Re: Let's Do the CoC Right

Hi PostgreSQL General.

I get that my short, snarky posts don’t help my argument, but I admit to being a bit frustrated that the posts wherein I have tried to lay out a position get little or no response. So let me try again.

1. Items in the current draft of the CoC can be manipulated by abusers to claim that they were just expressing an opinion or were ignorant of their tone. The ability to say that, and reference a specific item in the CoC when doing so, introduces an element of inconsistency that can lead people to doubt that statements are in violation of the CoC. One might think that “You can not violate one part of the CoC and use the other part as the reason”, and yet that is exactly what is likely to happen. One can, and one will, and then how will those evaluating a case of reported abuse handle it? If someone says, “I was abused as defined in Bullet 2,” but the abuser says, “I am protected in my speech by Bullets 1 and 3,” what’s going to happen?

Related: http://paddy.io/posts/professional-concerns/

2. This document has been written and edited, in the main, by people who have not, to my knowledge, experienced the kind of abuse we want to prevent. Nor do they have experience in writing a document like this in such a way to make it consistent and effective, and to make targets of abuse feel safe here. We really should be taking advantage of the expertise of those who have experienced these issues, who have seen what has worked and what hasn’t, and can advise us on the most likely approach for success. The Contributor Covenant tries to encapsulate such expertise in a way that’s easy for communities to develop. But if our community doesn’t like the Covenant, I think we should bring in the expertise to help us craft a document that’s likely to be the most effective. There are a number of consultants in this space who have tremendously helped other communities I’ve participated in, such as the XOXO Festival.

3. If I understand correctly, the impetus for adopting a CoC (which, believe me, I laud in no uncertain terms) was this post by Randi Harper about her experience reporting abuse to the FreeBSD community:

http://blog.randi.io/2015/12/31/the-developer-formerly-known-as-freebsdgirl/

Ideally, by adopting a CoC and an enforcement policy, we can try to prevent bad experiences for people reporting abuse. However, in this example, the abuse, which came from a FreeBSD committer and was aimed at another, took place on Twitter, not in a FreeBSD forum. However, the rules of the FreeBSD community at that time did not cover abuse outside sanctioned community forums. As a result, the FreeBSd core:

> weren’t willing to take action on threats because they didn’t happen on the mailing list — despite them happening in a venue where the committer publicly identified himself as a member of the project.

The proposed CoC does not cover this situation, either, at least not as directly as it should. So if someone who identified as a PostgreSQL community member abused someone else on Twitter or Facebook, and that abuse was reported to the PostgreSQL community (by whatever policy the community will need to spell out), will the abuse enforcement team be able to do anything about it, by the proposed CoC? I suspect not. The third bullet item refers only to the community “collaborative space”. It should also cover forums outside the community’s own collaborative spaces. Otherwise, if someone in our community abuses someone in an outside forum, but is allowed to continue to participate in the community, then the target of that abuse will not feel safe here. The abuser, however, will. Is that an outcome we really want? If not, how do we make explicit that it won’t happen?

Look, I’m not an authority on this stuff, either. But I understand that rules, such as those in a Code of Conduct, must be explicit and as unambiguous as language will allow. And it’s pretty easy for me, a non-expert in the fields of law or abuse mitigation, to see oversights and contradictions that can and will be exploited by abusers. We should close them. Ideally the core organization would hire one or more experts to help us out, or else would take advantage of the fruits of their past labors and adopt something that has already been thought-through by experts and adopted by a wide range of communities. Will it be perfect? No. Can we make it good enough to make people feel safe? Absolutely.

This isn’t about compromise, mind. If what we want to do is to let people know that they are safe from abuse in this community and from members of this community, that we take abuse seriously and will act on reports expeditiously, then I don’t see how the proposed CoC get us there.

Best,

David