Hi, Sorry, this turned out to be longer than I wanted.
First of all, thanks for all your comments, well wishes and suggestions. I can't possibly reply to all of them individually, but I think the main take aways are below. I deliberately left out names. - Putting a document to collaborate on on GitHub was a good idea. After the initial announcement I've put the RFC as a whole on GitHub. I have now renamed it to https://github.com/derickr/php-values-and-mediation as that is more what the whole process and document is about (I'll get back to that in a moment). Several people have fixed my English, and contributed to some improvements already. Thanks for that! - Language is vague and open to interpretation - The CoC seems to be more concern with punitive action rather than establishing the values of the community. Starting out with a "you can't do this or we'll kick you out" (paraphrasing) before even saying what our values is likely deterimental to getting to a better situation. - There is no mechanism or ability for one to confront ones accuser That's a valid point, but a tricky one. I think it all depends on what the *consequences* would be for both the accuser, and the acused. I will seek advice from other groups that have gone through this process. - There has been confusion, for whatever reason, on what the outcome of mediation regarding either the Contributor Guidelines or Code of Conduct should be. As an example from IRC this morning, regarding removing code from an "harasser": <Derick> IRCUser: there was never the intention to ban code from people that behave well inside the PHP internals community. The personal opinion of these people outside of internals have nothing to do with this. Now, if that certain contributor would be harassing another contributor, then *that* falls in the realm of the CoC and contributing guidelines. It would still be very unlikely that code gets removed because of that. But I do see that nothing further would come out. Code removal is for when people commit stuff malisciously, or against the will of the rest of internals. - The current text of the Code of Conduct needs improvements. It certainly does. I believe Antony put it up as a starting point. Several of you have suggested other such documents to look at, such as the Drupal project, and the Django project. - Uncertainty on where our documents should have any influence. There is a reasonable suggestion in https://gist.github.com/amacgregor/16c62908ff39f51604e2 but I think it can still be improved upon. - A judicial system must be avoided I think it's also a valid point, but IMO I would rather phrase that as "The *use* of a judicial system must be avoided". - People have suggested to decouple the Contributor Guidelines, values statement, and Code of Conduct from the Community Mediation Team. With the main reason that it is too much to cover in one go. In case I missed some, sorry. There was a lot of material to go through. I do believe there is a broad consensus that it would be beneficial that we try to make our project a happier and more collaborate space. I know that right now it makes people weary to contribute, and at the same time, some of us are getting old enough that we would like our kids to start contributing too. Picking up on the last point first, that there is too many different parts being discussed at once. I can relate to that :-) I would therefore suggest the following: - Split out the document into several parts, and discuss each part separately, and in sequence. Once we're happy enough with each part, we continue to the next one. I suggest as order: - The goal of the documents, and our general values. Maybe we can steal a document from somewhere else as a starting point. - Our contributor guidelines (ie. how to behave on the mailinglists etc) These should focus on the positive things, but also provide negative examples of "bad behaviour". - The Code of Conduct A more formal document that states what we specifically are against. This could potentially start with the original Contributor Covenant that was initially suggested, or perhaps based on the modified version that was circulated in this thread. - The Mediation Team: how to deal with complaints regarding contributor guidelines (ie. X replies to every post in a thread, Y attacks person Z instead of debating technical points). As an initial suggestion, this team is to "slap people on the wrist" with persistent contributor guideline violations. No powers beyond a temporary mailinglist timeout in the uttermost extreme cases. - The Mediation team: how to deal with complaints regarding the Code of Conduct. As this is a more serious document, and where violation has likely *much* larger consequences towards specific people a stricter approach on possible enforcement should be considered. After we covered each phase, we'll do a mini vote (to gauge agreement), and move on to the next stage. After the Code of Conduct section, we can do a formal "RFC" vote on first three points. And we'll do the same at the end. I hope that many of you want to collaborate on each document, and I will be splitting out the current RFC on GitHub into five different parts, where I will likely remove some of the content that's currently there. At the end, I hope we have come to a set of documents that illustrates our values, how we want to work together and resolve conflicts, that has the empathy of people working together, but also the klout of dealing with serious issues in a fair manner. cheers, Derick -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
