Proposed Code of Conduct #22
Conversation
organizational/conduct.rst
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| This policy applies at all Hacker Society events, such as weekly talks, open | ||
| hacks, Link-State, HackCWRU, the mailing lists, and on our Slack team. It |
… of conduct applies to.
organizational/conduct.rst
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| retain the right to take any actions to keep HacSoc a welcoming environment for | ||
| all participants. This includes warning the offender, or removing them from the | ||
| event or communication streams they are abusing. This also includes further | ||
| action, such as pursuing University action, should it become necessary. |
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action...action
Sounds awkward
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Latest commit should address all those things. |
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I like it 👍 I am happy to argue in favor of this code of conduct if needed. |
organizational/conduct.rst
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| physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. As such, we do not | ||
| tolerate harassment. This includes, but is not limited to: | ||
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| - Rude or unwelcome comments |
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This should be clarified. I might find it unwelcome for someone to disparage my favorite editor, vim, I might even find it rude! However, it should be allowed. This is a silly example but one of the goals of an open society is to have freedom of thought and expression. This is necessarily in tension with freedom from rude or unwelcome comments. However, in the case of hacker society this is easily solved: comments attacking an individual on the grounds of: gender, gender identity, gender expression, attire, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, body type, race, age, or religion are considered rude and unwelcome.
We should strive for politeness and civil discourse but we should also strive to make all welcome. Even those with unpopular ideas or thoughts. So when does an unpopular idea cross the line? To me this happens when it is an attack on an intrinsic characteristics of a person. Here is an example of an idea which attacks a non-intrinsic characteristic: I hate how "Joe" is so bad at using email he always replies before quote text instead of after. The way "Joe" uses email is not intrinsic to Joe an may be violating other established community norms. However, saying: I hate how Joe always wears yellow shirts so ugly! That is saying something about an intrinsic to Joe their preference for yellow shirts. The former is allowed the latter would be viewed as unwelcome. In the same way saying: I love how Joe always uses vim, is fine but saying: I love how Joe always wears green it is so hot, is not fine.
This is a really tricky balance. In my views the goals are:
- A welcoming environment
- A non-sexualized environment
- A free environment where people can explore ideas
Freedom is necessarily subservient to the other two. If not than the loudest and crassest have free reign. A community has goals and norms and an open society can have both and still be open. Open for who? All who want to engage with ideas not engage with attacking personal characteristics of other community members.
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@timtadh: I agree. The original policy I was basing this on was a bit more specific - it actually spelled out the intrinsic characteristics you talk about. Here is the original line (note it's something of a template):
Verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination [related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, [your specific concern here].
I made the line more general mostly because I was hoping it could apply to more undesirable conduct; in retrospect, I don't know what else it really would cover. I was also unsure about the "social structures of domination" portion, since in my opinion, any attack on someone based on their intrinsic characteristics is problematic, not just those that reinforce the "social structures of domination". I might propose a simpler, but more specific wording:
Verbal attacks or unwelcome comments about gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion
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@brenns10 That looks better. I also don't know exactly what they meant by "structures of domination." That seems to be pulling in a philosophical theory that I am unfamiliar with. I would go with:
Rude or unwelcome comments about gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, attire, race, age or religious expression.
or maybe better:
Rude or unwelcome comments about a person's gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, attire, race, age or religious expression.
It might be valuable to have some examples and have some discussion of the tension in the document itself.
…ut tension between expression and welcoming atmosphere.
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Updated the point about "rude or unwelcome comments" and added a short paragraph exploring some of the tensions between providing an environment for open discussion, expression, and debate, and providing a welcoming environment. @timtadh: I think this addresses our discussions well enough. |
organizational/conduct.rst
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| has some tension with the goal of providing a welcoming environment. We expect | ||
| that debate and constructive criticism are part of this open atmosphere. | ||
| However, when these discussions devolve into attacks against a person and/or | ||
| their intrinsic characteristics, we believe that this is unacceptable. |
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change to:
Necessarily, the goals of learning, community, and equality are in tension
with the goals individual empowerment, freedom of thought, and freedom of
expression. We strive for politeness and civil discourse but we also strive to
make all welcome. Even those with unpopular ideas or thoughts. However, in
order to foster our community certain limits on free expression must be
observed. We expect that debate and constructive criticism are part of this
open atmosphere. We expect that some members of the community may express
ideas which are not politically correct. We expect that some ideas expressed
by a minority may be deeply unpopular and distasteful to the majority.
However, if these ideas or discussions devolve into attacks against a person
and/or their intrinsic characteristics, we believe that this is unacceptable.
Here is an example of an idea which attacks a non-intrinsic characteristic: I
hate how Pat is so bad at using email he always replies before the quoted
text instead of after. The way Pat uses email is not intrinsic to Pat an may
be violating other established community norms. However, saying: I hate how
Pat always wears yellow shirts so ugly! That is saying something about an
intrinsic to Pat their preference for yellow shirts. The former is allowed the
latter would be viewed as unwelcome. In the same way saying: I love how Pat
always uses vim, is fine but saying: I love how Pat always wears green it is
so hot, is not fine.
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First paragraph ++, it adds a bit more detail that seems valuable. The second paragraph I could take or leave - the examples don't seem (to me) that much more helpful.
I put the mission of Hacker Society at the top. I changed the explanation of why we don't allow some behaviour. I clarified the section on the tension between restrictions on behaviour and expression and the goals of an open society. Explicitly noting that: unpopular ideas are allowed, politically incorrect speach is allowed, distastful speach is allowed. The line is where that speach becomes an attack on a person in the community and is about one or more of their intrinstic characteristics. Signed-off-by: Tim Henderson <[email protected]>
organizational/conduct.rst
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| Necessarily, the goals of learning, community, and equality are in tension | ||
| with the goals individual empowerment, freedom of thought, and freedom of | ||
| expression. We strive for politeness and civil discourse but we also strive to |
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How about "We encourage civil discourse but we also strive to ..."
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"We encourage polite, civil discourse, but we also strive to ..." ?
| retain the right to take any actions to keep HacSoc a welcoming environment for | ||
| all participants. This includes warning the offender, or removing them from the | ||
| event or communication streams they are abusing. This also includes further | ||
| measures, such as pursuing University action, should it become necessary. |
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who pursues university action? Am I supposed to if someone is harassing me at hacsoc or is HacSoc supposed to? Both?
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I didn't draft this section but from the context it seems that the leadership who asked the person to stop doing something is pursuing university action.
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I did write this. I wanted to include University action as an explicit option for resolving disputes when necessary. I wasn't trying to come up with a rule for who take this action, just explicitly state that University repercussions could happen for poor behavior at HacSoc.
It seems like regardless of who appeals to the university, the person who is being harassed should be able to say whether or not they would like to pursue university action.
| - HackCWRU | ||
| - Mailing lists (hackers-discuss, cwru-hackers) | ||
| - GitHub organization | ||
| - Slack team |
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As long as the current maintainers consent, I don't see why not.
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As the dude in charge of the IRC server right now: I do not consent to this policy being applied to IRC because there is already a notice that the server is under the CWRU Acceptable Use Policy.
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I will reach out to Andy. But this bring up a question if we want to extend this to other server stuff... Like could I host a website that violates? |
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We have to decide, but I would lean towards no. Right now I have arbitrary power to decide what does and does not go on the server, and I see no problem with declining our services toward individuals or groups who would violate this CoC. |
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So should we put the servers in here some how. Someone will have to do the wording on that. |
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@zwh2 and @MatthewBentley I think the servers should have a separate policy. There are a lot of other things we don't want running on the servers besides things that violate this CoC -- bitcoin mining, drive by malware sites, etc... So the server needs a separate policy. |
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I would agree that we want additional restrictions on the server but I don't see why we shouldn't have this apply. |
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Well, if we have additional restrictions on the server (which I think we should), then the server CoC would read something like: So there would be no need to do anything further in this PR. |
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@ajm188 agreed. |
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I'm not sure how to structure the server(s) part of this. On one hand, we should require externally facing sites to follow the CoC (we don't want to host anything that promotes harassment, racism, sexism, etc), but on the other hand it might be a bit heavy handed to require services such as IRC to adopt it. Although if IRC markets itself as an official HacSoc service, then it should follow the CoC. And obviously anything on the server would have to follow CWRU acceptable network usage policies, the law, and we would want a clause allowing us to turn down services for no stated reason if we want to. |
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Also, let's move server discussion to #24 |
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What's the status on this? The initial goal of March has flown through finals/graduation/summer. Adding references to the resources from our relevant professional organizations would be a useful thing to have, as there is a significant community overlap at CWRU: |
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As a preliminary warning to the participants of this discussion - I will be going through the remaining commit comments, taking the agreed upon resolution, applying that, and pushing a new commit. This pull request is a year old and needs to go. Therefore once that is done I will be merging what we have. I don't mean to close all discussion - anything you feel isn't completely settled, you can raise in new issues or pull requests. Their smaller scope should help facilitate a more productive conversation. This PR just reached a tipping point of size that exhausted everyone! |
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Okay, so the updates according to the open comments are done. While I don't think that merging a pull request == adopting a policy, I suppose that I should not unilaterally merge something either. I think the process for "deploying" a code of conduct ought to look like this:
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MERGING IT!!! |
I didn't want the idea of a organizational code of conduct (as discussed in #21) to get forgotten. Having one of these is pretty important, so I drafted something. I feel that our group is very good, so this policy won't impact much day-to-day life - but having it in place is important in case problems do arise.
This is a pretty big deal, so I would like a lot of people to read this and comment. This draft includes stuff from just me, and I would like it to reflect our organization as a whole.
edit from @timtadh
Process for Adoption
We are going to adopt this code of conduct by consensus between all participants on this draft. A broad call will go out on the main Hacker Society mailing list for input. When consensus is reached the code of conduct will be announced and adopted.
Target Date for Adoption
We hope to conclude the drafting and discussion process and adopt the code of conduct by March 16, 2016.
Process for Revision
Propose a change via a comment. Either a diff comment or a general comment on the PR. If some else approves then the change can become a commit. Note: if there disagreement about it majority consensus should be sought. If there is disagreement about a committed change make a comment on that commit and reference it from a comment in the main thread. If there is majority consensus that the commit should be reverted than a reverting commit should then be made. There should be no re-basing or force pushes on this branch!