On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 3:13 PM, François Laupretre <franc...@php.net> wrote:
> Le 14/01/2016 16:47, Stig Bakken a écrit : > >> >> I agree whole-heartedly with Zeev here! >> >> Anyone who has a clue about organizational psychology will tell you to >> focus on what you want more of, not on what you want to eliminate. Heck, >> anyone who is a parent today should understand this intuitively. >> >> The main focus of a CoC should be positive, describing or even giving >> examples of respectful behavior, that way people are guided towards >> "wanted" behavior, instead of having to figure it out by process of >> elimination from a list of what NOT to do. Granted, there is such a thing >> as common sense, but it's not always that common, so providing positive >> guidance is effective. >> > > I also think positive guidelines are way more effective than punitive > rules. And, as we are talking psychology, I suggest we complement the > approach with the powerful concept of 'compliance without pressure'. This > concept states that someone will naturally respect better something he > freely and explicitely agreed with (sorry for my poor english). > > In our case, it may take the form of a short statement, listing positive > behaviors we want to encourage in the community, expressed in the first > person, expanding the idea of 'I'll try to act with more empathy and > respect among other community members'. Then, publish it and just let > people click on a button when the want to mark their personal engagement to > follow these guidelines. Under the statement, just list the names of people > who 'signed' on it. The key point is that this must be a voluntary > decision. There must be no pressure on list members to sign this 'good > conduct' statement. This may sound naive but such 'soft power' mechanism > already proved excessively successful in a lot of similar situations. > I really like this idea. It may not effectively give "compliance without pressure", as people will expect one to mark their engagement, so there would be some social pressure within the community. But I don't see that as a problem. Reading through the CoC-related threads I must admit that I'm a bit uneasy about the fact that the RFC process, which was designed to discuss technical features in the PHP core, is being used to define something approaching bylaws for the entire project. I understand that RFCs are a handy tool, but I still question whether it is the right one to use here, at least with the CoC RFC's scope including "punishment" of community members. - Stig
