ones raising hell about 
> CoCs, which is the third rail I’ve seen most likely to set off the 
> actually hypersensitive types who fling this so-called insult around.
>
> To be honest, examples like “sacrifice a willing virgin” or “offering 
> my first born […]”, etc. do not contribute to conversations but rather 
> bury rhetorical and technical weaknesses under a top layer of 
> historical/emotional semiotic thatch that must be cut through to 
> appropriately determine the validity of an argument. I do not 
> understand what one might hope to preserve by ensuring users of such 
> phrases are permitted to continue putting up such smokescreens.
Dem der big words you be using!  You are over analysing.

Nothings buried!

Note that in discussing the CoC, I've not used colourful language as 
part of, nor instead of, any argument I've presented -- other than as 
examples.

Any real difficulties would be mentioned explicitly, if not already 
known by the listener.

If a rational argument is needed, it can/will be provided. Colourful 
language is no substitute for valid arguments, that we are agreed. Nor 
should it be used as a smokescreen.

Colourful language makes conversation less stilted when used 
'appropriately', and can help bonding.  A lot depends on context.

One place where I worked, I pretended to blame people for things outside 
their control.  There were 4 people I didn't indulge such humour too:  
the manager (it may well have been his fault, and he would likely take 
it badly in any case), the technical manager (he was too stressed), and 
2 people who obviously did not appreciate that kind of humour.  Others 
had no problem with it.

With some friends/colleagues I've used grossly offensive language. 
However, in the context it's been taking in the spirit intended and not 
at face value.  Though, I'm careful not to overdo it, and not every time 
we spoke.  There are things I  might say face-to-face, that I would not 
write in an email -- as I've no idea of how the reader might be feeling 
when they read, context and body language are important to consider.

>
> Ultimately, the important thing this CoC provides is some concrete 
> language to point at when a party is aggrieved and explicit avenues of 
> redress available when one refuses to address one’s own behavior. 
> We’re adults here, the strawmen of people being harangued out of the 
> community because they said a bad word are unlikely to materialize.
>
> +1

If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

I fear that the CoC is likely to be misused.

Have seen many heated arguments in these lists, but none that got out of 
hand.

I strongly feel that a CoC is neither needed nor useful here. It is a 
Politically Correct check list item.

-100


Cheers,
Gavin

On 2018-Jun-05, Gavin Flower wrote:

> If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

"We're all adults" is wishful thinking.  Some old people are just kids
who aged but didn't actually mature.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

On 2018-06-04 22:26, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> On 2018-Jun-05, Gavin Flower wrote:
> 
>> If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.
> 
> "We're all adults" is wishful thinking.  Some old people are just kids
> who aged but didn't actually mature.

Also to point out... there is the occasional teen who does meaningful
stuff with Open Source.

So, "we are all adults here" might not actually be 100% correct. :D

+ Justin

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> On 2018-Jun-05, Gavin Flower wrote:
>> If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

> "We're all adults" is wishful thinking.  Some old people are just kids
> who aged but didn't actually mature.

I'm sure we'd all be ecstatic if the CoC committee never actually has
anything to do.  The point of this exercise is to make new people ---
particularly women and others who have often felt disadvantaged in
technical communities --- feel safe and welcome here.

Also: we *have* had cases where women who had been contributors left
because of harassment, and I'd like to ensure that doesn't happen again.

            regards, tom lane

On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
>> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Actually, it's intentional that we are not saying that.  The idea is
> that any interaction between PG community members is subject to the CoC,
> whether it takes place in postgresql.org infrastructure or not, so long as
> there is not another CoC that takes precedence (such as a conference's
> CoC).  The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
> the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
> abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
> because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
> So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
> situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
> act.

O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X 
being disciplined for behavior that has nothing to do with 
PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that 
but it is none of our business if contributor X gets into a fight 
(online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community.

Thanks,

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
> On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> ... The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
>> the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
>> abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
>> because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
>> So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
>> situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
>> act.

> O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X 
> being disciplined for behavior that has nothing to do with 
> PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that 
> but it is none of our business if contributor X gets into a fight 
> (online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community.

Fair.  As written, I think that would only fall under the CoC if somebody
made an argument that it was bringing disrepute to the PG community.
The extent to which that would hold up would depend a lot on details,
like who was involved.  Peripheral community members would probably not
be considered to be representing the community ... at the other extreme,
members of the core team had better keep our noses clean at all times.
That's the price of community leadership.

            regards, tom lane

> On Jun 4, 2018, at 3:30 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>
> On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
>>> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
>> Actually, it's intentional that we are not saying that.  The idea is
>> that any interaction between PG community members is subject to the CoC,
>> whether it takes place in postgresql.org infrastructure or not, so long as
>> there is not another CoC that takes precedence (such as a conference's
>> CoC).  The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
>> the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
>> abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
>> because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
>> So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
>> situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
>> act.
>
> O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X being disciplined for behavior that has
nothingto do with PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that but it is none of our business
ifcontributor X gets into a fight (online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community. 

That can be a problem when people who are known by some to be toxic join a community, and those who have previous
experiencewith them leave. That can leave them as a "missing stair" or, worse, if they continue to be horrible but
withinmoderation guidelines they can provoke responses from other participants that can cause them to be moderated or
bechastized and then leave. In some cases that has caused the entire culture to drift, and pretty much destroyed the
community.

(Community management is hard. The more you formalize some of it the more you have to formalize all of it and do so
near-perfectly.Developers, who tend to prefer hard black/white, true/false rules rather than leaving some decisions to
personaljudgement can be some of the worst people at doing community management, and some of the easiest to
manipulate.)

Cheers,
  Steve

> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
> 
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
> but shortly.
> 
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.
> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
works.

One concern is, who checks for the correctness of the translations. I
think committers could do the job since there are good number of
non-English native speakers in the group.

Best regards,
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php
Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
> 
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
> but shortly.
> 
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.
> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
works.

One concern is, who checks for the correctness of the translations. I
think committers could do the job since there are good number of
non-English native speakers in the group.

Best regards,
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php
Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
> 
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.
> 
> The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
> but shortly.
> 
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.
> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
works.

One concern is, who checks for the correctness of the translations. I
think committers could do the job since there are good number of
non-English native speakers in the group.

Best regards,
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php
Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

> On Jun 4, 2018, at 6:41 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
>> On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> ... The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
>>> the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
>>> abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
>>> because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
>>> So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
>>> situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
>>> act.
>
>> O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X
>> being disciplined for behavior that has nothing to do with
>> PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that
>> but it is none of our business if contributor X gets into a fight
>> (online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community.
>
> Fair.  As written, I think that would only fall under the CoC if somebody
> made an argument that it was bringing disrepute to the PG community.
> The extent to which that would hold up would depend a lot on details,
> like who was involved.  Peripheral community members would probably not
> be considered to be representing the community ... at the other extreme,
> members of the core team had better keep our noses clean at all times.
> That's the price of community leadership.

+1.

I would add that if you choose to contribute to PostgreSQL and make
representations that you contribute to PostgreSQL, then you are acting
as an ambassador of the community in various forums, and as such should
be mindful of how you treat people, regardless of your level of contribution.

I would also say I’m less concerned about people fighting (disputes happen
all the time amongst the best of friends) vs. someone targeting and/or harassing
people inappropriately, which is very different.  And to reiterate, according to the
CoC, should someone file a report, it is reviewed by a committee of people
who will do their best to determine whether or not the behavior was inappropriate
and/or brings disrepute to the PG community.

Jonathan

Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@sraoss.co.jp> writes:
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

> Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
> do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
> like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
> it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
> it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
> works.

Good idea, but let's wait till the text is official; I'm not sure if
we'll change the draft again in response to the current discussions.

            regards, tom lane

>> Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
>> do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
>> like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
>> it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
>> it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
>> works.
> 
> Good idea, but let's wait till the text is official; I'm not sure if
> we'll change the draft again in response to the current discussions.

Of course. I will wait for the text to be settled down.

Best regards,
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php
Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

On 05/06/18 01:07, Tom Lane wrote:
> Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@sraoss.co.jp> writes:
>>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
> 
>> Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
>> do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
>> like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
>> it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
>> it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
>> works.
> 
> Good idea, but let's wait till the text is official; I'm not sure if
> we'll change the draft again in response to the current discussions.

Also I think official text should have its own page on the website,
rather than just be on the wiki.  Hopefully that's already planned.
-- 
Vik Fearing                                          +33 6 46 75 15 36
http://2ndQuadrant.fr     PostgreSQL : Expertise, Formation et Support

Vik Fearing <vik.fearing@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
> Also I think official text should have its own page on the website,
> rather than just be on the wiki.  Hopefully that's already planned.

Right; we'll mark the formal blessing of the text by moving it onto
the main website.  The translated versions should end up there too.

(I believe there are plans afoot to move all the "locked" wiki pages'
content to the main site, but I'm not involved in making that happen.)

            regards, tom lane

Geoff Winkless <pgsqladmin@geoff.dj> writes:
> On Sun, 3 Jun 2018 at 22:47, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
>> length in 2016.  It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
>> the community wants a CoC.  I don't think any useful purpose will be
>> served by re-litigating that point.

> This is somewhat at odds with your message here.
> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/18630.1454960447%40sss.pgh.pa.us

> It's rather disappointing that discussion was effectively silenced
> based on the implication that there would be time for further
> discussions before the implementation stage, only to have consultation
> deferred until late on in the implementation itself.

I think you're forgetting the sequence of events.  That was posted in
Feb 2016.  In May 2016 we posted a draft CoC which was open for public
discussion, and was discussed extensively at a public meeting at PGCon
in that same month [1], and the draft was subsequently revised a good bit
as a result of that, and republished [2].  It's taken us (mainly meaning
core, not the exploration committee) way too long to agree to a final
draft from there, but claiming that there's been no public input is just
wrong.

> If we're going to move on from that (as I assume), as to the content
> of the CoC itself, can I echo others' comments that

>> engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute,

> is far too open to interpretation.

Yeah, it's fuzzy, but as Steve Atkins notes downthread, black and white
is hard to get to in this game.  I do not think dropping the provision
altogether would be a good thing, nor would lawyering it to death be an
improvement.  We're better off applying Justice Stewart's "I know it
when I see it" approach.

In reality I suspect actions under that provision will be quite rare.
You'd need somebody to actually file a complaint, and then for the CoC
committee to agree that it's a good-faith complaint and not a form of
using the CoC as a weapon.  Given reasonable people on the committee,
that seems like it'll be a fairly high bar to clear.  But, given an
unambiguous case, I'd want the committee to be able to take action.

            regards, tom lane

[1] https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Coc_qa_pgcon2016
[2] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CA+OCxowroZoDXk0O9NpyXTJ9dTnD8RiPvJXxK4xD=dA5w7c=cg@mail.gmail.com

On 06/04/2018 05:18 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Geoff Winkless <pgsqladmin@geoff.dj> writes:
>> If we're going to move on from that (as I assume), as to the content
>> of the CoC itself, can I echo others' comments that
> 
>>> engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute,
> 
>> is far too open to interpretation.
> 
> Yeah, it's fuzzy, but as Steve Atkins notes downthread, black and white
> is hard to get to in this game.  I do not think dropping the provision
> altogether would be a good thing, nor would lawyering it to death be an
> improvement.  We're better off applying Justice Stewart's "I know it
> when I see it" approach.
> 

Yeah, I think we have to be careful to not overdue this. We need to come 
at this with, "Everyone has the best intentions" else it is just going 
to fail.

JD



-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

> On Jun 4, 2018, at 7:23 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> Vik Fearing <vik.fearing@2ndquadrant.com> writes:
>> Also I think official text should have its own page on the website,
>> rather than just be on the wiki.  Hopefully that's already planned.
>
> Right; we'll mark the formal blessing of the text by moving it onto
> the main website.  The translated versions should end up there too.

I assumed this would be put onto the website, just wanting for the
“final word.”

And +1 for translations.

Jonathan

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:
> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.

> My comments:

> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem. 

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm aware of at least one actual case of a
person leaving the community because of harassment.  I do not think
it's a hypothetical problem.  Whether a CoC can fix it remains to
be seen, but doing nothing will certainly not fix it.

> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into 
> disrepute, ..."
> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside 
> the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled 
> where they occur not here.

See discussion elsewhere in thread, particularly the FreeBSD precedent
about actions "outside the community".  We shouldn't be too legalistic
about exactly where that boundary is.

> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered 
> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such 
> conduct. "
> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people 
> these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to 
> have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed 
> behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

I'm not following this complaint.  That's part of the conclusion,
which is *supposed* to restate what came before it, with more concision
and hence necessarily less precision.

            regards, tom lane

Hello,

Maybe must include policy of money support from several at member from 
country less earnings. For examplo Cuba.


El 2018-06-05 10:45, Chris Travers escribió:
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>> 
>> My comments:
>> 
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>> 
>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
>> into disrepute, ..."
>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
>> handled where they occur not here.
> 
>  This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
> performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a
> similar sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case.
> This based on the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.
> 
> It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
> committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
> chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
> 
> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for
> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
> 
>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
>> conduct. "
> 
>>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of
>>> people these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with
>>> someone to have it called offensive. This section should be
>>> removed as proscribed behavior is called out in detail in the
>>> paragraphs above it.
> 
> "considered offensive by fellow members"
> 
>  Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
> 
>> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking
>> to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at
>> that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get
>> their knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender
>> is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers
>> in a twist" could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm
>> suggesting that whoever
> 
>  "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
> offensive. Which is correct?
> 
> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
> 
> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to
> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of
> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this
> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
> 
>>> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university
>>> that doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc,
>>> because of the history of slavery.
>> 
>> The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use
>> the terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.
>> 
>>> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and
>>> "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of
>>> resolving a technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what
>>> I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm not seriously
>>> suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is
>>> conceivable that someone might object!
>> 
>> Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>> acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>> Knowing your audience is important.
> 
> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and
> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with
> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do
> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be
> proud of ourselves.
> 
>>> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell
>>> government Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that
>>> are very Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they
>>> found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found
>>> the gestures obscene. The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay
>>> gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next finger --
>>> nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional
>>> Greeks found them offensive.
>> 
>> Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word
>> c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and
>> highly frowned upon.
> 
> Again key point that a CoC committee needs to be international and
> used to addressing these sorts of issues.
> 
>>> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
>> 
>> Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you
>> wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That
>> too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the
>> restrictions rational.
> 
> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I
> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work
> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a
> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
> 
> --
> 
> Best Regards,
> Chris Travers
> Database Administrator
> 
> Tel: +49 162 9037 210 | Skype: einhverfr | www.adjust.com [1]
> Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin
> 
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.adjust.com/

Hello,

Maybe must include policy of money support from several at member from 
country less earnings. For examplo Cuba.


El 2018-06-05 10:45, Chris Travers escribió:
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>> 
>> My comments:
>> 
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>> 
>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
>> into disrepute, ..."
>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
>> handled where they occur not here.
> 
>  This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
> performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a
> similar sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case.
> This based on the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.
> 
> It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
> committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
> chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
> 
> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for
> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
> 
>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
>> conduct. "
> 
>>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of
>>> people these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with
>>> someone to have it called offensive. This section should be
>>> removed as proscribed behavior is called out in detail in the
>>> paragraphs above it.
> 
> "considered offensive by fellow members"
> 
>  Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
> 
>> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking
>> to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at
>> that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get
>> their knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender
>> is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers
>> in a twist" could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm
>> suggesting that whoever
> 
>  "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
> offensive. Which is correct?
> 
> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
> 
> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to
> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of
> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this
> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
> 
>>> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university
>>> that doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc,
>>> because of the history of slavery.
>> 
>> The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use
>> the terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.
>> 
>>> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and
>>> "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of
>>> resolving a technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what
>>> I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm not seriously
>>> suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is
>>> conceivable that someone might object!
>> 
>> Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>> acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>> Knowing your audience is important.
> 
> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and
> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with
> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do
> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be
> proud of ourselves.
> 
>>> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell
>>> government Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that
>>> are very Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they
>>> found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found
>>> the gestures obscene. The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay
>>> gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next finger --
>>> nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional
>>> Greeks found them offensive.
>> 
>> Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word
>> c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and
>> highly frowned upon.
> 
> Again key point that a CoC committee needs to be international and
> used to addressing these sorts of issues.
> 
>>> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
>> 
>> Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you
>> wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That
>> too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the
>> restrictions rational.
> 
> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I
> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work
> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a
> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
> 
> --
> 
> Best Regards,
> Chris Travers
> Database Administrator
> 
> Tel: +49 162 9037 210 | Skype: einhverfr | www.adjust.com [1]
> Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin
> 
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.adjust.com/

Hello,

Maybe must include policy of money support from several at member from 
country less earnings. For examplo Cuba.


El 2018-06-05 10:45, Chris Travers escribió:
> On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>> 
>> My comments:
>> 
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>> 
>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
>> into disrepute, ..."
>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
>> handled where they occur not here.
> 
>  This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
> performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a
> similar sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case.
> This based on the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.
> 
> It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
> committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
> chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
> 
> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for
> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
> 
>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
>> conduct. "
> 
>>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of
>>> people these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with
>>> someone to have it called offensive. This section should be
>>> removed as proscribed behavior is called out in detail in the
>>> paragraphs above it.
> 
> "considered offensive by fellow members"
> 
>  Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
> 
>> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking
>> to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at
>> that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get
>> their knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender
>> is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers
>> in a twist" could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm
>> suggesting that whoever
> 
>  "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
> offensive. Which is correct?
> 
> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
> 
> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to
> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of
> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this
> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
> 
>>> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university
>>> that doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc,
>>> because of the history of slavery.
>> 
>> The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use
>> the terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.
>> 
>>> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and
>>> "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of
>>> resolving a technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what
>>> I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm not seriously
>>> suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is
>>> conceivable that someone might object!
>> 
>> Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>> acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>> Knowing your audience is important.
> 
> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and
> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with
> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do
> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be
> proud of ourselves.
> 
>>> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell
>>> government Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that
>>> are very Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they
>>> found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found
>>> the gestures obscene. The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay
>>> gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next finger --
>>> nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional
>>> Greeks found them offensive.
>> 
>> Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word
>> c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and
>> highly frowned upon.
> 
> Again key point that a CoC committee needs to be international and
> used to addressing these sorts of issues.
> 
>>> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
>> 
>> Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you
>> wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That
>> too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the
>> restrictions rational.
> 
> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I
> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work
> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a
> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
> 
> --
> 
> Best Regards,
> Chris Travers
> Database Administrator
> 
> Tel: +49 162 9037 210 | Skype: einhverfr | www.adjust.com [1]
> Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin
> 
> 
> 
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.adjust.com/

El 2018-06-05 10:54, gilberto.castillo@etecsa.cu escribió:
> Hello,
> 
> Maybe must include policy of money support from several at member from
> country less earnings.
> 
> 
> El 2018-06-05 10:45, Chris Travers escribió:
>> On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>>> 
>>> My comments:
>>> 
>>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
>>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>>> 
>>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
>>> into disrepute, ..."
>>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
>>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
>>> handled where they occur not here.
>> 
>>  This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
>> performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a
>> similar sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case.
>> This based on the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.
>> 
>> It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>> committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
>> chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
>> 
>> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
>> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for
>> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>> 
>>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
>>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
>>> conduct. "
>> 
>>>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of
>>>> people these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with
>>>> someone to have it called offensive. This section should be
>>>> removed as proscribed behavior is called out in detail in the
>>>> paragraphs above it.
>> 
>> "considered offensive by fellow members"
>> 
>>  Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
>> 
>>> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking
>>> to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at
>>> that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get
>>> their knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender
>>> is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers
>>> in a twist" could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm
>>> suggesting that whoever
>> 
>>  "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>> offensive. Which is correct?
>> 
>> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
>> 
>> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to
>> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of
>> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this
>> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
>> 
>>>> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university
>>>> that doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc,
>>>> because of the history of slavery.
>>> 
>>> The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use
>>> the terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.
>>> 
>>>> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and
>>>> "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of
>>>> resolving a technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what
>>>> I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm not seriously
>>>> suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is
>>>> conceivable that someone might object!
>>> 
>>> Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>>> acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>>> Knowing your audience is important.
>> 
>> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and
>> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with
>> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do
>> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be
>> proud of ourselves.
>> 
>>>> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell
>>>> government Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that
>>>> are very Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they
>>>> found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found
>>>> the gestures obscene. The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay
>>>> gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next finger --
>>>> nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional
>>>> Greeks found them offensive.
>>> 
>>> Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word
>>> c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and
>>> highly frowned upon.
>> 
>> Again key point that a CoC committee needs to be international and
>> used to addressing these sorts of issues.
>> 
>>>> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
>>> 
>>> Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you
>>> wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That
>>> too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the
>>> restrictions rational.
>> 
>> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I
>> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work
>> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a
>> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Best Regards,
>> Chris Travers
>> Database Administrator
>> 
>> Tel: +49 162 9037 210 | Skype: einhverfr | www.adjust.com [1]
>> Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://www.adjust.com/

El 2018-06-05 10:54, gilberto.castillo@etecsa.cu escribió:
> Hello,
> 
> Maybe must include policy of money support from several at member from
> country less earnings.
> 
> 
> El 2018-06-05 10:45, Chris Travers escribió:
>> On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>>> 
>>> My comments:
>>> 
>>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
>>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>>> 
>>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
>>> into disrepute, ..."
>>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
>>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
>>> handled where they occur not here.
>> 
>>  This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
>> performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a
>> similar sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case.
>> This based on the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.
>> 
>> It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>> committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
>> chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
>> 
>> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
>> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for
>> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>> 
>>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
>>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
>>> conduct. "
>> 
>>>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of
>>>> people these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with
>>>> someone to have it called offensive. This section should be
>>>> removed as proscribed behavior is called out in detail in the
>>>> paragraphs above it.
>> 
>> "considered offensive by fellow members"
>> 
>>  Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
>> 
>>> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking
>>> to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at
>>> that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get
>>> their knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender
>>> is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers
>>> in a twist" could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm
>>> suggesting that whoever
>> 
>>  "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>> offensive. Which is correct?
>> 
>> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
>> 
>> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to
>> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of
>> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this
>> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
>> 
>>>> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university
>>>> that doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc,
>>>> because of the history of slavery.
>>> 
>>> The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use
>>> the terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.
>>> 
>>>> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and
>>>> "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of
>>>> resolving a technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what
>>>> I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm not seriously
>>>> suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is
>>>> conceivable that someone might object!
>>> 
>>> Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>>> acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>>> Knowing your audience is important.
>> 
>> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and
>> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with
>> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do
>> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be
>> proud of ourselves.
>> 
>>>> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell
>>>> government Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that
>>>> are very Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they
>>>> found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found
>>>> the gestures obscene. The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay
>>>> gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next finger --
>>>> nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional
>>>> Greeks found them offensive.
>>> 
>>> Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word
>>> c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and
>>> highly frowned upon.
>> 
>> Again key point that a CoC committee needs to be international and
>> used to addressing these sorts of issues.
>> 
>>>> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
>>> 
>>> Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you
>>> wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That
>>> too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the
>>> restrictions rational.
>> 
>> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I
>> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work
>> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a
>> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Best Regards,
>> Chris Travers
>> Database Administrator
>> 
>> Tel: +49 162 9037 210 | Skype: einhverfr | www.adjust.com [1]
>> Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://www.adjust.com/

El 2018-06-05 10:54, gilberto.castillo@etecsa.cu escribió:
> Hello,
> 
> Maybe must include policy of money support from several at member from
> country less earnings.
> 
> 
> El 2018-06-05 10:45, Chris Travers escribió:
>> On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>>> 
>>> My comments:
>>> 
>>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
>>> problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.
>>> 
>>> 2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
>>> into disrepute, ..."
>>> This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
>>> outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
>>> handled where they occur not here.
>> 
>>  This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
>> performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a
>> similar sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case.
>> This based on the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.
>> 
>> It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>> committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
>> chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
>> 
>> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
>> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for
>> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>> 
>>> 3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
>>> offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
>>> conduct. "
>> 
>>>> Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of
>>>> people these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with
>>>> someone to have it called offensive. This section should be
>>>> removed as proscribed behavior is called out in detail in the
>>>> paragraphs above it.
>> 
>> "considered offensive by fellow members"
>> 
>>  Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
>> 
>>> I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking
>>> to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at
>>> that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get
>>> their knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender
>>> is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers
>>> in a twist" could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm
>>> suggesting that whoever
>> 
>>  "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>> offensive. Which is correct?
>> 
>> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
>> 
>> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to
>> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of
>> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this
>> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
>> 
>>>> I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university
>>>> that doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc,
>>>> because of the history of slavery.
>>> 
>>> The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use
>>> the terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.
>>> 
>>>> I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and
>>>> "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of
>>>> resolving a technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what
>>>> I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm not seriously
>>>> suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is
>>>> conceivable that someone might object!
>>> 
>>> Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>>> acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>>> Knowing your audience is important.
>> 
>> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and
>> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with
>> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do
>> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be
>> proud of ourselves.
>> 
>>>> Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell
>>>> government Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that
>>>> are very Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they
>>>> found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found
>>>> the gestures obscene. The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay
>>>> gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next finger --
>>>> nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional
>>>> Greeks found them offensive.
>>> 
>>> Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word
>>> c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and
>>> highly frowned upon.
>> 
>> Again key point that a CoC committee needs to be international and
>> used to addressing these sorts of issues.
>> 
>>>> Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!
>>> 
>>> Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you
>>> wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That
>>> too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the
>>> restrictions rational.
>> 
>> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I
>> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work
>> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a
>> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Best Regards,
>> Chris Travers
>> Database Administrator
>> 
>> Tel: +49 162 9037 210 | Skype: einhverfr | www.adjust.com [1]
>> Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1] http://www.adjust.com/

Am 05.06.2018 17:03 schrieb Chris Travers:
> On to the code of conduct committee:
> 
> This needs to be explicitly international and ideally people from very
> different cultures.  This is the best protection against one small 
> group
> within one country deciding to push a political agenda via the Code of
> Conduct.  I would recommend adding a note here that the committee will 
> be
> international and culturally diverse, and tasked with keeping the peace 
> and
> facilitating a productive and collegial environment.

I strongly agree with this.

CoCs discussed in other projects have an inclination towards US view 
points. Maybe the reason for this is that many community members are US 
residents and are having the problems of their society in mind when 
thinking of what a CoC should be. But what is acceptable in the US might 
be unacceptable in other parts of the world and vice versa.

Please procure that the CoC is not a vehicle to propagate US values.

Regards

Lutz

On 06/04/2018 09:55 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:
>> On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
>>> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> 
>> My comments:
> 
>> 1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem.
> 
> As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm aware of at least one actual case of a
> person leaving the community because of harassment.  I do not think
> it's a hypothetical problem.  Whether a CoC can fix it remains to
> be seen, but doing nothing will certainly not fix it.

Adrian,

As one of the people that interacts with external members of the 
community more than most, I can tell you that a CoC is something the 
wider community wants. I have sat in feedback meetings with hundreds of 
people who are potential community members. These people have ranged in 
age, gender, sexual orientation and technical capability on all realms 
of the spectrum. The majority of them aren't interested if we do not 
have a written Code of Conduct.

All PostgreSQL contributors should be looking at this as an opportunity 
to grow our community in a more open and diverse way.

Thanks,

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/05/2018 07:45 AM, Chris Travers wrote:

>     It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>     committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
>     chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
> 
> 
> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and 
> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for it 
> to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
> 

+1


>     "considered offensive by fellow members"
> 
>     Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
> 
>         I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when
>         talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that
>         I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive
>         American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in
>         this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that
>         expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some
>         snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever
> 
> 
>     "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>     offensive. Which is correct?
> 
> 
> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
> 
> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to 
> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of 
> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this 
> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
> 

[snip]

> 
>     Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>     acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>     Knowing your audience is important.
> 
> 
> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and 
> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with red 
> MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do 
> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be 
> proud of ourselves.

To be fair, those were South Africans but yes, nobody gave them any 
public grief as far as I know.

> 
>     Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't
>     say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has
>     problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions
>     rational.
> 
> 
> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I think 
> the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work together.  
> Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a collegial and 
> generally respectful way around eachother.

+1

JD




-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/05/2018 07:45 AM, Chris Travers wrote:

>     It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>     committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
>     chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
> 
> 
> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and 
> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for it 
> to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
> 

+1


>     "considered offensive by fellow members"
> 
>     Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
> 
>         I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when
>         talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that
>         I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive
>         American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in
>         this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that
>         expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some
>         snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever
> 
> 
>     "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>     offensive. Which is correct?
> 
> 
> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
> 
> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to 
> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of 
> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this 
> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
> 

[snip]

> 
>     Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>     acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>     Knowing your audience is important.
> 
> 
> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and 
> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with red 
> MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do 
> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be 
> proud of ourselves.

To be fair, those were South Africans but yes, nobody gave them any 
public grief as far as I know.

> 
>     Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't
>     say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has
>     problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions
>     rational.
> 
> 
> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I think 
> the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work together.  
> Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a collegial and 
> generally respectful way around eachother.

+1

JD




-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/05/2018 07:45 AM, Chris Travers wrote:

>     It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>     committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
>     chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.
> 
> 
> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and 
> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for it 
> to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
> 

+1


>     "considered offensive by fellow members"
> 
>     Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
> 
>         I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when
>         talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that
>         I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive
>         American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in
>         this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that
>         expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some
>         snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever
> 
> 
>     "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>     offensive. Which is correct?
> 
> 
> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
> 
> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to 
> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of 
> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this 
> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
> 

[snip]

> 
>     Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>     acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
>     Knowing your audience is important.
> 
> 
> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and 
> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with red 
> MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do 
> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be 
> proud of ourselves.

To be fair, those were South Africans but yes, nobody gave them any 
public grief as far as I know.

> 
>     Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't
>     say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has
>     problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions
>     rational.
> 
> 
> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I think 
> the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work together.  
> Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a collegial and 
> generally respectful way around eachother.

+1

JD




-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/05/2018 08:19 AM, Lutz Horn wrote:
> Am 05.06.2018 17:03 schrieb Chris Travers:
>> On to the code of conduct committee:
>>
>> This needs to be explicitly international and ideally people from very
>> different cultures.  This is the best protection against one small group
>> within one country deciding to push a political agenda via the Code of
>> Conduct.  I would recommend adding a note here that the committee will be
>> international and culturally diverse, and tasked with keeping the 
>> peace and
>> facilitating a productive and collegial environment.
> 
> I strongly agree with this.
> 
> CoCs discussed in other projects have an inclination towards US view 
> points. Maybe the reason for this is that many community members are US 
> residents and are having the problems of their society in mind when 
> thinking of what a CoC should be. But what is acceptable in the US might 
> be unacceptable in other parts of the world and vice versa.
> 
> Please procure that the CoC is not a vehicle to propagate US values.

Let's remember that we are an International project and let's not direct 
particular frustration at any particular set of values. It would be very 
easy to start a culture war within this thread alone.

JD




-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 11:41 AM, Jason Petersen <jason@citusdata.com> wrote:
> Ultimately, the important thing this CoC provides is some concrete language
> to point at when a party is aggrieved and explicit avenues of redress
> available when one refuses to address one’s own behavior. We’re adults here,
> the strawmen of people being harangued out of the community because they
> said a bad word are unlikely to materialize.
>
> +1

This seems like a good summary on the purpose of the CoC.

It is of course possible that a member of the committee could act in
bad faith for any number of reasons. You can say the same thing about
any position of leadership or authority within the community, though.
That hasn't really been much of a problem in my experience, and I see
no reason for particular concern about it here.

--
Peter Geoghegan

Am 05.06.2018 17:33 schrieb Joshua D. Drake:
> Let's remember that we are an International project and let's not
> direct particular frustration at any particular set of values. It
> would be very easy to start a culture war within this thread alone.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "particular frustration". I think 
that it is obvious that most CoCs are not, for example, developed by 
communities in Africa or Asia. Most are developed in North America and 
Europe with a strong weight in the US. Observing this does not claim 
that the values voiced by the vocal majority are good or bad, only that 
they can be biased.

That's why I support the nottion of making the international character 
of both the project and the board explicit.

Regards

Lutz

O.K,

Remember my Country Please!!!!.


El 2018-06-05 11:29, Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> On 06/05/2018 07:45 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
> 
>>     It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>>     committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an 
>> echo
>>     chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this 
>> community.
>> 
>> 
>> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and 
>> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for 
>> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>> 
> 
> +1
> 
> 
>>     "considered offensive by fellow members"
>> 
>>     Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
>> 
>>         I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when
>>         talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that
>>         I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive
>>         American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in
>>         this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that
>>         expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some
>>         snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever
>> 
>> 
>>     "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>>     offensive. Which is correct?
>> 
>> 
>> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
>> 
>> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to 
>> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of 
>> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this 
>> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
>> 
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> 
>>     Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>>     acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like 
>> adults).
>>     Knowing your audience is important.
>> 
>> 
>> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and 
>> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with 
>> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do 
>> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be 
>> proud of ourselves.
> 
> To be fair, those were South Africans but yes, nobody gave them any
> public grief as far as I know.
> 
>> 
>>     Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you 
>> wouldn't
>>     say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has
>>     problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions
>>     rational.
>> 
>> 
>> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I 
>> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work 
>> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a 
>> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
> 
> +1
> 
> JD

O.K,

Remember my Country Please!!!!.


El 2018-06-05 11:29, Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> On 06/05/2018 07:45 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
> 
>>     It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>>     committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an 
>> echo
>>     chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this 
>> community.
>> 
>> 
>> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and 
>> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for 
>> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>> 
> 
> +1
> 
> 
>>     "considered offensive by fellow members"
>> 
>>     Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
>> 
>>         I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when
>>         talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that
>>         I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive
>>         American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in
>>         this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that
>>         expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some
>>         snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever
>> 
>> 
>>     "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>>     offensive. Which is correct?
>> 
>> 
>> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
>> 
>> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to 
>> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of 
>> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this 
>> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
>> 
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> 
>>     Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>>     acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like 
>> adults).
>>     Knowing your audience is important.
>> 
>> 
>> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and 
>> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with 
>> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do 
>> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be 
>> proud of ourselves.
> 
> To be fair, those were South Africans but yes, nobody gave them any
> public grief as far as I know.
> 
>> 
>>     Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you 
>> wouldn't
>>     say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has
>>     problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions
>>     rational.
>> 
>> 
>> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I 
>> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work 
>> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a 
>> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
> 
> +1
> 
> JD

O.K,

Remember my Country Please!!!!.


El 2018-06-05 11:29, Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> On 06/05/2018 07:45 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
> 
>>     It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
>>     committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an 
>> echo
>>     chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this 
>> community.
>> 
>> 
>> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and 
>> include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for 
>> it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>> 
> 
> +1
> 
> 
>>     "considered offensive by fellow members"
>> 
>>     Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:
>> 
>>         I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when
>>         talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that
>>         I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive
>>         American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in
>>         this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that
>>         expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some
>>         snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever
>> 
>> 
>>     "snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
>>     offensive. Which is correct?
>> 
>> 
>> I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.
>> 
>> This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to 
>> come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of 
>> conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this 
>> goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.
>> 
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> 
>>     Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
>>     acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like 
>> adults).
>>     Knowing your audience is important.
>> 
>> 
>> I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and 
>> mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with 
>> red MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do 
>> better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be 
>> proud of ourselves.
> 
> To be fair, those were South Africans but yes, nobody gave them any
> public grief as far as I know.
> 
>> 
>>     Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you 
>> wouldn't
>>     say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has
>>     problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions
>>     rational.
>> 
>> 
>> I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I 
>> think the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work 
>> together.  Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a 
>> collegial and generally respectful way around eachother.
> 
> +1
> 
> JD

Am 05.06.2018 17:26 schrieb Joshua D. Drake:
> As one of the people that interacts with external members of the
> community more than most, I can tell you that a CoC is something the
> wider community wants. I have sat in feedback meetings with hundreds
> of people who are potential community members. These people have
> ranged in age, gender, sexual orientation and technical capability on
> all realms of the spectrum. The majority of them aren't interested if
> we do not have a written Code of Conduct.

May I ask what the context of these meetings was? Where where they held? 
For which country or part of the broader community where the 
participants representative?

Regards

Lutz

On 06/05/2018 08:41 AM, Lutz Horn wrote:
> Am 05.06.2018 17:26 schrieb Joshua D. Drake:
>> As one of the people that interacts with external members of the
>> community more than most, I can tell you that a CoC is something the
>> wider community wants. I have sat in feedback meetings with hundreds
>> of people who are potential community members. These people have
>> ranged in age, gender, sexual orientation and technical capability on
>> all realms of the spectrum. The majority of them aren't interested if
>> we do not have a written Code of Conduct.
> 
> May I ask what the context of these meetings was? Where where they held? 
> For which country or part of the broader community where the 
> participants representative?

Happy to discuss offlist. I don't want to distract from this thread.

jD

> 
> Regards
> 
> Lutz
> 
> 


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On Tue, 5 Jun 2018 at 01:18, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> I think you're forgetting the sequence of events.  That was posted in
> Feb 2016.  In May 2016 we posted a draft CoC which was open for public
> discussion, and was discussed extensively at a public meeting at PGCon
> in that same month [1], and the draft was subsequently revised a good bit
> as a result of that, and republished [2].  It's taken us (mainly meaning
> core, not the exploration committee) way too long to agree to a final
> draft from there, but claiming that there's been no public input is just
> wrong.

Fair; however I still maintain that there was no further consultation
on whether one was required, which was the implication of your
message, and which your latest email implied had occurred when it
suggests that the wider community was consulted on whether it is
required.

However searching through the lists for concepts, rather than words,
is pretty difficult, so it's quite possible that I missed the email
asking for votes and as I said, I'm just going to drop that one.

> In reality I suspect actions under that provision will be quite rare.
> You'd need somebody to actually file a complaint, and then for the CoC
> committee to agree that it's a good-faith complaint and not a form of
> using the CoC as a weapon.  Given reasonable people on the committee,
> that seems like it'll be a fairly high bar to clear.  But, given an
> unambiguous case, I'd want the committee to be able to take action.

I'm just worried that expressing a political (or other) opinion on
(eg) twitter that some people find disagreeable could easily be
considered to bring the community into disrepute.

eg a patent lawyer might reasonably consider that a hypothetical core
developer (let's call him Lon Tame :P ) making public statements on an
ongoing patent dispute implying that the case is baseless could make
patent lawyers look upon the PostgreSQL community less favourably, ie
his actions have done damage to the reputation of PostgreSQL in the
eyes of other patent lawyers.

I'm pretty sure no-one here (or indeed on the committee) would think
that that was reasonable but because of the wording a court might well
disagree; I'm not a lawyer so I'm unsure whether you could leave
yourself open to action in the event that the person bringing the
complaint considers it was mishandled by the committee: by including
this line there's a potential legal argument that you really don't
need to be having.

Geoff

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:49 AM, Benjamin Scherrey
<scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
> I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It adopted a
> CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far more likely to be abused
> than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it was ever
> invoked it was by one of the founders of the project (whom I previously
> personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the manner that I had
> feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did not like rather
> than any legitimate concern. Unfortunately this is not such an unusual
> circumstance as one might hope in these projects or conferences. It is
> impossible to separate the concept of political correctness from these CoCs
> I find and they are much more dangerous things than they appear. We should
> tread with extreme cautious about adopting such a thing.

It's impossible for me to know what really happened in that situation,
but it doesn't seem like the CoC was likely to have been much of a
factor in any telling. If this individual was in a position of
influence and decided to act maliciously, they would no doubt have
found another way to do so in the absence of a CoC. On the other hand,
it's easy to imagine a newer non-influential community member finding
no recourse against abusive behavior because that isn't explicitly
provided for; they might simply not know where to start, and become
totally discouraged.

Nobody is claiming that the CoC is perfect, or that it can anticipate
every situation; it's just a framework for handling disputes about
abusive and/or antisocial behavior. The core team have had exclusive
responsibility for "Handling disciplinary issues" as part of their
charter, at least until now. You can make exactly the same slippery
slope argument against that.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:
> Do we need a code of conduct like this, or so we need a more general
> dispute resolution process?

We haven't really had many "disputes" in general, so I'm not sure why you
feel that something else is needed.  In any case, given that not everyone
is even happy with the notion of a CoC, moving for something that's even
more far-reaching seems unlikely to succeed right now.  Perhaps we can
revisit the scope of coverage in a few years when we have some experience
with this version.

> A code of conduct is basically "be excellent to each other", but what
> that means is never going to be well codified in a document anyone can
> produce. It's why we have a judiciary in the "real world".

Agreed, and that's why we need a committee to resolve the actual meaning
of "be excellent to each other" in any particular situation.  We've not
tried to nail down exact behavior requirements in the document.

> I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement
> a code of conduct go well.

Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too.  The proposed CoC
does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether those
are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
on the judgment of the committee members.  We have a provision in there
for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it if
we see abuses.

In general, the PG community has a long track record of mostly civil
interactions, so I'm optimistic that that will continue.  The CoC should
only come into play in cases where people are not following community
norms.  If we were trying to impose a CoC to improve a situation where
not-so-civil interactions were common, I agree that it likely wouldn't
work.

            regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 09:32 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:
>> I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement
>> a code of conduct go well.
> 
> Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too.  The proposed CoC
> does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether those
> are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
> on the judgment of the committee members.  We have a provision in there
> for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it if
> we see abuses.

A community that has an exceedingly reasonable and popular CoC is Ubuntu:

https://www.ubuntu.com/community/code-of-conduct

JD


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:32 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:
>> I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement
>> a code of conduct go well.

There’s also a lot of evidence to the contrary, where groups have
successfully implemented CoCs as well by extension, the corporate
environment and policies and procedures organizations have put in
place to create safe working environments. To echo a point Peter G. made
upthread, yes, mistakes are made and yes nothing will be perfect, but the
main goal is to ensure that if someone is being harassed by a community
member, they have an appropriate avenue to safely report it and ensure
the CoC committee will review.

> Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too.  The proposed CoC
> does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether those
> are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
> on the judgment of the committee members.  We have a provision in there
> for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it if
> we see abuses.

If you read the reporting guidelines, it is requested that someone filing a
report provides as much evidence as possible, and that is a really
important provision, both for the person reporting and for the committee
to review and adjudicate fairly.

And having the independence and the check-and-balance with the core
committee is also key too, to ensure each report is given a fair, objective
review to the best of the abilities of each committee.

> In general, the PG community has a long track record of mostly civil
> interactions, so I'm optimistic that that will continue.  The CoC should
> only come into play in cases where people are not following community
> norms.  If we were trying to impose a CoC to improve a situation where
> not-so-civil interactions were common, I agree that it likely wouldn't
> work.

+1

Jonathan

On June 5, 2018 12:36:37 PM EDT, "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:
>On 06/05/2018 09:32 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:
>>> I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group
>implement
>>> a code of conduct go well.
>>
>> Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too.  The proposed CoC
>> does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether
>those
>> are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
>> on the judgment of the committee members.  We have a provision in
>there
>> for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it
>if
>> we see abuses.
>
>A community that has an exceedingly reasonable and popular CoC is
>Ubuntu:
>
>https://www.ubuntu.com/community/code-of-conduct
>

We can go back and forth with examples and counter examples of CoC that have been abused. The point is largely that
they'reabused often enough that you felt the need to clarify you've found one that hasn't been. 

Complete aside, and probably a CoC violation because it'll upset people. I wish this many people cared about having a
properbug tracker for this project and we spent this much time determining how to do that. My personal experience with
thehackers and bugs lists are that things get lost and end up being incredibly difficult to find or reference. However,
wehave to spend our time being hip and adopting policies that really have no reason to exist as overt and probably even
subtle,but persistent abuse will already be dealt with by moderators in their capacity as moderators. 

Jim

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:
> I also think that a CoC focuses on the wrong things. If someone is disruptive, they need to be told to leave, just
likein every forum ever. 

That's pretty much what the CoC *is*: it's just trying to set out an
agreed-on framework for exercising the power to ban somebody.  Up to now,
if someone was being disruptive enough that that would be a reasonable
thing to do, the decision would be taken by the core team, according to
no defined principles and with no mechanism for appeal --- nor any guards
against core abusing its power.  AFAIR, core has never actually done any
such thing, and I'd like to think that the CoC committee will never need
to ban anybody either.  But if it does come to that, we'll have a much
better governance mechanism in place for it.

            regards, tom lane

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 9:51 AM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:
> To be honest, this is a bigger problem. Why would someone not feel
> comfortable contacting the core team? Why would they feel better contacting
> the CoC board who is probably mostly core team or otherwise self-selected
> community members who have a strong belief in the CoC (and I don't mean that
> kindly)?

The CoC states that the committee's members cannot come from the core team.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 9:51 AM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:
>
> > [T]he
> main goal is to ensure that if someone is being harassed by a community
> member, they have an appropriate avenue to safely report it and ensure
> the CoC committee will review
>
> To be honest, this is a bigger problem. Why would someone not feel comfortable contacting the core team? Why would
theyfeel better contacting the CoC board who is probably mostly core team or otherwise self-selected community members
whohave a strong belief in the CoC (and I don't mean that kindly)? 

The whole point of having a CoC is to advertise that we, as an organization, don't tolerate harassment and offensive
behaviour.It also advertises that "we" will deal with it, if reported, and provides a clear, appropriate point of
contactto do so. It also states roughly what process will be taken at that point. 

Also, an alternative perspective, what makes you think every member of the core team would be comfortable being
contacted?Handling allegations of, for example, drunken tech bros sexually harassing people isn't comfortable, is time
consumingand does require a particular set of soft skills - skills that do not correlate with software architecture
chops.

Cheers,
  Steve

"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:
> Tangential, are there plans to increase number of core team members.  IIRC
> its actually decreased by one between the time of the first proposal of the
> CoC and now.

We're thinking about it, but it's not something to be hasty over.

> As an outside observer I am a bit curious that the Core Team wouldn't be
> able to handle accepting the, likely low volume, of complaints directly; is
> the management of a committee necessary?

That's more or less how things have worked up to now, or really not
worked, because there have been hardly any incidents in which anyone
approached core for such a complaint.  I would say there are a number
of things wrong with it:

1. Nobody knows that they could approach core on such a matter;

2. Nobody knows exactly what sorts of matters core might be willing
to act on;

3. There's no appeal process, nor any clean way to deal with the
situation if the complaint is against a core member.  (Which is a
case I sure hope never happens, but we ought to design to handle it.)

So publishing a formal CoC at all is mainly meant to deal with weak
points 1 and 2, and then the details of the process are there to try
to fix point 3.

Yeah, managing the committee is a lot of overhead that in an ideal
world we wouldn't need, but I think we have to accept it to have a
process people will have confidence in.

            regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 10:26 AM, Chris Travers wrote:

>     Let's role play. I'll be a homophobic person.
> 
>     You've just submitted a proposal suggesting that we change
>     master-master replication to be multi-partner replication. I've told
>     you I don't like the wording because of it's implication of
>     supporting homosexual marriage, which I believe to be a personal
>     offense to me, my marriage, and my "deeply held religious beliefs".
>     You tell me that's not your intent and that you do not plan to
>     change your proposed wording. You continue to use the term in all
>     correspondences on the list and I continually tell you that
>     supporting gay marriage is offensive and that you need to not be so
>     deeply offensive. I submit all our correspondences to the CoC
>     committee and complain that you're purposely using language that is
>     extremely offensive.
> 
>     What is a "fair" outcome? Should you be banned? Should you be forced
>     to change the wording of your proposal that no one else has
>     complained about and others support? What is a fair, just outcome?
> 
> 
> I think the fundamental outcome is likely to be that people who cause 
> trouble are likely to get trouble.  This sort of case really doesn't 
> worry me.  I am sure whoever is stirring the pot will be asked at least 
> to cease doing so.

Your example is flawed because:

Multi-Partner has nothing to do with sexuality unless you want to make 
the argument that your belief is that a relationship should be between 
one person and another and in this argument a man and a woman which has 
literally nothing to do with the word multi or partner in a technical 
context.

Your example would carry better wait if you used master-master 
replication to be man-man or woman-woman neither of which makes any 
sense in the context of replication.

Since man-man or woman-woman makes zero sense in the context of 
replication it would immediately be -1 from all the -hackers of any 
sense which for the most part is all of them.

In short the fundamental outcome is that the community wouldn't let it 
get that far. We have 20 years of results to show in that one.

JD




-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

On 06/05/2018 10:44 AM, James Keener wrote:
> 
>     Your example is flawed because:
> 
>     Multi-Partner has nothing to do with sexuality unless you want to
>     make the argument that your belief is that a relationship should be
>     between one person and another and in this argument a man and a
>     woman which has literally nothing to do with the word multi or
>     partner in a technical context.
> 
> 
> Gay couples often call their significant other their partner.

Yes but the argument against the use of the word partner isn't 
technically relevant to the feature.


> So, you're saying we don't need a CoC because in 20 years you've never 
> had an issue? That doesn't seem like a good response.

No my response is that 20 years of community experience is that we as a 
community on public lists would not allow it to get that far because the 
original proposal or complaint wouldn't be technically relevant.

The CoC is going to be most relevant for:

1. Showing a clear understanding that not all people have a voice they 
are comfortable using

2. Showing a clear understanding that all people are equal in the policy 
of this community

3. That those who are subject to #1, they have a team to back them up or 
correct them should a problem arise.

Does the CoC help or harm me? No. You? Probably not.

I will reference what Jonathan Katz mentioned yesterday:

"I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident."

This is what the CoC is about, nothing more and nothing less. That is 
what we should be focusing on. To throw my own slogan on this bird:

People, Postgres, Data

JD
-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

Greetings,

* Magnus Hagander (magnus@hagander.net) wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 4:45 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@adjust.com>
> wrote:
> > If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
> > include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for it to
> > be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>
> It will be. This is the PostgreSQL *global* development group and project,
> after all. Yes, there is definitely a slant in the project in general
> towards the US side, as is true in many other such projects, but in general
> we have decent coverage of other cultures and countries as well. We can't
> cover them all  on the committee (that would make for a gicantic
> committee), but we can cover it with people who are used to communicating
> and working with people from other areas as well, which makes for a better
> understanding.
>
> It won't be perfect in the first attempt, of course, but that one is
> covered.

This drives to a point which I was thinking about also- what is needed
on the committee are people who are worldly to the point of
understanding that there are different cultures and viewpoints, and
knowing when and how to ask during an investigation to get an
understanding of if the issue is one of cultural differences (leading
potentially to education and not to reprimand, as discussed in the CoC),
something else, or perhaps both.

The CoC committee doesn't need to be comprimised of individuals from
every culture to which the community extends, as that quickly becomes
untenable.

I'm confident that the Core team will work to ensure that the initial
committee is comprised of such individuals and that both Core and the
subsequent CoC committees will work to maintain that.

Thanks!

Stephen

Greetings,

* Magnus Hagander (magnus@hagander.net) wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 4:45 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@adjust.com>
> wrote:
> > If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
> > include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for it to
> > be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>
> It will be. This is the PostgreSQL *global* development group and project,
> after all. Yes, there is definitely a slant in the project in general
> towards the US side, as is true in many other such projects, but in general
> we have decent coverage of other cultures and countries as well. We can't
> cover them all  on the committee (that would make for a gicantic
> committee), but we can cover it with people who are used to communicating
> and working with people from other areas as well, which makes for a better
> understanding.
>
> It won't be perfect in the first attempt, of course, but that one is
> covered.

This drives to a point which I was thinking about also- what is needed
on the committee are people who are worldly to the point of
understanding that there are different cultures and viewpoints, and
knowing when and how to ask during an investigation to get an
understanding of if the issue is one of cultural differences (leading
potentially to education and not to reprimand, as discussed in the CoC),
something else, or perhaps both.

The CoC committee doesn't need to be comprimised of individuals from
every culture to which the community extends, as that quickly becomes
untenable.

I'm confident that the Core team will work to ensure that the initial
committee is comprised of such individuals and that both Core and the
subsequent CoC committees will work to maintain that.

Thanks!

Stephen

Greetings,

* Magnus Hagander (magnus@hagander.net) wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 4:45 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@adjust.com>
> wrote:
> > If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
> > include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for it to
> > be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.
>
> It will be. This is the PostgreSQL *global* development group and project,
> after all. Yes, there is definitely a slant in the project in general
> towards the US side, as is true in many other such projects, but in general
> we have decent coverage of other cultures and countries as well. We can't
> cover them all  on the committee (that would make for a gicantic
> committee), but we can cover it with people who are used to communicating
> and working with people from other areas as well, which makes for a better
> understanding.
>
> It won't be perfect in the first attempt, of course, but that one is
> covered.

This drives to a point which I was thinking about also- what is needed
on the committee are people who are worldly to the point of
understanding that there are different cultures and viewpoints, and
knowing when and how to ask during an investigation to get an
understanding of if the issue is one of cultural differences (leading
potentially to education and not to reprimand, as discussed in the CoC),
something else, or perhaps both.

The CoC committee doesn't need to be comprimised of individuals from
every culture to which the community extends, as that quickly becomes
untenable.

I'm confident that the Core team will work to ensure that the initial
committee is comprised of such individuals and that both Core and the
subsequent CoC committees will work to maintain that.

Thanks!

Stephen

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 10:08 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> So publishing a formal CoC at all is mainly meant to deal with weak
> points 1 and 2, and then the details of the process are there to try
> to fix point 3.
>
> Yeah, managing the committee is a lot of overhead that in an ideal
> world we wouldn't need, but I think we have to accept it to have a
> process people will have confidence in.

It's worth pointing out that the community has grown considerably in
the last ten years. I assume that adding a bit of process to deal with
these kinds of disputes is related to that.

We have a pretty good track record through totally informal standards
for behavior. Setting a good example is absolutely essential. While
that's still the most important thing, it doesn't seem particularly
scalable on its own.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 08:49, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
> I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It adopted a CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous
andfar more likely to be abused than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it was ever invoked it
wasby one of the founders of the project (whom I previously personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the
mannerthat I had feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did not like rather than any legitimate concern. 

Speaking as someone who has served on the board of the Django Software Foundation:

1. The Django Code of Conduct is considered a success and a valuable asset to the growth and health of the community.
2. Others involved in the event mentioned above would not describe it in the same terms

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:06, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
> Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this community does not gain an advantage for
adoptinga CoC? 

Not at all.  The need for a CoC is not theoretical.  Real people, recently, have left the community due to harassment,
andthere was no system within the community to report and deal with that harassment. 

What we do have is 20 years of people demonstrating reasonable good judgment, which we can conclude will apply to a CoC
committeeas well. 
--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> writes:
> On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:42 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:
>> The question is: how can you (honestly) make people feel like we'll take
>> complaints seriously, while also not allowing for the politics that I've
>> seen surround recent incarnations of Codes of Conduct?

> At the end I see signals in the current CoC that make me hopeful.  Phrases
> like "common interest" occur.  There are some minor changes I think would
> help avoid problems.  But they aren't big deals.  The big thing is I trust
> our community not to exclude people based, for example, on political or
> cultural perspectives and thats really important.

The one thing that gives me any hope of success is that this has
historically been an apolitical community, so that these sorts of problems
don't naturally arise.  As long as it stays that way, I think a CoC can
work to smooth out edge-case situations.  I tend to agree that a CoC
could not fix tensions in a community that naturally needs to deal with
political or religious issues.  If someone tries to inflame political or
religious feelings among the PG community, I hope we have the sense to
walk away.  (Maybe we could put something in the CoC about that, but
I have the sense that it'd do more harm than good.)

            regards, tom lane

Greetings,

* Benjamin Scherrey (scherrey@proteus-tech.com) wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:
> > Not at all.  The need for a CoC is not theoretical.  Real people,
> > recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
> > system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.
>
> I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
> but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
> Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?
> What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
> in a different outcome? Without that then your claim does not even rise up
> to the standard of theoretical. Frankly this claim does not seem very
> plausible to me at all. Let's try to keep our standards here. I'm not
> trying to harp on you personally, it's just that you're the unlucky
> umpteenth time I've seen this claim made with zero satisfaction.

While I can't say for sure, I feel reasonably confident that the level
of proof you're asking for here isn't going to be forthcoming as it's a
matter that Core has decided is best kept private, not unlike what we
would expect the CoC Committee to do in instances where appropriate,
possibly at the request and/or agreement of the individual or
individuals involved.

So while I can understand why you're asking, it's not particularly
useful to continue to do so.  Specific suggestions about how to change
the proposed CoC would be useful, but the ongoing discussion about if
one is needed is not.

Thanks!

Stephen

Hi,

On 2018-06-06 02:20:45 +0700, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> > > On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:06, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this
> > community does not gain an advantage for adopting a CoC?
> >
> > Not at all.  The need for a CoC is not theoretical.  Real people,
> > recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
> > system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.
> >
> 
> I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them.

What would satisfy you? Dishing out all the details for everyone to see?
That'd both personally effect the victim and the alleged perpetrator,
and have potential legal implications.  At some point you're going to
have to trust that community stewards are working in good faith (which
doesn't imply agreeing on everything) and not trying to just screw with
you for the sake of it.


> Sorry but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this
> will make Postgres go faster" would on a code change.

You do trust us to run code on your systems without having read every
line.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:20, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
> I'm not trying to harp on you personally, it's just that you're the unlucky umpteenth time I've seen this claim made
withzero satisfaction. 

Given that we are talking about human beings here, who (unlike code commits) have careers and a reasonable expectation
ofprivacy, it's possible that the reason you have heard this upteen times is that there are issues in the community
thatyou are not aware of.  I would say that it more likely that bad faith and conniving on the part of upteen people. 

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 12:20 PM, Benjamin Scherrey
<scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
> I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
> but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
> Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?
> What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
> in a different outcome? Without that then your claim does not even rise up
> to the standard of theoretical. Frankly this claim does not seem very
> plausible to me at all. Let's try to keep our standards here.

Whose standards are these? By my count, the majority of e-mails you've
ever sent to a PostgreSQL mailing list have been sent in the last 2
days, to this code of conduct thread.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

On 06/05/2018 12:12 PM, Christophe Pettus wrote:
> 
>> On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:06, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
>> Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this community does not gain an advantage for
adoptinga CoC?
 
> 
> Not at all.  The need for a CoC is not theoretical.  Real people, recently, have left the community due to
harassment,and there was no system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.
 
> 
> What we do have is 20 years of people demonstrating reasonable good judgment, which we can conclude will apply to a
CoCcommittee as well.
 

+1

jD

> --
> -- Christophe Pettus
>     xof@thebuild.com
> 
> 


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 3:16 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> 
> Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:42 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:
>>> The question is: how can you (honestly) make people feel like we'll take
>>> complaints seriously, while also not allowing for the politics that I've
>>> seen surround recent incarnations of Codes of Conduct?
> 
>> At the end I see signals in the current CoC that make me hopeful.  Phrases
>> like "common interest" occur.  There are some minor changes I think would
>> help avoid problems.  But they aren't big deals.  The big thing is I trust
>> our community not to exclude people based, for example, on political or
>> cultural perspectives and thats really important.
> 
> The one thing that gives me any hope of success is that this has
> historically been an apolitical community, so that these sorts of problems
> don't naturally arise.  As long as it stays that way, I think a CoC can
> work to smooth out edge-case situations.  I tend to agree that a CoC
> could not fix tensions in a community that naturally needs to deal with
> political or religious issues.  If someone tries to inflame political or
> religious feelings among the PG community, I hope we have the sense to
> walk away.  (Maybe we could put something in the CoC about that, but
> I have the sense that it'd do more harm than good.)

I would say that the ethos of the community cannot be codified, but is
something the community leaders must continue to exemplify.

Jonathan

Hi PostgreSQL Community,

some points I like to make mainly because of observations of how other 
open source projects handle this topic:


1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a 
committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and 
denunciation. That is why some projects choose not to have one
https://freie-software.org/verein/coc.html - they say: "we're friends - 
that's our CoC, more would be harmful" [1]

3) https://shiromarieke.github.io/coc.html explains why there's no safe 
space and CoC won't change that (she's a queer woman who experienced 
harassment and sexual assault)


In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a 
secondary judicial system but to use the already existing ones.


I hope these points can influence what is in the CoC or whether there 
will a CoC at all.
Personally, I find 2) a very good case against CoC (although I like the 
"we're friends - that's our CoC, more would be harmful").


Best,
Sven


On 03.06.2018 20:29, Tom Lane wrote:
> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
>
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

[1] Appendix - Google translation of the CoC of Freie Software:

Code of Conduct
Don't have it. Don't want to have.

That's the short version. The long version follows.

A "Code of Conduct" is a code of conduct in the sense of a set of norms 
intended to determine the behavior of addressees of the Code.

Thoughts on the normalization of the self-evident
If one reads current, relevant regulations, one finds that normal 
self-evident behaviors are normalized there. What is required there is 
the attitude and behavior of a reasonably reasonable, reasonably well 
behaved person.

That seems remarkable. Rules are set up when there is a risk that they 
will be broken. You should act on the addressee from the outside, 
because you fear that he will not behave properly without this impact.

Such a framework thus says something about the constitution of the 
community or society to which the rules apply. In this case, a 
reasonable behavior is obviously not (of course) obvious.

Among friends, the behaviors and attitudes described in the relevant 
regulations, such as respect, attention and helpfulness, 
non-discrimination, the will to cooperate, rule-free intercourse, etc., 
are self-evident. Friends behave as each other as required in these 
rules. At least most. If not always.

The biggest lump in the whole country ...
The relevant regulations then provide for the appointment of persons or 
bodies to whom, if one believes the rules have been violated, one can 
turn to oneself.

In most cases such a complaint is permissible not only in case of 
personal concern, but also if one thinks that the rules have been 
violated to the detriment of one or the other. Experience teaches that 
this often challenges behaviors that can kill any friendship. Knowing 
better and being feeling informers usually have only like-minded people 
as social contact.

But we do not want to promote either conceit or denunciation.

If someone does not behave as it is self-evident, then there are 
reasons. These can be different types. A clear word among friends in 
private or in a small circle is then helpful - for the "victim", as well 
as for the "perpetrator". The latter deserves respect, 
non-discrimination, attention, helpfulness and understanding. The latter 
should actually be self-evident, but it is often not the case when 
executing a Code of Conduct.

Nor is a rule-free, friendly dealing with the accused possible. The 
roles of the judge and a friend are incompatible. Friends meet at eye 
level; the judge has power and authority to exercise, even if he acquits.

Penalties among friends?
Finally, a Code of Conduct will include a sanctioning apparatus to 
sanction undesirable behavior. Deliberate addition of evils 
(punishments) among friends is a contradiction in terms.

 From this, it can be concluded that the moment a Code of Conduct takes 
effect, the friendship is already over. When we get to that point, we 
should dissolve our club, because then we failed - all together.

Therefore, we do not need and do not want a code of conduct in the sense 
of a set of rules.

Resistance to unreasonableness
Sometimes, in recent times, the demand for a code of conduct in the form 
of a corresponding set of rules is unfortunately linked with a 
(financial) aid offer. Help under such a condition we refuse.

Freedom, as we want to understand and live it, occasionally requires 
resistance to the imposition of doing something unreasonable and harmful.

Respectful help and patronage are incompatible. Freedom requires and 
requires maturity. We can not propagate freedom and accept paternalism.

We are friends. That is already in the name of our association. This is 
our "Code of Conduct". That is enough. More would be harmful.

Hi PostgreSQL Community,

some points I like to make mainly because of observations of how other 
open source projects handle this topic:


1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a 
committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and 
denunciation. That is why some projects choose not to have one
https://freie-software.org/verein/coc.html - they say: "we're friends - 
that's our CoC, more would be harmful" [1]

3) https://shiromarieke.github.io/coc.html explains why there's no safe 
space and CoC won't change that (she's a queer woman who experienced 
harassment and sexual assault)


In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a 
secondary judicial system but to use the already existing ones.


I hope these points can influence what is in the CoC or whether there 
will a CoC at all.
Personally, I find 2) a very good case against CoC (although I like the 
"we're friends - that's our CoC, more would be harmful").


Best,
Sven


On 03.06.2018 20:29, Tom Lane wrote:
> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
>
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

[1] Appendix - Google translation of the CoC of Freie Software:

Code of Conduct
Don't have it. Don't want to have.

That's the short version. The long version follows.

A "Code of Conduct" is a code of conduct in the sense of a set of norms 
intended to determine the behavior of addressees of the Code.

Thoughts on the normalization of the self-evident
If one reads current, relevant regulations, one finds that normal 
self-evident behaviors are normalized there. What is required there is 
the attitude and behavior of a reasonably reasonable, reasonably well 
behaved person.

That seems remarkable. Rules are set up when there is a risk that they 
will be broken. You should act on the addressee from the outside, 
because you fear that he will not behave properly without this impact.

Such a framework thus says something about the constitution of the 
community or society to which the rules apply. In this case, a 
reasonable behavior is obviously not (of course) obvious.

Among friends, the behaviors and attitudes described in the relevant 
regulations, such as respect, attention and helpfulness, 
non-discrimination, the will to cooperate, rule-free intercourse, etc., 
are self-evident. Friends behave as each other as required in these 
rules. At least most. If not always.

The biggest lump in the whole country ...
The relevant regulations then provide for the appointment of persons or 
bodies to whom, if one believes the rules have been violated, one can 
turn to oneself.

In most cases such a complaint is permissible not only in case of 
personal concern, but also if one thinks that the rules have been 
violated to the detriment of one or the other. Experience teaches that 
this often challenges behaviors that can kill any friendship. Knowing 
better and being feeling informers usually have only like-minded people 
as social contact.

But we do not want to promote either conceit or denunciation.

If someone does not behave as it is self-evident, then there are 
reasons. These can be different types. A clear word among friends in 
private or in a small circle is then helpful - for the "victim", as well 
as for the "perpetrator". The latter deserves respect, 
non-discrimination, attention, helpfulness and understanding. The latter 
should actually be self-evident, but it is often not the case when 
executing a Code of Conduct.

Nor is a rule-free, friendly dealing with the accused possible. The 
roles of the judge and a friend are incompatible. Friends meet at eye 
level; the judge has power and authority to exercise, even if he acquits.

Penalties among friends?
Finally, a Code of Conduct will include a sanctioning apparatus to 
sanction undesirable behavior. Deliberate addition of evils 
(punishments) among friends is a contradiction in terms.

 From this, it can be concluded that the moment a Code of Conduct takes 
effect, the friendship is already over. When we get to that point, we 
should dissolve our club, because then we failed - all together.

Therefore, we do not need and do not want a code of conduct in the sense 
of a set of rules.

Resistance to unreasonableness
Sometimes, in recent times, the demand for a code of conduct in the form 
of a corresponding set of rules is unfortunately linked with a 
(financial) aid offer. Help under such a condition we refuse.

Freedom, as we want to understand and live it, occasionally requires 
resistance to the imposition of doing something unreasonable and harmful.

Respectful help and patronage are incompatible. Freedom requires and 
requires maturity. We can not propagate freedom and accept paternalism.

We are friends. That is already in the name of our association. This is 
our "Code of Conduct". That is enough. More would be harmful.

Hi PostgreSQL Community,

some points I like to make mainly because of observations of how other 
open source projects handle this topic:


1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a 
committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and 
denunciation. That is why some projects choose not to have one
https://freie-software.org/verein/coc.html - they say: "we're friends - 
that's our CoC, more would be harmful" [1]

3) https://shiromarieke.github.io/coc.html explains why there's no safe 
space and CoC won't change that (she's a queer woman who experienced 
harassment and sexual assault)


In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a 
secondary judicial system but to use the already existing ones.


I hope these points can influence what is in the CoC or whether there 
will a CoC at all.
Personally, I find 2) a very good case against CoC (although I like the 
"we're friends - that's our CoC, more would be harmful").


Best,
Sven


On 03.06.2018 20:29, Tom Lane wrote:
> Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
> Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
> the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
> to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
> but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
> and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
> of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at
>
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

[1] Appendix - Google translation of the CoC of Freie Software:

Code of Conduct
Don't have it. Don't want to have.

That's the short version. The long version follows.

A "Code of Conduct" is a code of conduct in the sense of a set of norms 
intended to determine the behavior of addressees of the Code.

Thoughts on the normalization of the self-evident
If one reads current, relevant regulations, one finds that normal 
self-evident behaviors are normalized there. What is required there is 
the attitude and behavior of a reasonably reasonable, reasonably well 
behaved person.

That seems remarkable. Rules are set up when there is a risk that they 
will be broken. You should act on the addressee from the outside, 
because you fear that he will not behave properly without this impact.

Such a framework thus says something about the constitution of the 
community or society to which the rules apply. In this case, a 
reasonable behavior is obviously not (of course) obvious.

Among friends, the behaviors and attitudes described in the relevant 
regulations, such as respect, attention and helpfulness, 
non-discrimination, the will to cooperate, rule-free intercourse, etc., 
are self-evident. Friends behave as each other as required in these 
rules. At least most. If not always.

The biggest lump in the whole country ...
The relevant regulations then provide for the appointment of persons or 
bodies to whom, if one believes the rules have been violated, one can 
turn to oneself.

In most cases such a complaint is permissible not only in case of 
personal concern, but also if one thinks that the rules have been 
violated to the detriment of one or the other. Experience teaches that 
this often challenges behaviors that can kill any friendship. Knowing 
better and being feeling informers usually have only like-minded people 
as social contact.

But we do not want to promote either conceit or denunciation.

If someone does not behave as it is self-evident, then there are 
reasons. These can be different types. A clear word among friends in 
private or in a small circle is then helpful - for the "victim", as well 
as for the "perpetrator". The latter deserves respect, 
non-discrimination, attention, helpfulness and understanding. The latter 
should actually be self-evident, but it is often not the case when 
executing a Code of Conduct.

Nor is a rule-free, friendly dealing with the accused possible. The 
roles of the judge and a friend are incompatible. Friends meet at eye 
level; the judge has power and authority to exercise, even if he acquits.

Penalties among friends?
Finally, a Code of Conduct will include a sanctioning apparatus to 
sanction undesirable behavior. Deliberate addition of evils 
(punishments) among friends is a contradiction in terms.

 From this, it can be concluded that the moment a Code of Conduct takes 
effect, the friendship is already over. When we get to that point, we 
should dissolve our club, because then we failed - all together.

Therefore, we do not need and do not want a code of conduct in the sense 
of a set of rules.

Resistance to unreasonableness
Sometimes, in recent times, the demand for a code of conduct in the form 
of a corresponding set of rules is unfortunately linked with a 
(financial) aid offer. Help under such a condition we refuse.

Freedom, as we want to understand and live it, occasionally requires 
resistance to the imposition of doing something unreasonable and harmful.

Respectful help and patronage are incompatible. Freedom requires and 
requires maturity. We can not propagate freedom and accept paternalism.

We are friends. That is already in the name of our association. This is 
our "Code of Conduct". That is enough. More would be harmful.

Sorry...

> 1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects


    I know this on going regurgitation is going to cause my team to leave the project, right around 100 posts on this
offtopic topic.... it was bad enough when the original idea came up (2 years ago I think). It used to be exciting to
sitback and review the day or weeks posts... not much anymore. 

Regards,
Ozz

Sorry...

> 1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects


    I know this on going regurgitation is going to cause my team to leave the project, right around 100 posts on this
offtopic topic.... it was bad enough when the original idea came up (2 years ago I think). It used to be exciting to
sitback and review the day or weeks posts... not much anymore. 

Regards,
Ozz

Sorry...

> 1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects


    I know this on going regurgitation is going to cause my team to leave the project, right around 100 posts on this
offtopic topic.... it was bad enough when the original idea came up (2 years ago I think). It used to be exciting to
sitback and review the day or weeks posts... not much anymore. 

Regards,
Ozz

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Sven R. Kunze <srkunze@mail.de> wrote:
> 1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

This guy left LLVM for several reasons. The pertinent reason for us
was that he had to agree to a code of conduct in order to attend
conferences, which he found to be unacceptable. He did not have to
agree that the idea of a code of conduct was a good one, though. It
would have been perfectly possible for him to be opposed in principle
to the idea of a CoC, while also formally agreeing to it and attending
those conferences. I gather that his objections were around questions
of unintended consequences, the role of a certain authority to assess
violations of the CoC, and so on (I surmise that he was not actually
opposed to or constrained by any of the specific rules around content
in technical presentations and so on).

I for one accept that these may have been reasonable concerns, even
though I don't really agree, since the LLVM CoC seems quite
reasonable. Anybody that participates in an open source community soon
learns that their opinion on almost any matter may not be the one that
prevails. There are often differences of opinion on -hackers that seem
to fundamentally be down to a difference in values. We still manage to
make it work, somehow.

> 2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a
> committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and
> denunciation.

I think that having a code of conduct is better than not having one,
and I think that the one that we came up with is appropriate and
proportionate. We could speculate all day about specific unintended
consequences that may or may not follow. That doesn't seem very
constructive, though. Besides, the time for that has passed.

> In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a secondary
> judicial system but to use the already existing ones.

I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.
Naturally, the rules across disparate groups vary widely for all kinds
of reasons. Formalizing and being more transparent about how this
works seems like the opposite of paternalism to me.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Sven R. Kunze <srkunze@mail.de> wrote:
> 1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

This guy left LLVM for several reasons. The pertinent reason for us
was that he had to agree to a code of conduct in order to attend
conferences, which he found to be unacceptable. He did not have to
agree that the idea of a code of conduct was a good one, though. It
would have been perfectly possible for him to be opposed in principle
to the idea of a CoC, while also formally agreeing to it and attending
those conferences. I gather that his objections were around questions
of unintended consequences, the role of a certain authority to assess
violations of the CoC, and so on (I surmise that he was not actually
opposed to or constrained by any of the specific rules around content
in technical presentations and so on).

I for one accept that these may have been reasonable concerns, even
though I don't really agree, since the LLVM CoC seems quite
reasonable. Anybody that participates in an open source community soon
learns that their opinion on almost any matter may not be the one that
prevails. There are often differences of opinion on -hackers that seem
to fundamentally be down to a difference in values. We still manage to
make it work, somehow.

> 2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a
> committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and
> denunciation.

I think that having a code of conduct is better than not having one,
and I think that the one that we came up with is appropriate and
proportionate. We could speculate all day about specific unintended
consequences that may or may not follow. That doesn't seem very
constructive, though. Besides, the time for that has passed.

> In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a secondary
> judicial system but to use the already existing ones.

I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.
Naturally, the rules across disparate groups vary widely for all kinds
of reasons. Formalizing and being more transparent about how this
works seems like the opposite of paternalism to me.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Sven R. Kunze <srkunze@mail.de> wrote:
> 1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

This guy left LLVM for several reasons. The pertinent reason for us
was that he had to agree to a code of conduct in order to attend
conferences, which he found to be unacceptable. He did not have to
agree that the idea of a code of conduct was a good one, though. It
would have been perfectly possible for him to be opposed in principle
to the idea of a CoC, while also formally agreeing to it and attending
those conferences. I gather that his objections were around questions
of unintended consequences, the role of a certain authority to assess
violations of the CoC, and so on (I surmise that he was not actually
opposed to or constrained by any of the specific rules around content
in technical presentations and so on).

I for one accept that these may have been reasonable concerns, even
though I don't really agree, since the LLVM CoC seems quite
reasonable. Anybody that participates in an open source community soon
learns that their opinion on almost any matter may not be the one that
prevails. There are often differences of opinion on -hackers that seem
to fundamentally be down to a difference in values. We still manage to
make it work, somehow.

> 2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a
> committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and
> denunciation.

I think that having a code of conduct is better than not having one,
and I think that the one that we came up with is appropriate and
proportionate. We could speculate all day about specific unintended
consequences that may or may not follow. That doesn't seem very
constructive, though. Besides, the time for that has passed.

> In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a secondary
> judicial system but to use the already existing ones.

I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.
Naturally, the rules across disparate groups vary widely for all kinds
of reasons. Formalizing and being more transparent about how this
works seems like the opposite of paternalism to me.

-- 
Peter Geoghegan

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 15:20, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
> I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
> conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.

I believe the objection is to setting up a separate CoC committee, rather than using the core team as the enforcement
mechanism.

This is more important than may be obvious.  Having a separation of the CoC committee and the organization that sets up
andsupervises the CoC committee is very important to prevent the perception, or the fact, that the CoC enforcement
mechanismis a Star Chamber that is answerable only to itself.  It also allows for an appeal mechanism. 

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 15:20, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
> I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
> conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.

I believe the objection is to setting up a separate CoC committee, rather than using the core team as the enforcement
mechanism.

This is more important than may be obvious.  Having a separation of the CoC committee and the organization that sets up
andsupervises the CoC committee is very important to prevent the perception, or the fact, that the CoC enforcement
mechanismis a Star Chamber that is answerable only to itself.  It also allows for an appeal mechanism. 

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 15:20, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
> I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
> conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.

I believe the objection is to setting up a separate CoC committee, rather than using the core team as the enforcement
mechanism.

This is more important than may be obvious.  Having a separation of the CoC committee and the organization that sets up
andsupervises the CoC committee is very important to prevent the perception, or the fact, that the CoC enforcement
mechanismis a Star Chamber that is answerable only to itself.  It also allows for an appeal mechanism. 

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:
>> Not at all.  The need for a CoC is not theoretical.  Real people,
>> recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
>> system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

> I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
> but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
> Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?

You want us to name names?  I've tried to leave specific peoples' names
out of this; I don't think it would be helpful to them to dredge up old
wounds.  And I'm quite sure they wouldn't care to be contacted by
somebody trying to "verify" things.

> What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
> in a different outcome?

We have none, sure.  But what *can* be confidently asserted is that doing
nothing will result in no improvement.  It'll also create the perception
that we're actively uninterested in improving the situation, thus driving
away people who might otherwise have joined the community.

I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix.  Yes, this is an
experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.

            regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
>> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:
>>> Not at all.  The need for a CoC is not theoretical.  Real people,
>>> recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
>>> system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.
> 
>> I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
>> but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
>> Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?
> 
> You want us to name names?  I've tried to leave specific peoples' names
> out of this; I don't think it would be helpful to them to dredge up old
> wounds.  And I'm quite sure they wouldn't care to be contacted by
> somebody trying to "verify" things.
> 
>> What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
>> in a different outcome?
> 
> We have none, sure.  But what *can* be confidently asserted is that doing
> nothing will result in no improvement.  It'll also create the perception
> that we're actively uninterested in improving the situation, thus driving
> away people who might otherwise have joined the community.
> 
> I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
> ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix.  Yes, this is an
> experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
> If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.

Good to hear this is considered an experiment.

To that end will there be quarterly/yearly reports, suitably anonymized, 
that spell out the activity that took place with reference to the CoC?


> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 16:45 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:
> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well 
> and include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is
> for it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural
> viewpoint.

Being international/intercultural certainly has some value, but I think
it's at least as useful to have people with different competencies and
professional backgrounds.

For example: having some people who have a background in something like
psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
(in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
managers) would be valuable too.


-- 
Jan Claeys

On 06/05/2018 05:07 PM, Jan Claeys wrote:
> On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 16:45 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:
>> If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well
>> and include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is
>> for it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural
>> viewpoint.
> 
> Being international/intercultural certainly has some value, but I think
> it's at least as useful to have people with different competencies and
> professional backgrounds.
> 
> For example: having some people who have a background in something like
> psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
> (in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
> managers) would be valuable too.

Oh, please no that would be a trip down the rabbit hole.

> 
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 17:07, Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> wrote:
>
> For example: having some people who have a background in something like
> psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
> (in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
> managers) would be valuable too.

While it's good for the CoC committee to reach out for professional expertise if they need it, it should be on an
engagementbasis (if the CoC committee needs a lawyer, they find and retain a lawyer).  The damage that someone smart
whothinks they know another profession can do is substantial. 

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:
> On 06/05/2018 05:07 PM, Jan Claeys wrote:
>> Being international/intercultural certainly has some value, but I think
>> it's at least as useful to have people with different competencies and
>> professional backgrounds.
>> For example: having some people who have a background in something like
>> psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
>> (in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
>> managers) would be valuable too.

> Oh, please no that would be a trip down the rabbit hole.

Yeah.  For my own 2 cents, it's important that the committee members
be well known and trusted by the community-at-large; otherwise people
will be afraid to submit reports, making all this work pointless.
Combining that with the requirement for diversity is already going to
make it a difficult exercise to assemble a perfect team.  And then
there's the matter of whether people want to serve at all --- this is
likely to be a pretty thankless and unpleasant task, and one requiring
the sort of soft skills that tend not to be in abundance in a collection
of computer geeks ;-).  So I suspect that the pool of potential members
is not really very large.  Plus, since we put a time limit on how long
people can serve, we're going to need a fresh set of faces every couple
years.  So we shouldn't fool ourselves about how much we're going to be
able to ask in terms of additional qualifications.

            regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:
>> On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:
>>> Not at all.  The need for a CoC is not theoretical.  Real people,
>>> recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
>>> system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.
> 
>> I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
>> but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
>> Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?
> 
> You want us to name names?  I've tried to leave specific peoples' names
> out of this; I don't think it would be helpful to them to dredge up old
> wounds.  And I'm quite sure they wouldn't care to be contacted by
> somebody trying to "verify" things.

+1, this is ridiculous.

JD

-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:
> On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>> I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
>> ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix.  Yes, this is an
>> experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
>> If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.

> Good to hear this is considered an experiment.

> To that end will there be quarterly/yearly reports, suitably anonymized, 
> that spell out the activity that took place with reference to the CoC?

That seems like a good idea from here.  I don't know exactly how much
can be reported without risking privacy issues, but surely we could at
least provide the number of incidents and how they were resolved.

            regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 08:55 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:
>> On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
>>> ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix.  Yes, this is an
>>> experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
>>> If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.
> 
>> Good to hear this is considered an experiment.
> 
>> To that end will there be quarterly/yearly reports, suitably anonymized,
>> that spell out the activity that took place with reference to the CoC?
> 
> That seems like a good idea from here.  I don't know exactly how much
> can be reported without risking privacy issues, but surely we could at
> least provide the number of incidents and how they were resolved.

Yeah I like it too. We don't have to give out any confidential 
information but it adds to the transparency and allows the community as 
a whole to see that.
> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

## note: these are my personal opinions and views

On 6/3/18 11:29, Tom Lane wrote:
> We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
> Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
> If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
> coc@postgresql.org.

This email thread is so long that it's easy to spend more time on the
emails than the CoC itself!

My main feedback on the CoC is that it doesn't really say anything about
what to do if the complaint is against a core team member. This was
mentioned elsewhere in the email thread and I'm a bit surprised there's
nothing explicit in the CoC. If someone feels they have been treated in
a grossly inappropriate manner by a core team member, is it worthwhile
to report this? I think they'd want to know a little more about what the
process will be for that special case.

I haven't reviewed CoC's from other open source projects recently, but
sexual harassment policies at non-technical organizations where I
volunteer do explicitly cover the case of complaints against leaders. So
maybe it's a gap worth closing.

The sorts of issues that would be addressed here certainly are
complicated. I remember not too long ago when Brendan Eich was pressured
to resign as CEO of Mozilla (after only 11 days iirc) because he had a
particular political view unrelated to technology. I also think there
might be some merit to Lutz Horn's point about western bias in CoCs; we
should note concerns about propagating those values. (This isn't new;
e.g. Pope Francis called it ideological colonization in the news.) The
Mozilla case is not directly related to a CoC but it's still interesting
as it touches on how complicated these conversations can become.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/


https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ceo-brendan-eich-deserve-to-be-removed-from-his-position-due-to-his-support-for-proposition-8/

Overall, having a CoC seems to me like a good thing to do. My
interactions with leaders in the PostgreSQL have been positive and it
feels like they will be good stewards of a CoC. I'm looking forward to
seeing one adopted.

-Jeremy

## note: these are my personal opinions and views

-- 
Jeremy Schneider
Database Engineer
Amazon Web Services

Jeremy Schneider <schnjere@amazon.com> writes:
> My main feedback on the CoC is that it doesn't really say anything about
> what to do if the complaint is against a core team member. This was
> mentioned elsewhere in the email thread and I'm a bit surprised there's
> nothing explicit in the CoC. If someone feels they have been treated in
> a grossly inappropriate manner by a core team member, is it worthwhile
> to report this? I think they'd want to know a little more about what the
> process will be for that special case.

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread.  I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

    In the event of a complaint against a CoC committee member, the
    process proceeds normally, but that person is excluded from the
    committee's discussions in the matter.  Similarly, in the event of
    a complaint against a core team member, the process proceeds
    normally, but that person is excluded from any core review that
    may occur.

and maybe also

    In such cases, removal from the committee or core is another
    possible sanction, in addition to those mentioned above.

            regards, tom lane

I wrote:
> Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread.  I guess we felt that
> the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
> I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
complaint against someone else?  They certainly shouldn't get to rule
on their own complaint.  So maybe change "complaint against" to 
"complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.

            regards, tom lane

Jeremy Schneider <schnjere@amazon.com> writes:
> My main feedback on the CoC is that it doesn't really say anything about
> what to do if the complaint is against a core team member. This was
> mentioned elsewhere in the email thread and I'm a bit surprised there's
> nothing explicit in the CoC. If someone feels they have been treated in
> a grossly inappropriate manner by a core team member, is it worthwhile
> to report this? I think they'd want to know a little more about what the
> process will be for that special case.

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread.  I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

        In the event of a complaint against a CoC committee member, the
        process proceeds normally, but that person is excluded from the
        committee's discussions in the matter.  Similarly, in the event of
        a complaint against a core team member, the process proceeds
        normally, but that person is excluded from any core review that
        may occur.

and maybe also

        In such cases, removal from the committee or core is another
        possible sanction, in addition to those mentioned above.

On 2018-Jun-06, David G. Johnston wrote:

> On the topic of privacy - who exactly, from an administrative aspect, has
> access to the systems that house these kinds of confidential
> communications?  Do these emails end up in PostgreSQL.org servers long-term
> or is it mainly transient distribution and only individual's personal email
> accounts, with whatever hosting provider they choose, hold the messages
> long-term?

postgresql.org does not host personal email accounts, with a few
exceptions.  Most of these exceptions are actually just forwards to
mailboxes elsewhere, so the traffic stays in the relevant postgresql.org
server very briefly.  The few accounts that that are actual mailboxes in
postgresql.org are, as far as I know, only country-specific accounts for
advocacy, not personal points of contact.

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

On 06/06/2018 11:22 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> I wrote:
>> Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread.  I guess we felt that
>> the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
>> I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of
> 
> Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
> which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
> complaint against someone else?  They certainly shouldn't get to rule
> on their own complaint.  So maybe change "complaint against" to
> "complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.

Well that is a standard conflict of interest issue. Having simple 
language that says something such as:

A Member involved in complaints may not vote/rule on issues reported by 
the respective member.

JD

> 
>             regards, tom lane
> 


-- 
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:
> On the topic of privacy - who exactly, from an administrative aspect, has
> access to the systems that house these kinds of confidential
> communications?  Do these emails end up in PostgreSQL.org servers long-term
> or is it mainly transient distribution and only individual's personal email
> accounts, with whatever hosting provider they choose, hold the messages
> long-term?

The pginfra team, which has some overlap with core but is a separate
group (I'm not a member), are the guys with root on the servers.
So you have to trust them too as far as information security goes.
I don't know that the exact procedures for the CoC group have been
decided yet; but most likely it will work like the core team, for which
there's a closed mailing list that's not archived on the project servers.
The weakest link in the CoC traffic is likely to be the individual
committee members' email accounts --- I trust they'll take some suitable
precautions.

            regards, tom lane

Yeah, while it is pretty much self-evident I would agree that stating it explicitly would benefit the document.  Both parts.

On the topic of privacy - who exactly, from an administrative aspect, has access to the systems that house these kinds of confidential communications?  Do these emails end up in PostgreSQL.org servers long-term or is it mainly transient distribution and only individual's personal email accounts, with whatever hosting provider they choose, hold the messages long-term?

-- 
Jeremy Schneider
Database Engineer
Amazon Web Services

On Wed, 2018-06-06 at 07:27 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:
> The real fear here is the code of conduct being co-opted as a weapon
> of world-wide culture war and that's what is driving a lot of the
> resistance here.  This is particularly an American problem here and
> it causes  a lot of resistance among people who were, until the
> second world war, subject to some pretty serious problems by colonial
> powers.

I don't see how this could happen any more than it already can, because
as far as I can tell the goal is not to discuss complaints in public;
the committee would handle cases in private.  And if committee members
would try to abuse their power, I'm pretty sure they would be removed.

> Putting a bunch of American lawyers, psychologists, sociologists,
> marketers etc on the board in the name of diversity would do way more
> harm than good.

I didn't say they have to be American, and I didn't say there has to be
a bunch of them.  I just said it would be good if there were also
people who aren't (just only) developers, DBAs or other very technical
people.


-- 
Jan Claeys

You don't have to be a magician to predict this is going to harm the community.

Please keep your American social politics out of Postgres, thank you!

--

Met vriendelijke groeten,

	Pablo Hendrickx Open Source DBA +32 489 73 09 37 pablo.hendrickx@exitas.be Quality. Passion. Personality
www.exitas.be | Veldkant 31 | 2550 Kontich

On 07/06/18 09:04, Pablo Hendrickx wrote:
> You don't have to be a magician to predict this is going to harm the 
> community.
> 
> Please keep your American social politics out of Postgres, thank you!

As a long-time lurker and occasional participant on this list, I don't 
think this has ever been an issue, in my experience anyway. There might 
be an occasional turn of phrase which I have to parse a bit, but that's 
about it. :-)

Ray.

-- 
Raymond O'Donnell :: Galway :: Ireland
rod@iol.ie

On 07/06/18 21:49, Raymond O'Donnell wrote:
> On 07/06/18 09:04, Pablo Hendrickx wrote:
>> You don't have to be a magician to predict this is going to harm the 
>> community.
>>
>> Please keep your American social politics out of Postgres, thank you!
>
> As a long-time lurker and occasional participant on this list, I don't 
> think this has ever been an issue, in my experience anyway. There 
> might be an occasional turn of phrase which I have to parse a bit, but 
> that's about it. :-)
>
> Ray.
>
The Americans often seem to act as though most people lived in the USA, 
therefore we should all be bound by what they think is correct!


Cheers,
Gavin

> On Jun 7, 2018, at 02:55, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:
> The Americans often seem to act as though most people lived in the USA, therefore we should all be bound by what they
thinkis correct! 

I have to say that this seems like a red herring to me.

1. The CoC committee handles actual incidents involving real people.  It's not their job to boil the ocean and create a
newworld; they deal with the matters brought before them.  I have no reason to believe that they will not apply good
senseand judgement to the handling of the specific cases. 

2. I don't think that there is a country where someone being driven out of a technical community by harassment is an
acceptablelocal value. 

3. The only actual real-life example of a culture clash that I've seen offered up here is the ability to say "c*nt" on
atechnical mailing list about databases.  That seems a very strange and specific hill to choose to die on in this
discussion.

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

On 08/06/18 14:21, Christophe Pettus wrote:
>> On Jun 7, 2018, at 02:55, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:
>> The Americans often seem to act as though most people lived in the USA, therefore we should all be bound by what
theythink is correct!
 
> I have to say that this seems like a red herring to me.
Not entirely.  American web sites tend to insist on weird date format, 
and insist on the archaic imperial units rather than the metric system 
that most people in the world use.  There were also more cultural 
clashes, long before Trump got elected.  I'm English, and I'm very aware 
of the arrogance we showed when we had an Empire.  The Americans don't 
seem to have learnt from the mistakes the British made.

If you selected 3 teams of 4, for each of the countries USA, France, and 
Japan -- isolated each team and asked them to draw of a Code-of-Conduct, 
they would clash.  Mind you, they'd probably clash if you selected 3 
teams from different parts of the USA!


> 1. The CoC committee handles actual incidents involving real people.  It's not their job to boil the ocean and create
anew world; they deal with the matters brought before them.  I have no reason to believe that they will not apply good
senseand judgement to the handling of the specific cases.
 
>
> 2. I don't think that there is a country where someone being driven out of a technical community by harassment is an
acceptablelocal value.
 
True, but defining acceptable values is way more difficult than it 
looks, as are definitions in general.

For example try defining something simple, like what is a car! EVERYBODY 
knows what a car is right?  It is not something controversial that 
affects people's religious beliefs (car nuts excepted!).  You will find 
it incredible difficult to have a definition that includes everything 
that you consider a car, and exclude everything that you don't think is 
a car.  A colleague once had a car that only had 3 road wheels, ever 
come across that before???

Try defining success at university, it is downright impossible if you 
consider it with sufficient care -- yet people often act like there is a 
clear cut definition, they think it is so obvious they usually don't 
bother attempting to define it.  If a girl enrols in 3 courses at a 
university and completes them, but lives for 70 years without further 
study -- has she failed because she never got a degree?

>
> 3. The only actual real-life example of a culture clash that I've seen offered up here is the ability to say "c*nt"
ona technical mailing list about databases.  That seems a very strange and specific hill to choose to die on in this
discussion.
I agree that such words have no place in a discussion of databases, 
except when they do!

There was once a company that wrote an adventure game that refused to 
accept rude words, so people went out of their way to look for ones it 
didn't know about.  So their action had consequences opposite to their 
intentions.

Saying people should never denigrate others seems straightforward and 
noble until you look at things in detail.  I've called a friend of mine 
a bastard, but he took it as a mark of respect in the context of our 
discussion.

>
> --
> -- Christophe Pettus
>     xof@thebuild.com
>
>
I think a written code of conduct is laudable, but  impracticable in 
reality, even if "Politically Correct".


Cheers,
Gavin

On 06/07/2018 04:55 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:
[snip]
> The Americans often seem to act as though most people lived in the USA, 
> therefore we should all be bound by what they think is correct!

"You" are wearing a tee-shirt (or hoodie), blue jeans and Nikes, while 
eating a fast food hamburger, drinking a Coke, listening to rock and roll, 
emailing us over the Internet from your Mac, thinking all Men are created 
equal, and feeling glad that NZ isn't an English colony.

That kind of cultural dominance makes one think the US truly is exceptional.

-- 
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

> On Jun 7, 2018, at 21:00, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:
>
>> I have to say that this seems like a red herring to me.
> Not entirely.  American web sites tend to insist on weird date format, and insist on the archaic imperial units
ratherthan the metric system that most people in the world use.  

Then you will be pleased to know that neither writing dates day-of-month first, nor using meters, will be Code of
Conductviolations. :) 

> For example try defining something simple, like what is a car!
[...]
>
> Try defining success at university

It is equally unlikely that the Code of Conduct committee will need to decide what a car is, or whether or not someone
hassucceeded at university. 

I'm not trying to be snide, but this does seem to be exactly what I was talking about: When asked for examples of
culturaldifferences that might run afoul of the CoC, the examples don't seem to be either relevant (i.e., they are not
thingsthe CoC committee will have to address), or are clearly contextual in a way that a human will have no trouble
understanding.

> I've called a friend of mine a bastard, but he took it as a mark of respect in the context of our discussion.

This is why we have human beings, rather than a regex, forming the Code of Conduct committee.  It's important to
rememberthat the CoC committee is not going to be going around policing the community for potential violations; their
jobis to resolve actual situations between real people.  It's not their job to define values; it's their job to resolve
situations. In my experience in dealing with CoC issues, the situations (while often complex) are rarely of the form,
"Thisword does not mean anything bad where I come from." 

--
-- Christophe Pettus
   xof@thebuild.com

On 08/06/18 16:55, Ron wrote:
> On 06/07/2018 04:55 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:
> [snip]
>> The Americans often seem to act as though most people lived in the 
>> USA, therefore we should all be bound by what they think is correct!
>
> "You" are wearing a tee-shirt (or hoodie), blue jeans and Nikes, while 
> eating a fast food hamburger, drinking a Coke, listening to rock and 
> roll, emailing us over the Internet from your Mac, thinking all Men 
> are created equal, and feeling glad that NZ isn't an English colony.
>
> That kind of cultural dominance makes one think the US truly is 
> exceptional.
>
Only two of those things you said about me are currently true, and some 
are never true.

Perhaps accusing someone as being a Mac user should be banned by the CoC?

On 08/06/18 17:09, Christophe Pettus wrote:
[...]
>
> It is equally unlikely that the Code of Conduct committee will need to decide what a car is, or whether or not
someonehas succeeded at university.
 
>
> I'm not trying to be snide, but this does seem to be exactly what I was talking about: When asked for examples of
culturaldifferences that might run afoul of the CoC, the examples don't seem to be either relevant (i.e., they are not
thingsthe CoC committee will have to address), or are clearly contextual in a way that a human will have no trouble
understanding.
I was simply pointing out the problems with definitions.  The examples 
were chosen to show the problems exist even when the subject matter is 
not normally considered controversial.

>
>> I've called a friend of mine a bastard, but he took it as a mark of respect in the context of our discussion.
> This is why we have human beings, rather than a regex, forming the Code of Conduct committee.  It's important to
rememberthat the CoC committee is not going to be going around policing the community for potential violations; their
jobis to resolve actual situations between real people.  It's not their job to define values; it's their job to resolve
situations. In my experience in dealing with CoC issues, the situations (while often complex) are rarely of the form,
"Thisword does not mean anything bad where I come from."
 

I've read emails from Sarah Sharpe, and seen her harangue Linus (I was 
standing about a metre away from them).  Sarah was essentially trying to 
insist that Linus follow a CoC.  The pg lists are remarkable tame, 
compared to some I read.  Linus is quite entertaining at times, but most 
people appreciate where he is coming from even when they are the target 
of one of his rants.  I've immense respect for Linus, but he'd likely 
fall foul of most CoC's!

>
> --
> -- Christophe Pettus
>     xof@thebuild.com
>
Cheers,
Gavin

Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> writes:
> 2. I don't think that there is a country where someone being driven out of a technical community by harassment is an
acceptablelocal value. 

Yeah, this.  People that I've known and respected, and who did not seem
at all thin-skinned, have left this community because of harassment.
We need to try to stop that, not because of "political correctness",
but to ensure that our community has a long-term future.

It's not a simple thing, and I don't envy the CoC committee's task.
For instance, I hope we can all agree that sexual harassment is
unacceptable --- but I can imagine that what one person thought was
friendly banter was harassment to the other, particularly if different
cultures are involved.  The committee will likely have to sort out such
situations and try to reconcile the two people without either starting a
war or driving away either person.  They may not always succeed.  But not
trying is not a better answer.

            regards, tom lane

On 06/08/2018 12:09 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:
> On 08/06/18 16:55, Ron wrote:
>> On 06/07/2018 04:55 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> The Americans often seem to act as though most people lived in the USA, 
>>> therefore we should all be bound by what they think is correct!
>>
>> "You" are wearing a tee-shirt (or hoodie), blue jeans and Nikes, while 
>> eating a fast food hamburger, drinking a Coke, listening to rock and 
>> roll, emailing us over the Internet from your Mac, thinking all Men are 
>> created equal, and feeling glad that NZ isn't an English colony.
>>
>> That kind of cultural dominance makes one think the US truly is exceptional.
>>
> Only two of those things you said about me are currently true, and some 
> are never true.

That's why I put "you" in quotes.

>
> Perhaps accusing someone as being a Mac user should be banned by the CoC?

-- 
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

On 6 June 2018 at 19:22, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> I wrote:
>> Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread.  I guess we felt that
>> the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
>> I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of
>
> Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
> which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
> complaint against someone else?  They certainly shouldn't get to rule
> on their own complaint.  So maybe change "complaint against" to
> "complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.

Which brings up the further complication of in which order are things
dealt with?

If people file complaints against each other. Is there benefit in
rushing to file a complaint?

"The Committee will inform the complainant and the alleged violator of
their decision at that time." That is unclear.

Are complaints considered AFTER information has been collected from
both parties? If so, it doesn't matter who complains first, both
parties will get their say.

But if the person being complained about only hears of the complaint
after judgement has been made this means there is benefit in being the
first to complain, which will encourage people to complain early so
they can get their boot in first. And also cause double the volume of
complaints, since it will be necessary to counter-complain in order
for the alleged violator to get their say.

Would it not be better to consider arbitration as the first step in
dispute resolution? Do we need judgement by a committee as the first
step? Do we even have time for judges to judge?

Thanks for working on this.

-- 
Simon Riggs                http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

On 2018-06-08 09:46, Simon Riggs wrote:
<snip>
> Would it not be better to consider arbitration as the first step in
> dispute resolution?

This bit sounds like it'd need to be on a case-by-case basis.

It's pretty easy to imagine scenarios where arbitration wouldn't be
appropriate.

Whether or not they come about in the PG Community or not is a
different matter.

My point being that arbitration isn't necessarily automatically the
right direction.

I'd probably leave it up to the CoC team/people to figure it out. :)

+ Justin

On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 12:06 -0400, James Keener wrote:
> Do we need a code of conduct like this, or so we need a more general
> dispute resolution process? Something that is public and aimed at
> mediating disputes (even ones about bad conduct) and removing repeat
> offenders. To be honest, larger issues of harassment should be handled
> by the police.
> 
> A code of conduct is basically "be excellent to each other", but what
> that means is never going to be well codified in a document anyone can
> produce. It's why we have a judiciary in the "real world".
> 
> I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group
> implement a code of conduct go well. I'm a fairly socially liberal
> person, but have been told in one group that my views as a cis,
> hetero, white, middle class make aren't welcome in discussions about
> getting more women or minorities to participate. Specifically there
> was a discussion in that group about how since women often bare the
> burden of child care, even when both partners work, that side projects
> as a hiring criteria are sexist. I mentioned that as an involved
> father I also find little time to work on side projects and that the
> issue is more about those with kids than specifically women and was
> essentially run out of the group.
> 
> Another time, same group, someone was discussing guns, and someone
> else said that this kind of discussion is why women don't participate
> much. I mentioned that I know more women who own guns, hunt, and
> target shoot than I do men who do that. I was again told to shut up
> and banded for a few days when I pressed as to why a not-male-centric
> discussion was being censored in the name of sexism and fairness.
> 
> How will this CoC handle these situation? I obviously offended people
> and had no intention of doing so. I was also told that the
> moderators/CoC commitee would act fairly, and I obviously believe I
> was mistreated by them. Forgive me for not believing in the
> benevolence of the governors.
> 

i think that's much broader problem of CoC that anyone would like to
admit.

but before i go further, let me introduce context of my personal view.
i'm great fan of postgresql (although somewhat outside of my real work,
i use it a lot for work and hobby) and that community, which i find
really great.
i wouldn't describe myself as an active community member, i'm mostly
lurking (sometimes with significant delay) learning even more from other
people's problems and solutions, and at times when i could be of help to
someone it's too late (due to significant delays in reading).
as of CoC, i would say i really do not care that much and it does not
change my life a bit. but...
there's always a "but".
i personally hate formalizing everything for the idea of having all
formalized.

CoC in itself is political thing, for enforcing political correctness in
many social, cultural, geographical, political, religious, intimate, and
other aspects, all beyond community's interests.
not only is prone to be abused, but implicitly invites ways of abusing
to community's life.

and generally (not saying anyone here personally) people demanding
special treatment because of some CoC rules and people enforcing
policing force of CoC in the name of political correctness, or for their
personal needs of being part of, or contributing to that policing force
may be more dangerous to community and other members than people who can
very occasionally unintentionally offend someone.

and does real harassment comes from unintentional offense? maybe, when
the victim feels too much offended to try to understand what really
happened.
and than CoC becomes a tool to revenge, even more so when CoC is to
punish offender, not really to mediate between involved parties. culture
differences do not help in understanding each other when it comes that
far.
misunderstanding (involuntary or intentional (yes, that may happen)) is
far more expected than intentional offense, that should be addressed and
not political correctness.

formalizing correctness is never good, helps nothing, introduces
problems. creating entity for judging and punishing does not solve those
newly introduced problems.

wouldn't it be better if CoC didn't touch aspects beyond community's
interests, only stated that friendliness is expected, some ways of
mediation available and punishment only as a last resort solution?

when technical community walks into keeping eyes on member's personal
beliefs, feelings and way of life (like being too much polite, too much
rude, too much humorous, too much fanatic, too much religious, or
whatever) than that's not the same technical community anymore.


just my 2c, ban me my dear community if i violated your CoC ;)


> Jim
> 
> On June 5, 2018 11:49:06 AM EDT, Benjamin Scherrey
> <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
>         
>         
>         On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 10:37 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie>
>         wrote:
>                 It is of course possible that a member of the
>                 committee could act in
>                 bad faith for any number of reasons. You can say the
>                 same thing about
>                 any position of leadership or authority within the
>                 community, though.
>                 That hasn't really been much of a problem in my
>                 experience, and I see
>                 no reason for particular concern about it here.
>         
>         
>         I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community.
>         It adopted a CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far
>         more likely to be abused than provide any benefit. I was
>         shocked when the very first time it was ever invoked it was by
>         one of the founders of the project (whom I previously
>         personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the manner
>         that I had feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion
>         he did not like rather than any legitimate concern.
>         Unfortunately this is not such an unusual circumstance as one
>         might hope in these projects or conferences. It is impossible
>         to separate the concept of political correctness from these
>         CoCs I find and they are much more dangerous things than they
>         appear. We should tread with extreme cautious about adopting
>         such a thing.
>         
>         
>           -- Ben Scherrey
>          
> 

> On Jun 8, 2018, at 4:46 AM, Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
>
> On 6 June 2018 at 19:22, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>> I wrote:
>>> Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread.  I guess we felt that
>>> the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
>>> I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of
>>
>> Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
>> which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
>> complaint against someone else?  They certainly shouldn't get to rule
>> on their own complaint.  So maybe change "complaint against" to
>> "complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.
>
> Which brings up the further complication of in which order are things
> dealt with?
>
> If people file complaints against each other. Is there benefit in
> rushing to file a complaint?
>
> "The Committee will inform the complainant and the alleged violator of
> their decision at that time." That is unclear.
>
> Are complaints considered AFTER information has been collected from
> both parties? If so, it doesn't matter who complains first, both
> parties will get their say.
>
> But if the person being complained about only hears of the complaint
> after judgement has been made this means there is benefit in being the
> first to complain, which will encourage people to complain early so
> they can get their boot in first. And also cause double the volume of
> complaints, since it will be necessary to counter-complain in order
> for the alleged violator to get their say.

Earlier it says:

"With the cooperation of all parties, the Committee will aim to complete the
investigation in a period of two weeks from the receipt of the complaint.”

which I interpret as “The CoC committee will collect information in order to
make a fair decision” which would involve talking to the alleged violator(s).

Perhaps we need an additional line that says the CoC committee will be
reaching out to all parties involved in a complaint, just to be clear?

> Would it not be better to consider arbitration as the first step in
> dispute resolution? Do we need judgement by a committee as the first
> step? Do we even have time for judges to judge?

I have noticed it is in the nature of our community for people to try and work
things out amongst themselves first before escalating to others, or to take one
another aside to try and work things out.  For the minor issues that crop up (and
I know “minor” is relative), I hope that remains the case.  I view the CoC as being
in place for having a way to report abusive behavior and harassment and
knowing we will ensure our community is a safe, fun place to collaborate.

Jonathan

On 06/07/2018 02:55 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:
> On 07/06/18 21:49, Raymond O'Donnell wrote:
>> On 07/06/18 09:04, Pablo Hendrickx wrote:
>>> You don't have to be a magician to predict this is going to harm the 
>>> community.
>>>
>>> Please keep your American social politics out of Postgres, thank you!
>>
>> As a long-time lurker and occasional participant on this list, I don't 
>> think this has ever been an issue, in my experience anyway. There 
>> might be an occasional turn of phrase which I have to parse a bit, but 
>> that's about it. :-)
>>
>> Ray.
>>
> The Americans often seem to act as though most people lived in the USA, 
> therefore we should all be bound by what they think is correct!

Well the spate of privacy policy changes I have to deal with here(USA) 
brought on by actions of the EU would seem to contradict the above. Just 
an example of how all this flows in many directions. And please don't 
lump all Americans together as we come from many paths and often 
disagree on what is correct, which is what motivates my reservations 
about the CoC.

> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Gavin
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> writes:
> On 2018-06-08 09:46, Simon Riggs wrote:
>> Would it not be better to consider arbitration as the first step in
>> dispute resolution?

> I'd probably leave it up to the CoC team/people to figure it out. :)

Yeah, exactly.  I don't think it's helpful for the document to try to
micro-manage the committee's processes.

If the committee isn't working in good faith, and effectively, to try
to resolve disputes fairly then we have bigger problems.  At that
point you think about replacing the committee ... which *is* spelled
out in the document.

            regards, tom lane

Greetings,

* Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.

We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
this will be moving forward?

Or did I miss something?

Thanks!

Stephen

Greetings,

* Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.

We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
this will be moving forward?

Or did I miss something?

Thanks!

Stephen

Greetings,

* Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> July 1 2018.

We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
this will be moving forward?

Or did I miss something?

Thanks!

Stephen

On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 03:22:10PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> > Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> > of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> > July 1 2018.
> 
> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
> this will be moving forward?
> 
> Or did I miss something?

Are we waiting for the conference community guidlines to be solidified?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I.  As I am, so you will be. +
+                      Ancient Roman grave inscription +

On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 03:22:10PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> > Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> > of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> > July 1 2018.
> 
> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
> this will be moving forward?
> 
> Or did I miss something?

Are we waiting for the conference community guidlines to be solidified?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I.  As I am, so you will be. +
+                      Ancient Roman grave inscription +

On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 03:22:10PM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> > Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
> > of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
> > July 1 2018.
> 
> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
> this will be moving forward?
> 
> Or did I miss something?

Are we waiting for the conference community guidlines to be solidified?

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

+ As you are, so once was I.  As I am, so you will be. +
+                      Ancient Roman grave inscription +

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
>> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
>> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
>> July 1 2018.

> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
> this will be moving forward?

> Or did I miss something?

Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard to keep
forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting the initial
committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.

            regards, tom lane

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
>> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
>> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
>> July 1 2018.

> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
> this will be moving forward?

> Or did I miss something?

Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard to keep
forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting the initial
committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.

            regards, tom lane

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
>> Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
>> of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
>> July 1 2018.

> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
> this will be moving forward?

> Or did I miss something?

Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard to keep
forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting the initial
committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.

            regards, tom lane

I wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
>> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
>> this will be moving forward?
>> Or did I miss something?

> Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard to keep
> forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting the initial
> committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
> wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.

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 think we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.

            regards, tom lane

I wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
>> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
>> this will be moving forward?
>> Or did I miss something?

> Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard to keep
> forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting the initial
> committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
> wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.

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 think we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.

            regards, tom lane

I wrote:
> Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
>> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update on when
>> this will be moving forward?
>> Or did I miss something?

> Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard to keep
> forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting the initial
> committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
> wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.

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 think we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.

            regards, tom lane

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 10:38:56AM +0200, Chris Travers wrote:

> > 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.
> >
> 
> Suggestion instead:
> 
> "Personally directed behavior is not automatically excluded from this code
> of conduct merely because it does not happen on the postgresql.org
> infrastructure.  In the case where a dispute of such a nature occurs
> outside said infrastructure, if other parties are unable to act, this code
> of conduct may be considered where it is, on the balance, in the interest
> of the global community to do so."
> 
> This preserves the ability to act, without basically providing the same
> invitation for problems.

Sounds pretty balanced to me.

Karsten
-- 
GPG  40BE 5B0E C98E 1713 AFA6  5BC0 3BEA AC80 7D4F C89B

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 10:31 AM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 point has nothing to do with _correct_ discussions or
public tweets.

If one community member tweets publicly and in a way which abuses
other community members, it is obvious CoC violation. It is hard to
imagine healthy community if someone interacts with others  correctly
on the list or at a conference because the CoC stops him doing things
which he will do on private capacity to the same people when CoC
doesnt apply.

If someone reports CoC violation just because other community member's
_correct_ public tweet or whatsoever  expressed different
political/philosophical/religious views, this is a quite different
story. I suppose CoC committee and/or Core team in this case should
explain the reporter the purpose of CoC rather than automatically
enforce it.

> --
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 10:31 AM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 point has nothing to do with _correct_ discussions or
public tweets.

If one community member tweets publicly and in a way which abuses
other community members, it is obvious CoC violation. It is hard to
imagine healthy community if someone interacts with others  correctly
on the list or at a conference because the CoC stops him doing things
which he will do on private capacity to the same people when CoC
doesnt apply.

If someone reports CoC violation just because other community member's
_correct_ public tweet or whatsoever  expressed different
political/philosophical/religious views, this is a quite different
story. I suppose CoC committee and/or Core team in this case should
explain the reporter the purpose of CoC rather than automatically
enforce it.

> --
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 10:31 AM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 point has nothing to do with _correct_ discussions or
public tweets.

If one community member tweets publicly and in a way which abuses
other community members, it is obvious CoC violation. It is hard to
imagine healthy community if someone interacts with others  correctly
on the list or at a conference because the CoC stops him doing things
which he will do on private capacity to the same people when CoC
doesnt apply.

If someone reports CoC violation just because other community member's
_correct_ public tweet or whatsoever  expressed different
political/philosophical/religious views, this is a quite different
story. I suppose CoC committee and/or Core team in this case should
explain the reporter the purpose of CoC rather than automatically
enforce it.

> --
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
>
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On 9/14/18 1:31 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 10:53 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us 
> <mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:
> 
>     I wrote:
>      > Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net <mailto:sfrost@snowman.net>>
>     writes:
>      >> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update
>     on when
>      >> this will be moving forward?
>      >> Or did I miss something?
> 
>      > Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard
>     to keep
>      > forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting
>     the initial
>      > committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
>      > wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.
> 
>     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 
> <http://postgresql.org> infrastructure, so long as there is not another 
> Code of Conduct that takes precedence (such as a conference's Code of 
> Conduct)."

I second that objection. It is not in PGDG's remit to cure the world, 
for whatever form of cure you ascribe to. This is especially true as 
'community member' has no strict definition.

> 
> 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 we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
>     CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.
> 
>                              regards, tom lane
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
> 
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor 
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On 9/14/18 1:31 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 10:53 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us 
> <mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:
> 
>     I wrote:
>      > Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net <mailto:sfrost@snowman.net>>
>     writes:
>      >> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update
>     on when
>      >> this will be moving forward?
>      >> Or did I miss something?
> 
>      > Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard
>     to keep
>      > forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting
>     the initial
>      > committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
>      > wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.
> 
>     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 
> <http://postgresql.org> infrastructure, so long as there is not another 
> Code of Conduct that takes precedence (such as a conference's Code of 
> Conduct)."

I second that objection. It is not in PGDG's remit to cure the world, 
for whatever form of cure you ascribe to. This is especially true as 
'community member' has no strict definition.

> 
> 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 we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
>     CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.
> 
>                              regards, tom lane
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
> 
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor 
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On 9/14/18 1:31 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 10:53 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us 
> <mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:
> 
>     I wrote:
>      > Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net <mailto:sfrost@snowman.net>>
>     writes:
>      >> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update
>     on when
>      >> this will be moving forward?
>      >> Or did I miss something?
> 
>      > Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard
>     to keep
>      > forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting
>     the initial
>      > committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
>      > wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.
> 
>     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 
> <http://postgresql.org> infrastructure, so long as there is not another 
> Code of Conduct that takes precedence (such as a conference's Code of 
> Conduct)."

I second that objection. It is not in PGDG's remit to cure the world, 
for whatever form of cure you ascribe to. This is especially true as 
'community member' has no strict definition.

> 
> 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 we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
>     CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.
> 
>                              regards, tom lane
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best Wishes,
> Chris Travers
> 
> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor 
> lock-in.
> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 9:41 AM, Adrian Klaver
<adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/18 1:31 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 10:53 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
>> <mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:
>>
>>     I wrote:
>>      > Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net <mailto:sfrost@snowman.net>>
>>     writes:
>>      >> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update
>>     on when
>>      >> this will be moving forward?
>>      >> Or did I miss something?
>>
>>      > Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard
>>     to keep
>>      > forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting
>>     the initial
>>      > committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
>>      > wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.
>>
>>     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 <http://postgresql.org>
>> infrastructure, so long as there is not another Code of Conduct that takes
>> precedence (such as a conference's Code of Conduct)."
>
>
> I second that objection. It is not in PGDG's remit to cure the world, for
> whatever form of cure you ascribe to. This is especially true as 'community
> member' has no strict definition.

I understand the concern, however, if you look at how attacks happen
it is frequently through other sites. Specifically under/poorly
moderated sites. For specific examples, people who have issues with
people on Quora will frequently go after them on Facebook and Twitter.

these aren't a solution looking for a problem. If we just want to look
at the clusterfuck that is happening in the reddis community right now
we can see conversations spilling onto twitter and into ad hominem
vitriol.

My $0.02
-- Rob Eckhardt

>
>
>>
>> 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 we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
>>     CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.
>>
>>                              regards, tom lane
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Best Wishes,
>> Chris Travers
>>
>> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
>> lock-in.
>> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more
>
>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian.klaver@aklaver.com
>

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 9:41 AM, Adrian Klaver
<adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/18 1:31 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 10:53 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
>> <mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:
>>
>>     I wrote:
>>      > Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net <mailto:sfrost@snowman.net>>
>>     writes:
>>      >> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update
>>     on when
>>      >> this will be moving forward?
>>      >> Or did I miss something?
>>
>>      > Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard
>>     to keep
>>      > forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting
>>     the initial
>>      > committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
>>      > wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.
>>
>>     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 <http://postgresql.org>
>> infrastructure, so long as there is not another Code of Conduct that takes
>> precedence (such as a conference's Code of Conduct)."
>
>
> I second that objection. It is not in PGDG's remit to cure the world, for
> whatever form of cure you ascribe to. This is especially true as 'community
> member' has no strict definition.

I understand the concern, however, if you look at how attacks happen
it is frequently through other sites. Specifically under/poorly
moderated sites. For specific examples, people who have issues with
people on Quora will frequently go after them on Facebook and Twitter.

these aren't a solution looking for a problem. If we just want to look
at the clusterfuck that is happening in the reddis community right now
we can see conversations spilling onto twitter and into ad hominem
vitriol.

My $0.02
-- Rob Eckhardt

>
>
>>
>> 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 we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
>>     CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.
>>
>>                              regards, tom lane
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Best Wishes,
>> Chris Travers
>>
>> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
>> lock-in.
>> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more
>
>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian.klaver@aklaver.com
>

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 9:41 AM, Adrian Klaver
<adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/18 1:31 AM, Chris Travers wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 10:53 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
>> <mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:
>>
>>     I wrote:
>>      > Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net <mailto:sfrost@snowman.net>>
>>     writes:
>>      >> We seem to be a bit past that timeline...  Do we have any update
>>     on when
>>      >> this will be moving forward?
>>      >> Or did I miss something?
>>
>>      > Nope, you didn't.  Folks have been on holiday which made it hard
>>     to keep
>>      > forward progress going, particularly with respect to selecting
>>     the initial
>>      > committee members.  Now that Magnus is back on shore, I hope we can
>>      > wrap it up quickly --- say by the end of August.
>>
>>     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 <http://postgresql.org>
>> infrastructure, so long as there is not another Code of Conduct that takes
>> precedence (such as a conference's Code of Conduct)."
>
>
> I second that objection. It is not in PGDG's remit to cure the world, for
> whatever form of cure you ascribe to. This is especially true as 'community
> member' has no strict definition.

I understand the concern, however, if you look at how attacks happen
it is frequently through other sites. Specifically under/poorly
moderated sites. For specific examples, people who have issues with
people on Quora will frequently go after them on Facebook and Twitter.

these aren't a solution looking for a problem. If we just want to look
at the clusterfuck that is happening in the reddis community right now
we can see conversations spilling onto twitter and into ad hominem
vitriol.

My $0.02
-- Rob Eckhardt

>
>
>>
>> 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 we are about ready to announce the initial membership of the
>>     CoC committee, as well, but that should be a separate post.
>>
>>                              regards, tom lane
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Best Wishes,
>> Chris Travers
>>
>> Efficito:  Hosted Accounting and ERP.  Robust and Flexible.  No vendor
>> lock-in.
>> http://www.efficito.com/learn_more
>
>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian.klaver@aklaver.com
>

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.

Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development. 
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****

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.

Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
***  A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is.  ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development. 
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
*****     Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own.   *****