Regarding your [1], the GNOME code of conduct referenced therein explicitly says "There is no official enforcement of these principles, and this should not be interpreted like a legal document". So maybe that CoC is being applied contrary to its design there.
I wasn't arguing for formal verification, but you should notice that actual legislation is a lot less vague than the Django CoC.
>It follows that to work well it needs the people doing the interpretation (judges, committees, ombudsman, etc) to be competent, and be selected so that people can have faith in them.
And that's another problem with the Django CoC that I was mentioning, there's nothing there insuring that someone that's accused receives a due process, nor that all complaints are listened to equally.
https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/enforcement-manual/ documents at length how the committee handling the violation reports is appointed, how they conduct their work, how their oversight works etc.
Then, https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/reporting/) describes an appeal process: "Appealing: Only permanent resolutions (such as bans) may be appealed. To appeal a decision of the working group, contact the DSF Board at [email protected] with your appeal and the DSF board will review the case"
"Justice"
Remember that there is still after the fact accountability, and that the system relies on the people in the WG being trusted community members and reasonable people.
BTW this is not far from how it works in the real world. Bob is not going to be able to litigate his side of the story and face his accusers in most situations where he is removed from premises for harassment or threats of violence. And people generally are fine with this.
Or might not. Especially if either project CoC's in general or Project X's specifically are known for being interpreted and enforced capriciously.
https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/3abyva/a_code_of_co...
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-nuts/sy-YcVPADj...
User Peter Kleiweg raises this concern "Who gets to decide what is racist? And even whether or not racist is a bad thing?" and while I disagree with him on this particular issue the answer that Gerrand gives is very problematic:
"If it's speech that makes people feel unwelcome and discriminated against, then I personally believe that's a bad thing."
the problem with this is that, for example, an open display of support for gay marriage will make some catholics (for example) unwelcome and discriminated against. This isn't even theoretical, this is an argument that actually happens in the real world, just not in the bubble inhabited by Gerrand, apparently.
You can still have schisms and nasty politics with a policy like this, since obviously the different sides of the discussion will value things unequally, but the goal is to at least maintain surface politeness and order so that small voices don't give up so quickly.
>Catholics are getting shouted down - that does happen(in an existence-proof sense), but it's not nearly as common
A catholic would point you to all those countries where catholics are getting killed daily for their opinion.
»"Do not deny me my belief, critique is tyranny" is a very common theme to defend all forms of discrimination
An equally common theme is "your opinion/behaviour is offensive and scandalous", but both are exactly the point I'm making, it should be possible to make statements critical to the system without being branded with a scarlett letter by some secret court working on anonymous tips.
>You can still have schisms and nasty politics with a policy like this
IMHO no, you can't, the Django CoC is too "feelings oriented", you can't objectively judge peoples feelings (especially on mailing lists and IRC) because it's internal unobservable state, besides I have learned that some people invented several terms [1] [2] [3] to redefine "surface politeness discussion" into harassment.
Furthermore it specifically says "In general, if someone asks you to stop, then stop" which mean that even if you are making an argument that does not violate the CoC simply defending it if someone asks you to stop is a violation. It's simply impossible to enforce such rule equitably without every argument becoming a race to who can shout "mom!" first.
[1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions [2] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sealioning [3] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/JAQing_off
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
(And yes, I am aware he didn't say these exact words himself.)
“Though all winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple, who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.”
If I am on e.g. a technical list or attend a conference, I'd expect discussions about the subject-matter and offbeat comments about gender, race, or whatever.
Apparently it's a phrase from a biography of Voltaire by Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
The thing is that we are talking about a technical community. I don't see what an open display of support for or disapproval of gay marriage has to do with Go.
People subscribe to Go lists because they want to discuss technical aspects of a programming language. For other topics, there are other venues.
Yes, and for highlighting off-topic subjects, there is the simple moderator acronym "OT". A rigid rule book and enforcement policy has nothing to do with free speech. It's all about trying to balance the inequalities in the tech sector. Unfortunately, a rule book is not going to solve that problem. The cynic in me just thinks this a conference "feel-good" announcement planned as a result of Googlers feeling bad about the fact that they are a 83% male workforce.
If the real problem is going to be solved, it's got to be about encouraging and educating people from all genders and races to code. That starts much earlier than any engagement in online communities. If the output of schools and colleges of trained coders was balanced, all the horror stories of harassment and abuse would soon become history as the workforce also becomes balanced, in my opinion.
I strongly dislike the idea of self-appointed judiciaries. Mistakes happen. The nuances of behaviour of people with mental health issues is likely to get caught up in these rule books. That's why we have courts, to help deal with difficult cases. Vigilantes may well refer to the code of conduct for justification for statements of intent like this:
http://dave.cheney.net/2015/06/13/listen-up
I'm not comfortable with that.
"violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them"
[1] - http://redd.it/3abyva
Deleted comment 1 included "But I doubt I would waste time on coding as I’m sure you’ll just make an excuse to reject it, just as you’re making excuses instead of fixing this bug."
Deleted comment 2 included snippets like "except where they deliberately break it" and "but I’m sure it’s still their agenda to make it a dependency just because they want it to be".
1. The Django CoC uses very vague language on what it is forbidden and explicitly tells you that "this isn’t an exhaustive list of things that you can’t do" just to be extra vague in what constitutes unacceptable behaviour.
2. It does not define what process will be used to address CoC violations, being ejected from an OS project for violating the CoC can be a serious thing with personal and professional ramifications but an accused is not given the right to face their accuser nor the right to an impartial jury (which would be hard to do anyway since the accusation could be something like "he's making me anxious")
3. It overextends itself "violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them" which means that not only you are under the scrutiny of the kangaroo court when you are posting on golang spaces but everywhere else: ycombinator, reddit, your personal blog, etc. Honestly I feel like just writing this criticism is painting a target on my forehead, talk about safe spaces.
I wouldn't be making this comment if CoCs hadn't already been used in bad faith to attempt to character assassinate OS contributors (for exmaple the Kubuntu debacle or this [1])
[1] https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/