Subject: Re: code of conduct question for Board candidates
Date: Sun, 24 May 2015 16:55:05 -0700
Hi Marina,
On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Marina Zhurakhinskaya <marinaz redhat com> wrote:
What do you think about adopting a detailed code of conduct, similar to the one used for GUADEC 2014 [3], for all GNOME events and creating a similarly detailed code of conduct for the GNOME community?
I welcomed the adoption of an event code of conduct for GUADEC 2014, and I would support extending similar rules for events organized by GNOME.
I don't think that all events necessarily need the same level of detail though; as an example in events that are invite-only, like hackfests, it might be overkill or not viable for the organizers to formalize a code of conduct, or have a team to enforce it. I also like to think that in such settings the social situation is less prone to incidents that require a code of conduct to resolve, as participants likely know each other already and are pre-selected.
I'm more ambivalent about extending a community-wide code of conduct beyond the current one; mostly because it can be hard to determine the boundaries of the community such code would try to protect and really hard to enforce anything on some channels in practice. The current code also does not make distinction between disrespect/harassment ("Be respectful and considerate", even though the word "harassment" is not used) and etiquette best-practices ("Try to be concise"), and I don't think there should be any enforcement on the latter parts. I would be interested in understanding what kind of improvements and goals you have in mind for such a community code of conduct.
