View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | View Status | Date Submitted | Last Update |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4252 | Composr | core | public | 2020-05-27 03:00 | 2020-10-08 21:04 |
| Reporter | Chris Graham | Assigned To | Chris Graham | ||
| Priority | normal | Severity | feature | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Summary | 4252: Code of Conduct | ||||
| Description | Composr doesn't really have a code of conduct. We have rules for the forum. We do not, however, have a set of rules that would be seen to apply across all Composr communication channels, such as the forum, IRC, GitLab issues, the tracker, and unofficial Composr-related communications between members of the community. In my mind there are 4 reasons for not having one: 1) There has been very little conflict in the community. 2) There is some controversy around them. For example, they might be considered biased towards people with a particular political outlook. Some people prefer more of a wild west kind of situation where people don't feel encumbered from just speaking their minds. Some people think they may be used as a hammer to attack people they do not agree with. 3) Basic inertia. 4) Nobody has ever explicitly asked for one. That said, they are very popular now, and consensus is to have them. In fact, when I conducted a survey recently, most people considered them mandatory. There are many under-represented minorities who express views of feeling unwelcome in Open Source communities, and codes of conduct are a way to remove some of those negative behaviors that lead to that. My view is we should go for it. And we should probably try and reach a consensus on going with something that is already standardised such as the contributor covenant (https://www.contributor-covenant.org/). | ||||
| Tags | Roadmap: v11 | ||||
| Attach Tags | |||||
| Time estimation (hours) | 2 | ||||
| Sponsorship open | |||||
| related to | 4253 | Resolved | Chris Graham | Standardised documentation files |
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Personally, I don't want to allow a situation where a code of conduct may be used to suppress voices instead of giving people them. For example, people may have views I consider abhorrent, but as long as they don't go posting controversial views that have nothing to do with Composr around in our community, or making people feel unwelcome based on them, I think people are entitled to their views, include expressing them on places not directly relating to the community. And people who disagree are entitled to argue with them, outside the Composr community. In my mind, the Composr community should not be some 'free speech zone' to post whatever bigoted remarks people might have, but at the same time we should not be having people going off and crawling over people's personal social feeds and writing dossiers, as some way to kick people out of any kind of position in the community. The conduct should be enforced based on people's behaviour in-community. The Composr community should not be a political battleground in general, in my opinion. |
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Actually I might have to go back on something I said: "And people who disagree are entitled to argue with them, outside the Composr community." This is such a tricky issue to navigate. Let's say someone has some views that I might consider homophobic. Maybe those views are sincere and are a part of the community they are in. They might hear them in Church some Sundays. They may express those views on their private Twitter. I think they have a right to do so. As I have written, I don't think the Composr code of conduct should be a hammer to attack people's behaviours off-community. Even if their private Twitter is sometimes intertwined with the community. However, if someone finds out about someone's views by virtue of them both being in the Composr community, and then goes over to their private Twitter to explicitly argue against those views, isn't that targeted harassment? Or is it moot because it's off-community? Let's reverse the situation. Someone is putting pro-LGBT stuff on Twitter, and someone with anti-LGBT views from the community finds this out and starts arguing with them on Twitter. That's targeted harassment, right? Obviously there's a difference - most people would probably agree who is the bigot here. But I'm not sure we can start trying to define what are and are not appropriate views to have, based on some kind of broad constitution for correct thought, or some kind of groupthink. Or maybe the difference is in one situation the argument is with who someone is, and in the other situation its with just one's opinion? Perhaps the solution is having some kind of committee of reasonable people (perhaps elected) to evaluate complaints, if they happen? |
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I spent around a day looking in detail at the Contributor Covenant, which is the predominant standardised Code of Conduct for Open Source. It is recommended by GitHub, for example. I put together around 10 items of feedback on it and submitted them as issues, to hopefully round off what I considered some imperfections in what is otherwise a good document. I also had a good long discussion with Patrick Schmalstig about it (as they are very qualified to discuss codes of conduct, being an interest of theirs), and made sure we were on the same page and his feedback was also represented. Unfortunately the volume of feedback seems to have overwhelmed the product lead, and I was told providing that kind of feedback was not welcome. To avoid antagonising I'm going to leave this for a bit, then hopefully come back and discuss things with them in a constructive way. So this is on hold for now. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-05-27 03:00 | Chris Graham | New Issue | |
| 2020-05-27 03:00 | Chris Graham | Tag Attached: Roadmap: v11 | |
| 2020-05-27 03:03 | Chris Graham | Note Added: 0006563 | |
| 2020-05-27 03:05 | Chris Graham | Description Updated | |
| 2020-05-27 03:15 | Chris Graham | Relationship added | related to 4253 |
| 2020-05-27 03:25 | Chris Graham | Note Added: 0006564 | |
| 2020-05-27 03:25 | Chris Graham | Note Edited: 0006564 | |
| 2020-05-27 03:27 | Chris Graham | Note Edited: 0006564 | |
| 2020-06-02 22:32 | Chris Graham | Summary | Code of Conduct => Code of Conduct (on hold) |
| 2020-06-02 22:36 | Chris Graham | Note Added: 0006574 | |
| 2020-06-05 18:04 | Chris Graham | Assigned To | => Chris Graham |
| 2020-06-05 18:04 | Chris Graham | Status | Not Assigned => Resolved |
| 2020-06-05 18:04 | Chris Graham | Resolution | open => fixed |
| 2020-10-08 21:04 | Chris Graham | Summary | Code of Conduct (on hold) => Code of Conduct |
