Fedora Code of Conduct Discussion

[Sandro "red" Mathys]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 23:12, Robyn Bergeron <rbergero at redhat.com> wrote:
> On 12/06/2010 09:59 AM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>
> On Sun, 05 Dec 2010 15:22:54 -0500
> Brian Pepple <bpepple at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> Didn't see anyone start this discussion yet, so I'll get the ball
> rolling.
>
> Up to this point, we've pretty much only had a motto of 'Be excellent
> to each other' as an expectation for a community members behavior.
> This has worked pretty well since most of the community has worked
> together for many years (a lot from the fedora.us days), but as we've
> grown and gotten new blood, I think we've been hurt by not having
> some more concrete than a motto for a code of conduct.  For my 2￠,
> I'd like to see us use KDE's Code of Conduct (1) as a basis for
> creating our own.
>
> 1. http://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/
>
> I'm still not convinced having a code of conduct will help us. ;)
>
> Me either. ;)
>
> Pros:
>
> * It's more clear and detailed than "Be excellent to each other", so
>   perhaps some people will read it and realize that they need to be
>   nicer.
>
> * It helps us as a project say "hey, we want our community to be nice
>   and welcoming, if you join and have a poor interaction with someone
>   thats not what we want"
>
> * Allows us to point to something more concrete when removing or
>   moderating someone from the community. "You were not excellent" to
>   "You didn't follow the second section of the 'be respectfull"
>   section".
>
> +1 to all those things.

+1

> Cons:
>
> * People will language lawyer. "The Code doesn't _say_ I shouldn't call
>   your mother a llama".

What if the code says not to language lawyer? ;) No seriously, there's
always people who try to misread/-understand the law, still they will
land in jail if the police/judge doesn't agree with his reading of the
law.

> * Some people will ignore or note that they didn't sign it or agree to
>   it, so don't think they should be bound by it.

Add it to the join page, ask mentors to point new contributors to it.
Maybe add it to channel topics, list welcome-msgs. As the code would
also affect non-contributors (e.g. people asking for support in
fedora-list or #fedora) it doesn't make sense to have it signed
anyway. I never signed the law of my home country/country of residence
either, still I have to obey.

> * Is it really that much different/better than "Be excellent" Or "Don't
>   be a jerk"?

Yes. I have no idea what being excellent means. I think making "your
mother" jokes is an excellent way of having fun in the community.

Seriously, "be excellent" is a nice summary - but people need to be
told what the greater community understands by this. There's
differences due to cultural differences and such. That's what people
refer to as a cultural shock when they travel far away or move
permanently to another country. I'm very sure everyone of you
experienced this in one way or the other. I notice it mostly in
restaurants and shops around the world where you notice different
levels of politeness very quickly.

> That said, I could be talked into it... should we try and bring more
> people into the discussion? I know some people have stong feelings on
> this topic.
>
> I think that is a reasonable thing to do.
>
> My #1 con (I suppose it is a grouping of cons, in a way): I honestly don't
> know how well we can enforce it, if *at all*.
>
> Most of the cited "need" for a code of conduct revolves around mailing list
> conduct, and IRC conduct (mostly the former).  We cannot prevent anyone from
> joining a mailing list, or IRC, over and over and over, using different
> addresses, coming from different IP addresses, etc.  If someone is bound and
> determined to be a thorn in our sides, well, they're going to be.

Right now those people annoy us. You're right that they'll still annoy
us once we enforce a code. But if we enforce again and again people
themselves will get annoyed and vanish, e.g. if they're banned from a
list for the 5th time with their 5th address they are getting too
annoyed to set up a 6th email address just to annoy people.

Same goes for irc channels by the way, where we can enforce that only
registered nicks can join our channels and therefore ban them. In the
wiki and such people are bound to FAS accounts that can be blocked
too.

> If we are setting up community behavioral expectations and standards, that
> people need to sign their names to, they expect them to be executed upon.
> If it's something that is, in the end, unenforceable, it reflects poorly
> upon everyone - particularly the Board, who would likely wind up losing
> credibility in anything else they say in the near term.  ("Well, you told us
> you could get rid of poisonous people, why should we believe you now?")
>
> My other main gripe with Codes of Conduct is that they, in my opinion, tend
> to stifle discussion, because people tend to want to not be confrontational,
> because they don't want to get the ban-hammer.  I think this tends to just
> dull rapid innovation, and that's not something we should be doing (again,
> IMO).

Maybe the code should state it's okay to be confrontational as long as
the language used is not offensive.

> I *really* think that before we go crafting things, or talking to people in
> various groups, we should do the following:
>
> 1) Determine if any policy we create around a "worst-case scenario" could
> actually be enforced. What types of punishment are we dealing with?  If it
> can't be enforced, 100% of the time, we are just digging ourselves a deeper
> hole of problems - are people being favored? Are people not doing their
> jobs? Etc.
>
> 2) If we determine that a "worst-case scenario" could actually be dealt with
> and enforced - who is going to do it, and ARE THEY ACTUALLY GOING TO.  We've
> had a long-standing policy of "be excellent" - with the Board more or less
> responsible for "dealing" with situations - and I am not sure that any of
> the situations that could have been dealt with *actually* had action taken.

The moderators should and I know some did do so on the lists.

So IMHO: a code (or rather an etiquette) can improve things without
having bad side-effects. Of course it will take some time until it
works smoothly. And of course the moderators need to actually enforce
them.

-- red

> Frankly, I'm not sure that we've really *had* any situations that were so
> dire that they required any sort of serious intervention.  And that makes me
> wonder if we really need one at all.
>
> Bottom line: if it can't be enforced, we shouldn't do it. IMO :)
>
> -Robyn
>
>
> As such things go, the kde one seems reasonable.
>
> kevin
>
>
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