Hi Marc,
On 19.01.2015 01:49, Marc Jones wrote:
On Sat Jan 17 2015 at 8:12:20 PM Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
Hi Marc,
thanks for writing this up.
On 16.01.2015 19:15, Marc Jones wrote:
A coreboot code of conduct has been posted on the wiki.
I have written a blog post about why we have a code of conduct.
Feel free to give feedback on the policy and how else we can contribute to a welcoming and collaborative environment.
Given that the Code of Conduct has been announced publicly in a blog post, the feedback is probably expected to be public as well. Apologies if that is not the case.
The current wording suggests that anyone can be expelled from the community permanently without warning for either perceived harrassment or for strongly enforcing the code of conduct. This is probably not the intention.
Open discussion is acceptable.
Adding that sentence to the CoC would be helpful.
Furthermore, the second paragraph of "Unacceptable Behaviour" is either redundant or woefully incomplete. If you really think the word "harassing" from the first paragraph needs to be defined, you should define the other words from the first paragraph "intimidating", "abusive", "discriminatory", "derogatory" and "demeaning" as well. I suggest deleting that second paragraph.
I'll disagree. Harassment is the most common problem in online communities
Real citation needed, not just some sentiment. For example, quite a few feminist blogs point to intimidating and derogatory speech/actions as the primary hurdles against female participation in online communities.
and warrants the paragraph about those unacceptable behaviors.
If harassment is the most common problem, that definitely warrants listing harassment first (which is not the case in the current CoC).
Defining every other term would not make this policy any more robust.
Is the term "harassment" so unclear it warrants explanation? I thought there was universal agreement that harassment is bad, but having to define harassment implies that there is no such universal agreement (you can't agree on something undefined). I argue that creating our own homegrown definition of harassment (or copying someone else's homegrown definition) makes this policy less robust because this current homegrown definition is woefully incomplete.
Please define "community organizers". Did you mean "arbitration team"? Or is it the community members present at an event?
It isn't not meant to be specific to an arbitration team. These members may not be present in all cases and organizers of events and online communities should uphold the good standards of the community.
Thanks for clarifying. The CoC would benefit from adding this clarification.
How can we deploy this against people not part of our community? If they're not part of the community in the first place, it is by definition impossible to exclude them from our community and the Code of Conduct in its current form does not apply. If, on the other hand, we define everyone on the mailing list, everyone on IRC and everyone visiting our booths at various conferences and trade shows as being part of our community, we're going to overshoot the mark. I don't want to be guilty by association just because some troll on IRC joins all channels, spews some random offensive crap and disappears.
It applies to everyone that participates in coreboot communication, online, at an event or in a conference booth. People that are not up to this standard of behavior are not welcome in our community and they should be asked to leave. If a troll joins and spams the channel, clearly ask them to leave. If they don't leave report them to a channel or IRCOP. If there is a question of the policy or of a behavior, please contact an organizer or someone from the arbitration team.
Great, thanks for the explanation and guideline!
Regards, Carl-Daniel
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
I thought there was universal agreement that harassment is bad,
Experience shows this to not be the case - which is why we say that it is something we do not accept.
//Peter
Am 2015-01-19 12:52, schrieb Carl-Daniel Hailfinger:
Real citation needed, not just some sentiment. For example, quite a few feminist blogs point to intimidating and derogatory speech/actions as the primary hurdles against female participation in online communities.
I have read no such reports about our community, but we did have some (relatively minor) incidents in the past that made contributors well less than welcome.
I'd concentrate on solving our own issues first, over trying to fix all the world's grievances.
That said, I'm not sure what bucket these incidents fall into, and I'm not sure if our list of examples of unsuitable behavior cover only "harassment". Maybe we should replace "Harassment includes:" with "Examples of actions we don't want to see in our community:"?
and warrants the paragraph about those unacceptable behaviors.
If harassment is the most common problem, that definitely warrants listing harassment first (which is not the case in the current CoC).
Let's just say, they're all pretty terrible?
Please define "community organizers". Did you mean "arbitration team"? Or is it the community members present at an event?
It isn't not meant to be specific to an arbitration team. These members may not be present in all cases and organizers of events and online communities should uphold the good standards of the community.
Thanks for clarifying. The CoC would benefit from adding this clarification.
http://www.coreboot.org/Talk:Code_of_Conduct is generally writable with a Wiki account. Want to propose some language?
Patrick
On 19.01.2015 17:13, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Am 2015-01-19 12:52, schrieb Carl-Daniel Hailfinger:
Real citation needed, not just some sentiment. For example, quite a few feminist blogs point to intimidating and derogatory speech/actions as the primary hurdles against female participation in online communities.
I have read no such reports about our community, but we did have some (relatively minor) incidents in the past that made contributors well less than welcome.
I'd concentrate on solving our own issues first, over trying to fix all the world's grievances.
That said, I'm not sure what bucket these incidents fall into, and I'm not sure if our list of examples of unsuitable behavior cover only "harassment". Maybe we should replace "Harassment includes:" with "Examples of actions we don't want to see in our community:"?
and warrants the paragraph about those unacceptable behaviors.
If harassment is the most common problem, that definitely warrants listing harassment first (which is not the case in the current CoC).
Let's just say, they're all pretty terrible?
Please define "community organizers". Did you mean "arbitration team"? Or is it the community members present at an event?
It isn't not meant to be specific to an arbitration team. These members may not be present in all cases and organizers of events and online communities should uphold the good standards of the community.
Thanks for clarifying. The CoC would benefit from adding this clarification.
http://www.coreboot.org/Talk:Code_of_Conduct is generally writable with a Wiki account. Want to propose some language?
Thanks, I just did that.
Regards, Carl-Daniel
Hi Patrick,
I noticed that my comment on the wiki talk page for the CoC seemed to be unnoticed, that's why I'm continuing the discussion on the mailing list.
On 19.01.2015 17:13, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Am 2015-01-19 12:52, schrieb Carl-Daniel Hailfinger:
Real citation needed, not just some sentiment. For example, quite a few feminist blogs point to intimidating and derogatory speech/actions as the primary hurdles against female participation in online communities.
I have read no such reports about our community, but we did have some (relatively minor) incidents in the past that made contributors well less than welcome.
I'd concentrate on solving our own issues first, over trying to fix all the world's grievances.
That said, I'm not sure what bucket these incidents fall into, and I'm not sure if our list of examples of unsuitable behavior cover only "harassment". Maybe we should replace "Harassment includes:" with "Examples of actions we don't want to see in our community:"?
The examples in the updated CoC were copied from the "Citizen Code of Conduct" and there are countless better lists of examples out there. If we really want this list of examples, can we at least remove the really vague ones which include the word "inappropriate"?
I also would like to suggest a rewording elsewhere to make the CoC sound a bit friendlier: Change "Check your motives: Using this code of conduct aggressively against other people in the community might also be harassment. Behave." to "Using this code of conduct aggressively against other people in the community might also be harassment. Be considerate when enforcing the code of conduct and always try to listen to both sides before passing judgment."
Regards, Carl-Daniel
Hi everyone,
can we please put the Code of Conduct under some revision control? It seems patches are being ignored or getting lost.
There are two possible solutions: Removing the lock on the wiki page or having the CoC in git/gerrit with automatic publishing. I'm fine with either solution.
Regards, Carl-Daniel
Am 2015-02-01 13:30, schrieb Carl-Daniel Hailfinger:
It seems patches are being ignored or getting lost.
It's not exactly news that people are busy. And "patches" on the list are ignored since 2011.
There are two possible solutions: Removing the lock on the wiki page or
A CoC with no editorial oversight at all is probably worse than no CoC.
Patrick
On 02.02.2015 12:09, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Am 2015-02-01 13:30, schrieb Carl-Daniel Hailfinger:
It seems patches are being ignored or getting lost.
It's not exactly news that people are busy. And "patches" on the list are ignored since 2011.
Yes, but this is the first time a part of the community has decided how other parts of the community should behave and threatened draconian sanctions for any deviating behaviour.
There are two possible solutions: Removing the lock on the wiki page or
A CoC with no editorial oversight at all is probably worse than no CoC.
A CoC with no community backing is probably worse than no CoC.
Marc wrote in his initial post: "Feel free to give feedback on the policy". I sincerely hope that the CoC will only be in effect after the feedback has been incorporated. The current development guidelines didn't appear overnight, but were refined over time without a lockdown on the wiki. Besides that, the development guidelines don't mention any sanctions and are thus less aggressive.
Regards, Carl-Daniel
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
this is the first time a part of the community has decided how other parts of the community should behave
That's not really the case here. The code of conduct applies to everyone in the community, not just "other parts of the community".
and threatened draconian sanctions for any deviating behaviour.
Are you more concerned about how the code of conduct has been brought onto the agenda, or about the subject matter? It's hard to tell. :\
A CoC with no editorial oversight at all is probably worse than no CoC.
A CoC with no community backing is probably worse than no CoC.
I do not think that is true.
And you can't claim to speak for the whole community.
Marc wrote in his initial post: "Feel free to give feedback on the policy". I sincerely hope that the CoC will only be in effect after the feedback has been incorporated.
Maybe the code of conduct was always in effect, just not formalized?
//Peter
Opening remark: While I did try to phrase this in the most accurate way possible with the help of a dictionary, please keep in mind I'm not a native speaker of English. My apologies for any misunderstanding which may arise. There is no intent to offend on my side.
On 03.02.2015 17:11, Peter Stuge wrote:
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
this is the first time a part of the community has decided how other parts of the community should behave
That's not really the case here. The code of conduct applies to everyone in the community, not just "other parts of the community".
Granted. Let me replace "other parts of the community" with "themselves and other parts of the community". This makes it more clear that one part of the community makes decisions and the other part of the community is expected to comply. It is kind of obvious that the decision-making part of the community would comply with their own decisions, and this is why I didn't mention them in my original statement.
and threatened draconian sanctions for any deviating behaviour.
Are you more concerned about how the code of conduct has been brought onto the agenda, or about the subject matter? It's hard to tell. :\
I am concerned with the combination of both. I already mentioned my objections to parts of the Code of Conduct earlier in this thread. I also object to the way the CoC was presented. I would have been totally OK with "this is a draft, please comment, then after the requested changes have consensus and everyone agrees, let's make this binding". Instead, we get a public announcement of a Code of Conduct which implies that it is finalized already. Let me quote from the associated blog post: "we are going a step farther and describing what is unacceptable within our community with the coreboot Code of Conduct". That doesn't sound like it's a draft or unfinished.
Having the arbitration team be disjoint from the team creating the Code of Conduct would also have dispelled concern about one group of individuals acting as policymaker, judge, jury and executioner. I happen to have learned at school that separation of powers is essential and this shapes the way I think.
A CoC with no editorial oversight at all is probably worse than no CoC.
A CoC with no community backing is probably worse than no CoC.
I do not think that is true.
How would a CoC without community backing be any better than no CoC?
Please note that wiki accounts for editing are only handed out manually by a select few people. This also means that even for an unlocked wiki page (suggested by me as one of the possible solutions) there is in fact oversight.
And you can't claim to speak for the whole community.
I didn't claim to speak for the whole community. I didn't even claim to speak for the majority. I just took Patrick's statement word for word and replaced "editorial oversight" with "community backing". The most interesting question here is whether editorial oversight is more important than community backing.
Marc wrote in his initial post: "Feel free to give feedback on the policy". I sincerely hope that the CoC will only be in effect after the feedback has been incorporated.
Maybe the code of conduct was always in effect, just not formalized?
My impression is that there is/was some sort of universal agreement about being reasonably nice to everyone who was interested in or wanted to be involved with coreboot in some way. Occassional trolling on IRC is/was also being dealt with.
However, formalizing a "be nice" policy would hopefully have resulted in a text which focuses less on unacceptable behaviour and associated sanctions. Being nice also means not treating community members as potential offenders. Reading sentences like "Behave." (yes, that is a complete sentence from the Code of Conduct) makes me feel like an unruly teenager getting a dressing-down from the headmaster.
TL;DR: IMHO the CoC needs to be discussed, revised and ratified before taking effect.
Regards, Carll-Daniel
Am 2015-02-03 11:38, schrieb Carl-Daniel Hailfinger:
The current development guidelines didn't appear overnight, but were refined over time without a lockdown on the wiki.
And yet they're mostly useless.
The CoC wikipage is now unlocked. Let's see what comes of it.
Patrick
On 04.02.2015 12:31, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Am 2015-02-03 11:38, schrieb Carl-Daniel Hailfinger:
The current development guidelines didn't appear overnight, but were refined over time without a lockdown on the wiki.
And yet they're mostly useless.
The CoC wikipage is now unlocked. Let's see what comes of it.
Thanks!
I changed the wording a bit, reordered some stuff and replaced one of the homegrown definitions with the one used by the UN which is hopefully not objectionable.
There is another pending proposal (not by me) which IMHO would be a nice addition:
https://www.coreboot.org/Talk:Code_of_Conduct#Some_words_about_assessing_cod...
Some words about assessing code quality
Proposal: Add to the list in the chat etiquette something like: 'Code that you are changing wasn't perfect (or you wouldn't change it). However, try to avoid assuming that it was written by monkeys, or that it must have always been broken. It's likely that it used to work and it's likely that your new work is necessary and important because circumstances changed where the code didn't.'
Pros: Remind people that there's a coder behind the code. Assuming bad intent or stupidity (and doing so publicly) is as much a statement about the code as about the coder.
Cons: Is that micromanaging things?
The "Mailing list and chat etiquette" section of the CoC already has two related items:
- People who intentionally insult others (users, developers,
corporations, other projects, or the coreboot project itself) will be dealt with. See policy below.
- We are dealing with hardware with lots of undocumented pitfalls. It
is quite possible that you did everything right, but coreboot or its tools still wont work for you.
Admittedly some code has always been broken and nobody may have noticed before, but I really do like the "avoid assuming it was written by monkeys" part. Quite a lot of code in coreboot (especially hardware-specific stuff) has been copy-pasted and changed until it worked well enough. Some cleanups have removed code of that type, but there probably still is such code that remains. In flashrom, we do notice from time to time that the remaining really old code was written in an age where some classes of bugs simply weren't widely known and thus the coder could not have known how to avoid them. Sometimes, enough code was written the wrong way to have zero net effect. Yes, head-scratching and exclamations of WTF?!? happen whenever we try to fix or clean up that code. Still, back then the code contribution (patch) seems to have been considered a net positive, otherwise it wouldn't have been merged. For me, this is mostly a question about respecting our elders who didn't have our modern tools and still got things to work.
Opinions?
Regards, Carl-Daniel
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Carl-Daniel Hailfinger -
Patrick Georgi -
Peter Stuge