Re: Proposal for an Events Code of Conduct and Policy Referendum

[meg ford <megford gnome org>]

Hi,

On Sat, Apr 21, 2018 at 8:12 AM, Tobias Mueller <tobiasmue gnome org> wrote:

Hi,

On Sat, 2018-04-21 at 13:35 +0200, Benjamin Berg wrote:
> I do not think that this is just a technicality that can be taken
> lightly. Should the Board continue to discuss the proposal as is, it
> would legitimise the misconduct of some CoC WG members.
>
Based on what has been exchanged here in public, I feel the same way.


> In contrast, my proposal for an open referendum allows the draft to be
> resubmitted therefore avoiding the above taints.
Yes.  It seems very desirable to me. Are there reasons against adopting
a process that sparks confidence and trust in the result?

I can image that it incurs much higher overhead than a working group
meeting secretly and just throwing a document over the wall.

Honestly, I volunteered my lunch hour every Monday for over a year, plus extra time outside of meetings to review existing CoCs, take and publish notes, and participate in mailing list discussions. With the exception of the mailing list, the resources and research we produced were made public for the community to review:

Multi-page Review of Existing CoCs, Photo Policies, Incidents, Resources

https://wiki.gnome.org/Diversity/CoCWorkingGroup/Resources

https://wiki.gnome.org/Diversity/CoCWorkingGroup/Minutes

So the idea that we secretly met and 'threw a document over the wall' is inaccurate. And in fact, there was quite a bit of overhead and almost two years worth of work by me, Ben, Marina, Nuritizi, Rosanna, Neil, and Allan that went into producing the current document.

If the question is whether the WG accepts Allan and Neil's proposal, then I would be fine with participating in a vote of the WG members to either accept or reject it as long as such a vote takes place in a timely fashion. However, Allan and Neil's proposal has my full support whether or not such a vote takes place, even though I was not involved in the last round of changes.

Cheers,

Meg

That overhead might actually be a barrier for adopting any kind of CoC.
But in case it has gone through the process you described, the support
of the foundation can more easily be asserted.  From that point of view,
it's very much desirable to follow a process similar to what you've
outlined.  You might even consider requiring a minimum level of
participation or a quorum of, say, 50% of the membership in order to
successfully adopt the rights and restrictions set forth in such a
document.

Am I right in assuming that you would not pursue a referendum if the
board does not further decide on the current draft?


> > As per the section 7.10 of the Bylaws of the GNOME Foundation [1],
> it
> > is your right as a member to propose a referendum if you can gather
> > support from at least 10% of the membership.
>
> Thanks for the short summary of the how a Referendum works when
> initiated by a community member.
There should not be a difference.

You have another interesting mechanism at your disposal that we used in
2012: You can ask for amendment of the bylaws to include provisions that
you desire, cf. Article XVII:
https://people.gnome.org/~tobiasmue/bylaws2012/bylaws.html#amendments

Cheers,
  Tobi

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