Hi Michael, I'm quite surprised by your comments.
I understand that you talked to many people at LibOCon in Milan and that you might have forgotten about the nice long conversation we had in relation to the many improvements that we are implementing in TDF.
You surely played an important role in the CoC Team and I've been told that, over the years, you did certainly influence the structure of previous CoC Policy.
I understand you are upset for not having been part of this great achievement, the result of a team effort which included members of the board, the MC and the team. I'm sure also other ex-directors would have been eager and proud of being part of this team effort but we managed to meet only a week ago to finally agree on the text which, since then, received only minor corrections suggested by the team and the board.
Everyone in the room was very happy about what we collectively achieved to do and I'm sure the community appreciate our efforts.
This is just the beginning, the new CoC Team will work to iron out some errors we found (sorry we are not all native English speakers) and to progressively improve other areas of the Policy.
Contributions from the whole community are desired and welcome and as you are a native English speaker please do suggest further improvements.
Ciao Paolo On 07/10/2022 15:32, Michael Meeks wrote:
On 06/10/2022 12:39: > Hi everyone, > > The Document Foundation has updated its Code of Conduct, the set of > guidelines that explains to our contributors and users what behaviours > and interactions we value: > > https://www.documentfoundation.org/foundation/code-of-conduct/It is deeply disappointing to me that in a community committed to transparency - the first time I see or have input into this text is when it is published as law. This despite having done the work as half of the CoC committee for the last many years, and having helped to tweak and introduce the previous compromise policy. How did we fail that hard ?When we last did a CoC change we had wide discussion and input from many perspectives. We had a talk with feedback from the Rome conference (we had a perfect opportunity to do the same only days ago in Milan - was that deliberately missed?). When this appeared on the board agenda I asked about it privately to Sophie and the directors, and got nothing.Previously we had a carefully balanced pair of people: Bubli (later Sophie) and myself chosen to give confidence to any reporter and/or person reported against that they might have someone that can empathize with their perspective - so we could (ideally) achieve a quiet resolution, reconciliation and quickly restore peace, reducing escalations. That had minor tweaks over time.In contrast - it seems that this policy has been written in secret has a large volume of novel text and lots of quirks - eg. being based on an obsolete version of the Contributor Covenant for no obvious reason (the newer 2.1 is unsurprisingly better).I've not, as yet, had a chance to fully read the text, but the process so far needlessly burns my trust in the balance of the result. As the only coder on this new CoC committee (and having been unilaterally volunteered by others to enforce something I've not had a chance to read) - I'm seriously considering my position.Unfortunately it is not the first time that this approach has been used which I can characterize as:* a small group plans & drafts in secret * it decides not to include known interested or affected people around the topic * public / wider discussion and input is avoided * it suddenly dumps a big chunk of new rules on the community * no time is allowed for input * there is a rush to vote against an imposed deadlineThis has been used before to give really poor results and to significantly re-shape the community. There appears to be no reason for things to be done in this way. It is a really unfortunate way to work that damages trust.It also appears to conceive of those with different views as being fundamentally the problem - to be excluded - rather than a resource to collaborate with to make something widely acceptable to everyone for the good of TDF.This is a particularly wasted opportunity - because a new CoC (with which I have no problem in principle[1]) can give a useful point to reset our discourse as a community and to draw a line under some of the past unhelpful behavior. An opportunity for a fresh start from a new place that improves some of our interactions. Basing that on the trust re-built in-person at the conference is a great idea in principle.However - bouncing this through, in this way, without notice or discussion looks extremely rude. It is not how a community I'm happy to be part of should behave. It is far from inclusive.Perhaps when I have more calm & space - I'll try to work out if there is any genuine willingness to engage with improving the text. From a quick skim some details look quite problematic.In general there is substantial scope for mis-use (or even just the damaging appearance of it) around CoC enforcement and we need to build confidence that we will get this right.At a bare minimum I would expect each individual behind this, -particularly- if they are on the new CoC committee, to at least -try- to repair the situation by re-assuring the community that (despite apparently excluding people & views during the process of creating and pushing this initiative through) - that when actually enforcing the CoC they will respectfully listen to all views and act in an inclusive and balanced way.Regards, Michael.[1] - the latest Contributor Covenant is rather less problematic than in the past
-- Paolo Vecchi - Member of the Board of Directors The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
