Re: Code of Conduct: picking up
Wouter Verhelst writes ("Code of Conduct: picking up"):
> Anyway. The story so far:
> - I posted a draft update of the code of conduct to this list in may[1],
> upon which a short discussion was started
> - It was suggested that the draft wasn't ambitious enough, so I wrote a
> much more ambitious one during debcamp, and held a BoF[2] during
> debconf where much of it was discussed
> - I posted the working document that we'd produced during that BoF to
> this list shortly after the BoF had finished[3], which did generate
> some comments, but not much progress.
...
> # Debian Code of Conduct
Most of this is unobjectionable, although I would have preferred
something much more
> ## Try to be concise.
concise :-).
However, I think there are a couple of parts that need to be improved.
Firstly:
> ## In case of problems.
>
> While this code of conduct should be adhered to by participants, we
> recognize that sometimes people may have a bad day, or be unaware of
> some of the rules in this code of conduct. When that happens, you may
> reply to them and point out this code of conduct. Such messages may be
> in public or in private, whatever is most appropriate. However,
> regardless of whether the message is public or not, it should still
> adhere to the relevant parts of this code of conduct; in particular, it
> should not be abusive or disrespectful. Assume good faith; it is more
> likely that participants are unaware of their bad behaviour than that
> they intentionally try to degrade the quality of the discussion.
>
> Repeated offenders may be temporarily or permanently banned from
> communicating through Debian's systems, at the DPL's (or the DPL's
> delegates') prerogative.
This is too weak in a number of ways. I would:
* Replace "Repeated offenders may be..." with "Serious or persistent
offenders will be...".
* Replace "at the DPL's ... prerogative" with a new sentence
"Complaints should be made (in private) to the administrators
of the Debian communication forum in question."
> # Medium-specific codes
>
> This section contains some guidelines that are specific to one
> particular communication medium. Note that the above general guidelines
> still apply to each and every one of these medium-specific guidelines,
> as well.
I think these should not be part of the CoC. They should be
promulgated (or not) by the administrators for each discussion forum.
If we're planning to adopt the CoC via a GR then it is especially
important that these fiddly details aren't in it.
Indeed, even if we need to do this via a GR to show widespread
approval, I still think it would be good to allow the DPL to edit it
later. That would make it much easier to fix things.
I would suggest that the GR should explicitly say that the DPL is
empowered to make changes to the Code of Conduct according to the
usual process for a DPL decision.
If we do that then it becomes easy to include a list of links to the
forum-specific codes of conduct, and/or a list of complaint addresses.
> ## More?
>
> # Further reading
>
> The links in this section do not refer to documents that are part of
> this code of conduct, nor are they authoritative within Debian. However,
> they do contain useful information on how to conduct oneself on our
"on our..." ? Missing words.
> - The [Debian Community Guidelines](http://people.debian.org/~enrico/dcg/)
> by Enrico Zini contain some advice on how to communicate effectively.
> - <link to documentation on what to do in case of technical problems>
I guess this section is tolerable, particularly if the DPL is
empowered to add more links and remove stale ones.
Ian.
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