Let's Do the CoC Right

Fellow PostgreSQLers,

I can’t help that there are a whole lot of white guys working on this document, with very little feedback from the people who it’s likely to benefit (only exception I spotted in a quick scan was Regina; sorry if I missed you). I suspect that most of you, like me, have never been the target of the kinds os behaviors we want to forbid. Certainly not to the level of many women, transgendered, and people of color I know of personally, in this community and others, who have. If those people are not speaking up here, I suspect it’s because they don’t expect to be heard. A bunch of white guys who run the project have decided what it’s gonna be, and mostly cut things out since these threads started.

But a *whole* lot of thought has gone into the creation of CoCs by the people who need them, and those who care about them. They have considered what sorts of things should be covered, what topics specifically addressed, and how to word them so as to enable the most people possible to feel safe, and to appropriately address issues when they inevitably arise, so that people continue to feel safe.

So I’d like to propose that we not try to do this ourselves. Instead, I propose that we take advantage of the ton of thought others have already put into this, and simply:

* Follow the example of many other successful communities (Swift, Mono, Rails, and 10,000 others) and adopt the open-source Contributor Covenant, unmodified.

http://contributor-covenant.org

* Put this document in the root directory of the project as CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, so that anyone who wants to contribute can. It should also be listed on the main web site and referenced from appropriate places (such as the mail lists pages).

* Spell out a policy and procedure for enforcement and include it as a separate document, again in the Git rep and on the site. The reporting address should be included in the Covenant. The Covenant web site has links to a number of existing guides we ought to crib from.

Best,

David