On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 7:40 AM Benjamin Berg <benja...@sipsolutions.net> wrote:
> Dear Board, > > Codes of Conduct (CoC) and especially the policies surrounding them are > a very political issue (which easily becomes emotional). Unfortunately, > in my view, the CoC Working Group (WG) was unable to set these politics > aside enough to create a proposal that finds a balance in the wide > spectrum of different viewpoints, legal consequences, required > resources, rights, freedoms and the ability to deal with issues when > they occur. > > I would have very much preferred if the WG had succeeded in this task. > Unfortunately, it seems like it was too political and too biased > (considering the political and regional spectrum that was represented) > for the whole time. That compounded to inter-personal issues that could > never be resolved as neither the session chair nor other members (or > the ED for that matter) were able to create an environment where these > issues could have been sufficiently addressed and a viable way to work > together been developed. On top of this, it has recently come to my > attention that members of the WG who are also on the Foundation Board > have decided to continue working outside of the scope of the WG, > thereby silently excluding me from the proceedings. > > At the current point in time, I believe that the proposal below is the > best way forward. The idea to address it in a WG was good, but it turns > out it was too political to be an adequate forum. This proposal however > creates a forum that can legitimately resolve this political issue for > years to come. > > I would like the board to adopt the proposal for a referendum below and > I am happy to work on revising it. Failing to do so, I am intending to > ask for support from foundation members to enforce this to be a > referendum as per the bylaws. > > Should you have an alternative proposal on how to move forward, I am > happy to hear about it. > > Regards, > Benjamin > > ----- > > DRAFT: Event CoC and Policy Referendum > > Timeline (in weeks before vote): > * Announce referendum (13w) > * Proposal writing phase (6 weeks overall) > * Deadline for initial proposals (7w) > * Discussion phase (6 weeks overall) > * Last updates to proposals based on feedback (1w) > * Vote > > Proposals should generally include a main CoC document and important > pieces of the policy. If a proposal e.g. requires creating a Committee > then it may define policy parts that are intended to be created or > proposed by this body after adoption and are therefore not part of the > proposal. > > Proposals should include elaborations and take into consideration the > impact that policies have on affected parties (e.g. GUADEC or hackfest > organisers, the Foundation Board). > > Proposals should be endorsed by 3 foundation members to be considered, > however a foundation member may endorse multiple proposals. > > Proposals should be kept in Git or another GNOME hosted system that > easily allows any changes to be followed. This is in order to ensure > that voters can easily check modifications done during the discussion > phase. > > Foundation employees must remain neutral. > > The voting system is the single transferable vote (STV) system, which > is also used for the board elections. > Hi Benjamin, Your email references vaguely some recent events. Reading between the lines, something must have happened in the WG to make the situation untenable for you, but I have no idea what. According to [1], the WG's mailing list is private, and there are only public minutes up until February 2017, so I'm assuming that these events are not documented anywhere that I can read. I encourage you to continue to discuss your concerns with the board privately. With this little context, it sounds like public action runs a risk of making things even more "political," since you are effectively asking the subscribers of foundation-list to form their opinions without knowing what is going on. That will likely lead to assumptions, projection, and more misunderstandings. [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Diversity/CoCWorkingGroup Regards, Philip C
_______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
