On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 2:11 AM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
Back to the code of conduct discussion, Nathaniel has raised a pertinent theme over at the Scipy PR - main comment at:
https://github.com/scipy/scipy/pull/7963#discussion_r145580285
Nathaniel's basic point, as I understand it, is that one common type of behavior that we should be able to deal with, is flagrant and aggressive abuse, likely from people otherwise not involved in Scipy. He gives this example "Last night someone logged into the #scipy channel on Freenode and started pasting racial slurs in giant letters.".
Nathaniel then goes on to argue that the language and procedures in the CoC as stands don't apply to that case.
I think that's reasonable, but I think we have to be careful to distinguish:
1) obvious flagrant abuse, likely from someone who does not contribute, possibly from someone who does contribute who is having a breakdown of some sort and 2) discussions that started in good faith and have gone out of control.
It's true that the current code of conduct is aimed more or less squarely at the second.
I don't personally think we're going to have too much trouble distinguishing these two cases, so I'm going to suggest that, instead of switching the doc to aiming at case 1 rather than case 2, we have a safely-valve mechanism for case 1. This would go something like:
""" As a special case,
Your suggestions all make sense, but I suggest not calling one of possible types of cases a "special case". Ralf we know that it is painfully common for internet
communication to start at or devolve into obvious and flagrant abuse including violent, racist and sexist language. In the specific case of violent, racist or sexist language, these {named moderators} will use the following procedure:
* immediately disconnect the person from all Scipy communication channels; * if the originator appears to be a previous contributor, the moderator may try to contact the contributor by some other means to check whether their account has been hacked. * if the originator is in fact a previous contributor, and the contributor wants to be reconnected to the Scipy channels, then {consider some cooling off period, an agreement not to repeat the behavior, and email moderation. A previous contributor also has the right to an appeal to the code of conduct committee}. * in every case, the moderator should make a reasonable effort to contact the originator, and tell them specifically how their language qualifies as "violent, racist or sexist language", and they should copy this explanation to the code of conduct committee. The code of conduct committee should formally review and sign off on these cases every year to make sure this mechanism is not being used to control ordinary heated disagreement. """
I've argued before [1] that the best way to think about these documents, is in terms of specific use-cases. In Nathaniel's case above, I think it's fairly obvious how the mechanism above would work. Next we consider the famous case of the sexist joke on the Ubuntu mailing list [2]. I think that would also qualify for the mechanism above, but where we would expect the resolution to be that the originator would have to agree not to post sexist material to that list, and be moderated for a while, Last we consider the SpacedGirl Software Carpentry Case [1], where this procedure could not reasonably be invoked, and the rest of the current code of conduct would apply.
Cheers,
Matthew
[1] https://github.com/jupyter/governance/pull/23#issuecomment-269244281 [2] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Ubuntu_Code_of_Conduct_incident _______________________________________________ SciPy-Dev mailing list SciPy-Dev@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev