Hi, On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 12:25 PM, April Wright <[email protected]> wrote: > Spaced Girl wrote: > >> How about SC just do away with the whole code of conduct in general? It's >> a theoretical piece of shit and has no practical value. > > No. The Code of Conduct is not 'theoretical'. It is enforceable - as > instructors, we are expected to enforce it at our workshops. The executive > directors and admins of both Software and Data Carpentry can and do enforce > this code of conduct on the list. > > Perhaps having a defense against racism, sexism and homophobia is not > important to you, but to many of us [including those of us who have been > disrespected along gender, race or sexual orientation lines by other SWC > instructors], these guidelines are important. These guidelines grew out of > needing to manage the behavior of the community in a concrete, and decidedly > not theoretical way, as the community grew. > > And I would point out that calling the community code of conduct, the > product of careful thought, a 'piece of shit', is not professional behavior > and is belittling the efforts of other. You're welcome to disagree with > having a code of conduct, and to express those disagreements, but calling > people fascists and belittling them and their efforts is rude. This conduct > is certainly swaying me towards Dirk's view that pseudonyms are not > appropriate for this venue.
I do agree that completely dismissing the CoC is not a good way to go. I also agree that it's very important to have procedures in place to make sure that, when bad behavior happens, there is a process for dealing with it. The question then is - is the CoC (alone, as it stands) the best way to achieve that goal? I can tell you - not just from this conversation, but others, that the CoC as it is, makes some people angry and upset. Spaced Girl called it 'fascist' and that is the general tone of the objection. I think there's a reason that people react that way, and it's not because they want to allow harassment or bullying, it's because of the tone of the document. I don't think the document needs to have that tone, but I know that some people disagree. That was why I suggested that it might be useful to have another document, in more accessible and friendly language, that defines what the SWC community should look like in positive terms. For example, in this case, I think we could have avoided a lot of bad feeling by gently pointing everyone to that (positive) document, and encouraging them to follow that. Of course it is also necessary to have procedure to deal with the situation if it escalates, and I wrote another email to this list asking about that - but for some reason it didn't reach the mailing list. Cheers, Matthew _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
