Re: Code Of Conduct

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 10:49 -0400, Dan Winship wrote:
> Murray Cumming wrote:
> > I wouldn't feel optimistic about a code of conduct that didn't represent
> > our current consensus.
> ...
> > However, there's no shortage of people saying both that
> > - Some improvement in behaviour is necessary
> 
> These points don't fit together. If we are just making the current tacit
> CoC explicit, then we would expect no change in behavior.

Not a radical change in behaviour, but some improvement. More of the
good stuff.

And we need to show that we are already better compared to other techy
communities.

>  If we are
> trying to change behavior, then the CoC can't just represent the current
> consensus.
> 
> > I haven't heard any downside even from people who don't agree with either
> > of those points.
> 
> The current hackers appear to be at least somewhat content with the
> current atmosphere. If we change it too drastically, we run the risk of
> pushing existing hackers away, or failing to attract new (western/male)
> ones. And I still haven't seen anything to make me believe that this
> Code of Conduct would actually attract female/asian/whatever hackers. So
> the downside is that a CoC might drive away the current hacker
> demographic AND fail to attract any new hacker demographic.

Who's going to be drive away by us stating that we generally think it's
a good idea not to be nasty? We agree on that so where's the drastic
threat? Should our consensus say "Sometime's it's OK to flame people.
That's really fun. Oh, and treat people with dismissive contempt
sometimes too. They don't matter." Obviously not.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com