Re: Code of Conduct plan

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 4:51 PM Dave Page <dpage(at)pgadmin(dot)org> wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 3:43 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 09/14/2018 07:36 AM, Dave Page wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 3:21 PM, James Keener <jim(at)jimkeener(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Now, you may say that (2) would be rejected by the committee, but I would
>>>>> counter that it's still a stain on me and something that will forever
>>>>> appear
>>>>> along side my name in search results and that the amount of time and
>>>>> stress it'd take me to defend myself would make my voluntarily leaving
>>>>> the community, which would be seen as an admission of guilt, my only
>>>>> option.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If you had read the policy, you would know that wouldn't happen as
>>>> reports and details of reports are to be kept confidential.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That doesn't mean I won't be strung along and it doesn't mean that the
>>> attacker can't release those details. Remember, I'm worried
>>> about politically motivated attacks, and attacks meant to silence
>>> opposing viewpoints, not legitimate instances of harassment.
>>>
>>
>> Sure, but an attacker can do that now. Having the CoC doesn't change
>> anything there, though it does give us a framework to deal with it.
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> People are shitheads. People are assholes. We're not agreeing to join
>>>>> some organization and sign an ethics clause when signing up for the
>>>>> mailing
>>>>> list. The current moderators can already remove bad actors from the
>>>>> list.
>>>>> How they act outside of the list is non of this list's concern.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The lists are just one of many different ways people in this community
>>>> interact.
>>>>
>>>
>>> So? We interact with people outside of specific groups all the time.
>>> Baring specific
>>> agreements to the contrary, why should any one group claim
>>> responsibility of my
>>> personal business?
>>>
>>
>> If that business is publicly bringing the project into disrepute, or
>> harassing other community members and they approach us about it, then it
>> becomes our business.
>>
>> If it's unrelated to PostgreSQL, then it's your personal business and not
>> something the project would get involved in.
>>
>>
>> O.k. so this isn't clear (at least to me) within the CoC. I want to make
>> sure I understand. You are saying that if a community member posts on
>> Twitter that they believe gays are going to hell, reporting that to the CoC
>> committee would result in a non-violation UNLESS they referenced postgresql
>> within the post?
>>
>
> Yes, I believe so. Isn't that what "To that end, we have established this Code
> of Conduct for community interaction and participation in the project’s
> work and the community at large." basically says?
>
> And in the end, a broad scope is required to some extent.

I want to be clear about where my concern and objection is:

1. I think PostgreSQL, as an international project with people from many
different walks of life and different cultures needs to stay out of culture
war topics or assigning truth values to political viewpoints to the extent
absolutely possible. We do this today and we must continue to do this.
2. Compared to the rest of the world, people from my culture (the US) have
a tendency to take disagreements regarding political policies, social
theories, etc. personally and see abuse/attack where mere disagreement was
present. People making complaints aren't necessarily acting in bad faith.
3. If we don't set the expectation ahead of time that we remain
pluralistic in terms of political philosophy, culture, then it is way too
easy to end up in a situation where people are bringing up bad press for
failing to kick out people who disagree with them.

Like it or not there are precedents for this in the open source community,
such as the dismissal of Brendan Eich, and in an international project with
developers from all kinds of cultures with different views on deeply
divisive issues, such conflicts could hurt our community.

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

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