> > I've been reading the mini-thread that followed this message, and I'm > wondering, almost out loud: > > Isn't it obvious we're trying to create an amateur drive-by judicial system, > borrowing ideas from the law (some mostly universal, some not), > oversimplifying them (amateurishly, as we would as amateurs) and > intending to put amateur investigators and judges in charge? A system that > will definitely not have the countless checks and balances real world judicial > systems have (which still fail frequently enough, so they're far from being > perfect). > > > > To me, that's DOA. > > We are overly focused on steps beyond mediation, because that's where > most of the objections and arguments are focused - on the assumption that > mediation does not solve all problems.
I obviously realize that, but I think you agreed as well that mediation does solve the vast majority of issues (alongside a clear statement of values, which is very helpful on its own). To use the 99/1 breakdown you mentioned in another email - I'd say absolutely yes. Yes, it's better to 'sacrifice' 1% of the cases if it greatly benefits the common 99%. > What is being proposed is not in any way a court of law, nor does it claim to > be. Communities have been dealing with complaints, moderation issues, > bans, telling offs, and a whole host of steps since forever. > This is no different. I literally cannot fathom why the COC not being a court > is > a problem. It's one of the most bizarre and, frankly, concerning line of > objections to arise in the debate from my perspective. The absolute best we > can do is just that - the absolute best. And it's entirely responsible to > ensure > that it IS the absolute best that can be achieved. The problem is simple. Whatever we call it, the current CoC - as well as most other CoCs that were put on the table, do have the equivalent of laws and penal codes that are associated with them. They're simplistic, laconic, lack depth and amateur all around - but they are laws nonetheless. They do have the equivalent of judges. They will be comprised of exclusively (& hopefully) well-intending people, but amateurs by definition. Such a system would be ripe for failure. Note that I'm not saying just 'abuse' - that's just one type of possible failure. They can fail with good intentions on behalf of all parties associated. > However, the argument that since our absolute best does not match a > specific model of a legal court where the participants have decades of > training and experience (and precedence/laws) does not mean that the PHP > project should automatically do nothing whatsoever and call it a day. To state > an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo in comparison to a > COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML? > No action ever? Does anyone actually know what it is? I think the status quo right now is de-facto no action ever. Again, we're in the syndrome of 'are we talking about toxicity or are we talking about safety', but assuming we don't want to start banning people for 'toxicity' and that we're dealing with safety, I think the status quo is working very well for us. I suspect that if we see someone publicly and clearly harassing or threatening in one of the Open Spaces (a-la golang's CoC) - an ad-hoc petition/RFC to ban that person would follow suit, and with overwhelming results (>90%). If the 'offense' is going to be debatable and open for interpretation - then I suspect it wouldn't win the overwhelming majority, in which case it's a *good thing* that no ban will follow suit. As per golang's CoC, with the idea NOT being a way to silence others. As much as we all would like to mute certain individuals on this list every once in a while :) For the record, a couple of days ago I was reminded by Derick that I actually banned a certain individual back in 2002. Those who know me know that I'm senile and I truly didn't remember it. To the best of my knowledge, that was the only mailing list ban ever on php-dev's/internal's history, and it (a) happened 14 years ago, (b) was very poorly executed by me individually - an action I later apologized for to group@, and (c) was reversed within hours. To the best of my recollection, the reason for the ban can be described as 'trolling', and was certainly not a safety issue. I think it was most probably an idiotic/reckless action on my part - not just the way it was executed, but also seeking the ban itself - and a mediation team would have worked much better in this case. > Do people object to Twitter's policies? Reddit's? Facebook's? As Stas mentioned, all the time. In addition to the fact that the atmosphere in many corners of these websites is downright hellish in many cases - which isn't the case here - I want to point out a few other issues: 1. As commercial entities, these companies operate from very different motivations compared to our open source project; Whatever CoC's they have isn't in order to make people safe (and as I think we all know, people DON'T feel safe there); It's essentially to give them absolute power over the content on their websites, and minimize their exposure to lawsuits. 2. It's a known fact that not only do people object to the policies themselves, but also - to the poor and/or biased way they're implemented. I know this first hand. I've reported to Twitter about a terrorist org's account praising a terrorist that slaughtered two civilians in an office building roughly two miles south of where I'm typing right now, and calling upon others to follow suit and do the same - all that in a public tweet that got retweeted hundreds of times. The response I got, after repeated attempts, is that it doesn't violate their community standards (even though it clearly does). I've had similar experiences with Facebook. BTW, things like that are one of the reasons I find it a bit hard to identify with people feeling 'unsafe' on internals. And I was happy to read Andrea's email from a couple of days ago acknowledging that at least the current situation on internals doesn't seem to go beyond 'toxicity'. 3. With the proliferation of worldwide terrorism, governments are actually walking into these companies and will begin regulating them. This will likely happen much more aggressively going forward. So the CoC's are likely to become much more in sync with laws going forward. > All of the above? Not courts. All of the above? Implemented by people who > are not professional judges and just do the best they can because they value > their communities. They may not be professional judges, but it's still their full time job to do this. And from my limited personal experience, they still do a very poor job at it. So no, this doesn't instill any confidence in me that it's a good idea to make our amateurs be de-facto judge and jury. Zeev
