[Numpy-discussion] Adoption of a Code of Conduct

Thu Aug 2 08:57:23 EDT 2018

On Thu, 2018-08-02 at 12:04 +0200, Sylvain Corlay wrote:
> The "political belief" was recently removed from the Jupyter CoC.
> 
> One reason for this decision is that Racism and Sexism are
> increasingly considered as mainstream "political beliefs", and we
> wanted to make it clear that people can still be sanctioned for e.g.
> sexist or racist behavior when engaging with the project (at events,
> on the mailing list or GitHub...) even if their racism and sexism is
> corresponds to a "political belief".
> 
> It is still not OK for people to be excluded or discriminated against
> because of their political affiliation. The CoC statement reads "This
> includes, but is not limited to...". Also we don't wish to prioritize
> or elevate any members of a particular political belief to the same
> level as any members of the examples remaining in the
> document. Ultimately, the CoC committee uses their own judgement to
> assess reports and the appropriate response.
> 

TL;DR: I don't think it matters, as for the CoC as such, it seems fine
to me, lets just put it in and be done with it.
I do not think we should have a long discussion (about that list), and
in case it might go there, would suggest we try to find a way to refuse
to have it. Maybe by letting the committee that is in the CoC decide.

Actually: I am good with the people currently listed for SciPy if they
will do it, or anyone else wants to jump in?

I won't really follow the discussion much more (except for reading) and
do not feel like I really know enough about CoCs, but my point is, that
I do not care much. The CoC as suggested seems pretty uncontroversial
to me (it does not draw any hard lines worth fighting over). And that
is probably the only current believe I have, that I think it should not
really draw those lines.

Political opinion being included or not? I am not sure I care, because
as I read it and you point out, it does not really matter whether or
not it is included, including it would just raise awareness for a
specific issue.

This is not about freedom to express political believes (on numpy
channels), I suppose there may be a point where even a boycott can be
discriminatory and things may be tricky to assess [1], but again those
cases need careful weighing (by the committee mostly), a CoC might bias
this a little, but not much, and if we decide which way to bias it we
might end up fighting, so lets refuse to do it outside specific cases?

Freedom of expression is always limited by the protection of other
individuals rights (note that I believe in the US this freedom tends to
be held very high when weighing the two). But, since there is normally
no reason for voicing political opinions on numpy, it seems obvious to
me that it will tend to lose when weighed against the other persons
rights being protected [2].
Weighing different "rights" is always tricky, but cannot be avoided or
really formalized too much IMO [3,4].

Which comes to the point that I think the list is one to raise
awareness for and be welcoming to specific people (either very general
or minority), who have in the past (or currently) not felt welcome. And
such a list always will be set in the current time/mentality.
We are maybe in an odd spot where political discussion/judicial
progress feels lagging behind social development (and some fronts are
hardening :(), which makes things a bit trickier.

Overall, all it would do is to maybe suggested that "political opinion"
is currently not something that need special raised awareness. It does
not mean this defines a "bias", nor that the list cannot change at some
point.

Either way, I do not read the list as giving any additional protection
for *voicing* your opinion. In fact, I would argue the opposite may be
the case. If you voice it you make the opposite (political) opinion
feel less welcome, and since there is no reason for voicing a political
opinion *on a numpy channel* when weighing those against each other it
seems like a hard case [5].

At some points lines may have to be drawn (and drawing them once, does
not set them in stone for the next time!). I do not think we draw or
should draw them (much) with this statement itself, the statement says
that they will be drawn if and when necessary and then it will be done
so carefully. Plus it generally raises awareness and gives a bit
guidelines.
It seems to me that this may be the actual discussion with many of
those other discussions. Not so much the wording, but over how exactly
lines were drawn in practice.
Sure, probably we set a bit of bias with the list, but I doubt it is
enough to fight over. And hopefully we can avoid a huge discussion :)
(for now looks like it).

Best,

Sebastian

PS: I do not mind synchronizing numpy and scipy (or numpy and Jupyter
or all three) as much as possible. I guess you could sum it up to,
maybe I am even -0 on removal (I am not sure ;)), but anything is fine
and even something like "Jupyter removed it, lets stay synchronized"
seems like a fair enough argument to me.

PPS: Since this is a CoC thing... if anyone finds my opinion
strange/offensive, please write me, because I honestly would want to
know!

[1] Strangely enough, I have done this in a very mild form, by ignoring
    an issue (or similar) on github, because I understood their github
    picture as an offensive symbol.
    If they were seriously active/representative, I might have asked to
    at least change it (e.g. before being on the steering council).
[2] There are difficult lines when it comes to representative persons
    maybe, but I do not think you can really set up hard rules for it.
    It might be that my perspective is a bit different because german
    judicial system to my knowledge tends to draw few hard lines
    (two courts can easily decide differently on almost identical
    cases).
[3] We could formalize it, but that would seem to be the exact opposite
    of what a CoC tries to achieve.
[4] In germany there was a discussion recently with some politicians
    suggesting that "safety" should be a fundamental right or
    even "super fundamental right". As far as I know judiciary thought
    it was a very bad idea, because the "super" would mean that
    you strangely and definitely prefer safety over e.g. privacy,
    leading to an impossibility to thoughtfully weigh things
    against each other (not in specific areas, but in general).
[5] Yes, there may be some tough points where a person (without doing
    anything else) practically represents something so much that it
    could be offensive. First, that probably will not happen, ever,
    second, I do not see how anyone can hope to anticipate it.
    There is a reason fundamental laws/constitutions/human rights
    all start very general like "The dignity (of a human) is
    unimpeachable.".

> Best,
> 
> Sylvain
> 
> 
> On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 7:04 AM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 1, 2018 at 8:35 PM Ryan May <rmay31 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > When experts say that something is a bad idea, and when the
> > > > people who
> > > > a CoC is supposed to protect says it makes them feel unsafe, I
> > > > feel
> > > > like we should listen to that.
> > > > 
> > > > I also thought that the points made in the Jupyter discussion
> > > > thread
> > > > made a lot of sense: of course it's possible for people to
> > > > start
> > > > harassing each other over any excuse, and a CoC can, should,
> > > > and does
> > > > make clear that that's not OK. But if you specifically *call
> > > > out*
> > > > political affiliation as a protected class, at a time when lots
> > > > of the
> > > > people who the CoC is trying to protect are facing governmental
> > > > harassment justified as "mere political disagreement", then it
> > > > really
> > > > sends the wrong message.
> > > > 
> > > > Besides, uh... isn't the whole definition of politics that it's
> > > > topics
> > > > where there is active debate? Not really sure why it's even in
> > > > that
> > > > list to start with.
> > > 
> > > So I hear all the arguments about people feeling unsafe due to
> > > some truly despicable, discriminatory behavior, and I want
> > > absolutely no parts of protecting that. However, I also recognize
> > > that we in the U.S. are in a particularly divisive atmosphere,
> > > and people of varied political persuasions want absolutely
> > > nothing to do with those who share differing views. So, as a
> > > concrete example, if someone were to show up at a NumPy developer
> > > summit with a MAGA ("Make America Great Again") hat, or talks
> > > about their support for the president in non-numpy channels,
> > > WITHOUT expressing anything discriminatory or support for such
> > > views, if "political beliefs" is not in the CoC, is this person
> > > welcome? I'm not worried about my own views, but I have friends
> > > of widely varying views, and I truly wonder if they would be
> > > welcome. With differing "political beliefs" listed as something
> > > welcomed, I feel ok for them; if this language is removed, I'm
> > > much less certain.
> > > 
> > > IMO, "political beliefs" encompasses so much more things than a
> > > handful of very specific, hateful views. People can disagree
> > > about a wide array of "political beliefs" and it is important
> > > that we as a community welcome a wide array of such views. If the
> > > CoC needs to protect against the wide array of discriminatory
> > > views and behavior that make up U.S. politics right now, how
> > > about specifically calling those behaviors out as not-welcome,
> > > rather than completely ignoring the fact that 99% of "political
> > > beliefs" are perfectly welcome within the community?
> > > 
> > > The CoC is about spelling out the community norms--how about just
> > > spelling out that we welcome everyone, but, in the words of Will
> > > Wheaton, "Don't be a dick"?
> > 
> > I agree that it's worth clarifying in the text what this clause is
> > intended to do. I think it has been misinterpreted as defining a
> > legalistic set of protected classes along the lines of anti-
> > discrimination laws and can be interpreted by itself outside of the
> > context of the CoC as a whole. But it's not that. It's an
> > aspirational statement, and a high one, at that, if we interpret it
> > at its broadest. We will fail to meet it, in its entirety, and
> > that's *okay* if the spirit of the CoC is being defended. I am
> > perfectly happy to keep "political beliefs" explicit in the CoC and
> > still boot the neo-feudalist for making the project's/conference's
> > environment unwelcoming for a more vulnerable group of people, even
> > if just by their presence. I *am* sensitive to how nominally well-
> > intentioned "viewpoint diversity" efforts get hijacked by
> > regressives looking to (re)assert their traditional power. But that
> > problem is mostly confined to conferences who need to seek speakers
> > and has less relevance to numpy, which largely doesn't run much
> > except sprints. I think we can resolve that elsewhere, if not
> > another document, then at least another clause. A CoC has to pull a
> > kind of double duty: be friendly enough to digest for a newcomer
> > and also be helpful to project organizers to make tough balancing
> > decisions. We don't have to expect each sentence to pull that
> > double duty on its own. I don't quite know what the phrasing would
> > be (because, again, we don't run conferences), but I think we could
> > make a statement that explicitly disclaims that we will be using
> > "viewpoint diversity" to provide a platform for viewpoints
> > antithetical to the CoC.
> > 
> > None of these categorizations listed should be interpreted as get-
> > out-of-jail-free cards for otherwise unwelcoming behavior, and I
> > think maybe we should be explicit about that. Our diversity
> > statement is an aspiration, not a suicide pact. Religion,
> > neurotype, national origin, and subculture (4chan is a subculture,
> > God help us), at minimum, are all items on that list that I have
> > personally seen used to justify shitty behavior. Political belief
> > is far from unique (nor the most common excuse, in my experience)
> > in that list. But they all deserve to be on that list. I want the
> > somewhat fringy progressive hacktivist to feel comfortable here as
> > well as people more mainstream.
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > NumPy-Discussion at python.org
> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
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