Adding one more comment: Please, I implore you: Do not remove the
assumption of good faith from OSGeo's principles!
"Assumption of good faith" and "Quietening down somebody" are totally
different things. In her blog on thebias.com Annalee somewhat hastily
mixes the two up when she says:
"The harm is that telling people to “assume good intent” is a sign that
if they come to you with a concern, you will minimize their feelings,
police their reactions, and question their perceptions."
OSGeo and any open and welcoming community cannot exist without
assumption of good faith. The opposite to assuming good faith is perfect
paranoia which is only destructive. It is also quite impossible to set
up rules to regulate everything without suffocating. So let us talk and
interact as best we can from all our gender, cultural and individual
background. If it starts to get out of hand - and this will happen again
- look at it closely, have concerned people on a functioning CoC and
repair the damage.
Unfortunately I have not followed the issue which Sara Safawi indicated
as her reason to want to leave OSGeo closely enough to be able to
understand all the intricacies. But it actually did not feel good, even
from a distance. Maybe a functioning CoC could have helped? People on a
CoC have to take every complaint serious (reverse citing Annalee): Do
not "minimize their feelings, police their reactions, and question their
perceptions".
And lastly, sometimes it is also time to let things go. If Sara has no
intention of picking this up again we may want to let it rest.
Thanks,
Seven
Am 11.12.18 um 02:09 schrieb Daniel Morissette:
I agree with Jonathan here. I also have my own similar personal story
from ~20 years ago where I used a French expression as the opening
line in an email where all the rest was in English... and some of the
recipients (co-workers) could very rightly have been offended.
Actually some wondered if I might have been mad at them, but instead
of jumping the gun, they asked me directly, I explained the meaning of
the French expression and why I used it in this context, they
explained that there was a corresponding slang word... that day they
learned a new French expression and I learned a new word of English
slang. I was not being careless, I simply had no way to know at the
time that there was a corresponding English slang word that could have
been offending, because I am not a native English speaker.
We all had a good laugh in the end, but if it was not for their
assumption of good faith this could have turned into a huge mess.
I realize that not everybody will agree and I am not planning to enter
this CoC debate... I just wanted to relay an experience.
Stepping out of this thread now.
Daniel
On 2018-12-10 7:44 p.m., Jonathan Moules wrote:
Hi Maria,
Just a thought, but I'm not sure getting rid of the assumption of
good faith is a good idea. To do so would be basically assuming
people are guilty until proven innocent which runs counter to how
these things should work.
To use a personal anecdote, many years ago I had a black flatmate who
I was joking around with and I made a comment that it turns out is a
negative racial epithet. Being young and unworldly, I didn't know
that at the time and certainly didn't mean it in that context, it
also has a perfectly innocent context - the only one I'd ever been
exposed to - which is how I was using it.
Now, reading your thebias.com link, I can see that the author there
would suggest I be pilloried for what was an honest mistake. They'd
say I was being "careless" or "ignorant" and stepping on their toes.
But I don't think either is fair because it's not reasonable to
expect people to know everything that could offend everyone,
especially somewhere as multicultural as the internet.
For example, consider this symbol: 👍a simple thumbs-up emoticon
that's commonly used to signify "it's all good" and "thanks". Well,
it turns out that it's "an obscene insult" in some cultures! I didn't
know that until a few seconds ago when I went searching for a simple
example.
I have learnt over the years from experiences in both directions that
it's best to always assume good faith if possible. Humans may be the
species with the most complex communication on the planet, but that
doesn't mean we don't fail often.
@Ben - Thanks for sharing World Human Rights day. I'm a long time fan
of the UNDHR!
Cheers,
Jonathan
On 2018-12-09 12:49, María Arias de Reyna wrote:
Dear OSGeo community,
As you may already know, I have been working for the last months in
improving our community procedures[1] to make it a safer space.
Recent events in the community have shown that we have a lot of work
ahead.
We all, as OSGeo, must remove the recent bullying and campaigning
mentality that is unfortunately gradually become a part of our
culture. Disclosing private data or hinting threats is not helpful
and can only make our community less comfortable for everyone. We
will work on improving actions on harmful behavior.
This has been a slow task, but there are some actions taking place:
CoC committee members have become inactive. I volunteered to pick up
the task and lead a new CoC committee. Right now I am the only CoC
member, but I am looking for more volunteers. If only, to make sure
that if I am involved in any CoC incident, someone else can take
care of it properly as mediator.
I want to change also the way incidents and violations of the CoC
are reported. I noticed there are reports being done on person and
on private email, but never through the official channels (which
right now is a mailing list).To improve this, I will ask the SAC to
replace the mailing list with an alias and a form on the website.
Also, there will be a public list of who receives those emails so
people reporting incidents will have a clear understanding of who is
receiving the information and decide to contact privately only a
subset of the team. Replacing the mailing list by an alias that
sends the data directly to the inbox of the CoC team is important,
as sometimes incidents are not reported just because the person
reporting is scared to leave a trace of the report or is not sure
who will be reading the report.
Another action I am going to propose is a change on the CoC itself.
Our community has grown a lot both in diversity and in numbers, and
we need a strict code of conduct that makes sure marginalized or
harrased people is always covered by it. We can't rely anymore on
just common sense and good faith.
Once the new board is settled, I am going to propose to change the
current CoC for another like the Contributor Covenant[2]. As it is a
CoC shared by many communities, this has the advantage of receiving
the upgrades and experience from other communities. As you can see,
it fixes some of the bugs from our CoC, like the assuming good
intent and good faith[3] part that made the current CoC useless on
most cases. I will propose to add some foreword to adapt to
specifities for our community, but in my opinion, the latest version
of the Contributor Covenant is easy to read, simple, and cover most
of what we need. My hope is that this new CoC can be adapted to all
OSGeo Projects and Events that don't already have a CoC, so we have
full OSGeo universe covered by default.
I hope this actions will prove useful in the medium term and we
don't have to see more members leaving the community. We should
remember to be empathic and kind. We are all seeking the same goals
and we should encourage cooperation, not hinder each other. I know
that developer communities are very used to these bad behaviours,
but I'm confident we can grow better.
Have a nice day!
María.
[1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2018-August/011640.html
[2] https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
[3]
https://thebias.com/2017/09/26/how-good-intent-undermines-diversity-and-inclusion/
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