On Sun, 10 Jan 2016 07:36:23 -0800 "Joshua D. Drake" <j...@commandprompt.com> wrote:
> Hey, > > For the record, my thoughts on a CoC are something like: > > 1. Be excellent to each other > 2. If you don't know what that means, leave > 3. If someone isn't being excellent please contact: XYZ > > With XYZ being a committee that determines the ABCs. In general, I agree; but there are problems with 1 and 2. The definition of "being excellent" varies from individual to individual; but more importantly, from culture to culture. As a result, pretty much everyone would have to leave as a result of #2, because very few people know what "being excellent" means to everyone involved. As a result, I would feel REALLY bad for XYZ, who would be put in the unenviable place of trying to mitigate disputes with no guidance whatsoever. So, the purpose of a CoC is twofold: A) Define what "being excellent" means to this particular community. B) Provide a process for how to resolve things when "being excellent" doesn't happen. Without #1, nobody will want to do #2, as it's basically a job that can never be done correctly. But defining #1 is the really difficult part, because no matter how you define it, there will be some people who disagree with said definition. The fact that Postgres has not needed a CoC up till now is a testiment to the quality of the people in the community. However, if Postgres continues to be more popular, the number of people involved is going to increase. Simply as a factor of statistics, the project will be forced to deal with some unsavory people at some point. Having a CoC is laying the foundation to ensure that dealing with those people involves the least pain possible. It will always involve _some_ pain, but less is better. I've done the job of #3 with other groups, and 99% of the time there was nothing to do. The one incident I had to handle was terrible, but at least I had some guidance on how to deal with it. -- Bill Moran -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
