Re: 2nd draft (was: Re: Revising the Code of Conduct)

[Chris Knadle]

Greetings.

Wouter (and all other contributors): thank you very much for working on a Code 
of Conduct.  This really matters.

Further comments below.

On Wednesday, May 22, 2013 04:52:42, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
...
 New draft:
 
 ---
 # Debian mailing list Code of Conduct
 
 The Debian mailing lists exist to foster the development and use of
 Debian. This Code of Conduct exists to help towards that goal.
 
 Participants in discussions on Debian mailing lists should follow
 these rules:
 
 1. You're welcome to use our mailing lists to ask questions, but
please use the most appropriate list you can see.  If you are
unsure, use debian-user for support-related questions, or
debian-mentors for development-related questions.  Be prepared to
ask your question on a different list if told to do so, and
mention that it is a resent question.

I'd like this to be more global in coverage, and not just focus on the mailing 
lists.  In this draft of the Code of Conduct, 8 out of the 9 rules are about 
email, so it feels more like a mailing list CoC right now than a CoC.  ;-)

 2. Avoid flaming, cursing and other abusive or disrespectful
behaviour as much as you can.  That usually distracts from the
real discussion and is not constructive.

To me this sounds a bit too soft.

Everyone /deserves/ respect as a baseline, and so I don't see any reason why 
we couldn't push hard for this.  I've seen disrespectful communications from 
Debian Developers on the mailing lists, IRC, BTS reports, external blogs with 
Debian derivatives, and so forth.  There are lots of rules for Debian 
Develoeprs concerning how to do Debian packaging, but virtually none 
concerning respectful communication, and it's important.

Every large project or mailing list ends up needing such rules of conduct, and 
I'd like to see Debian armed with the same to be able to tackle this problem 
too.



For reference, the Ubuntu Code of Conduct v2.0 has more broad coverage and 
some language concerning respectfulness that is a bit more firm (but yet not 
law) which I think is worth a look.  In addition there's a responsibility 
section which I also think helps respectfulness as a byproduct.

   http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct



Everything else in this draft feels on the right track to me.

  -- Chris

--
Chris Knadle
chris.kna...@coredump.us


-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201305230317.48137.chris.kna...@coredump.us

Re: 2nd draft (was: Re: Revising the Code of Conduct)

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 03:17:48AM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
 I'd like this to be more global in coverage, and not just focus on the
 mailing lists.  In this draft of the Code of Conduct, 8 out of the 9
 rules are about email, so it feels more like a mailing list CoC
 right now than a CoC.  ;-)

This is my main comment as well. What we currently have is precisely a
*mailing list* CoC. And while that specific document might need
improvements, which Wouter is addressing, I think we should enlarge the
scope. I don't think we would gain much by addressing only interaction
problems on mailing lists. We definitely need to do the same on the BTS,
IRC, and other discussion fora.

As a second comment, I'd love if we could separate more clearly
technical aspects (e.g. the Reply/M-F-T discussion) from more general
community interaction guidelines. In the general part we should distill
what are our expectations of good interactions in Debian, e.g.: show me
the code, as well as politeness/professionalism requirements. In the
media-specific parts we can then put stuff like Reply/M-F-T and whatnot.


To help with the general effort of publishing a Debian CoC, a while ago
I started collecting some related work at

https://openhatch.org/wiki/Project_codes_of_conduct

with the help of friends from other FOSS projects. I think we can
benefit a lot from looking at what others have done in this area over
the past decade.  Many of us are aware of the Ubuntu CoC, but there is
more out there, some derived from Ubuntu's, some written from scratch.
I'm pretty sure we can find reusable pieces there, to be adapted to
Debian's culture. (Oh, and do not hesitate to contribute to that page!)


Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Former Debian Project Leader  . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature