Hi Kevin,
And thanx for responding to my question about the need for such a policy
with Django. Last night, as I had not yet had a response from anyone about
this question I searched the archives of both django groups looking for any
events or circumstances in which the code of conduct was invoked as I had
no personal recollection of any such thing. I found some innocuous
reference in the django-users group (wrongly suggesting that this coming
policy was going to increase female participation) and in
django-developers, one actual circumstance where its use was threatened -
not surprisingly as part of the one example you provided that actually has
anything to do at all with the Django community. Sadly, it's invocation was
precisely used in the manner that I had feared - to stifle debate and
threaten a person who was making valid and reasonable arguments (no doubt
in the middle of a flame war but he/she wasn't the flamer). When I saw the
name of the person who invoked the code of conduct I was even more
disappointed as it was someone that I otherwise have a profound respect for.
Other than this I was not surprised to see zero evidence for the need
for such a policy as there don't seem to be any threatening events of the
like that your email raises. These problems may exist elsewhere but not
amongst the general django community that I've ever seen.
Understand my background. I own a software development company that was
a VERY early adopter of Django way before the 1.0 days. I expect I was
certainly one of the first thousand developers to use Django in a real-life
situation once it got outside of the newspaper where it was created. My
company is one of the first to build commercial systems for clients on top
of Django. My staff even has a few little commits into the django code base
over the years, although minor, but we were proud nonetheless to be able to
contribute in some small way. I've attended my share of PyCons (prior to
the invention of DjangoCon which I hope to attend one day) and have always
found the community very open and inclusive of all types. This is a Good
Thing (TM). I've even sent 5 staff to the event, four of which happened to
be women. My team now consists of 34+ people, all but two of which are in a
technical capacity. WE are geeks who seek out other geeks who want to be
appreciated solely based on merit. We happen to have about a 40% female
colleague share and explicitly do NOT have a diversity policy (nor will we
ever have an HR department but that's another story). I simply am strong at
identifying and attracting people with strong potential and the market is
so extremely competitive that one must leave no stone unturned in order to
find the best. THAT is the one way that a more inclusive group will come
into being and for the right reasons.
So I have actually achieved what everyone is crying out for and can't
seem to figure how to accomplish. It wasn't difficult. I'm here to tell you
that diversity policies and codes of conduct, in my experience consulting
to dozens of commercial, government, and educational organizations in my
30+ years of experience have never once helped achieve their stated goals
and, many times, have hurt both the organization and it's intended
beneficiaries. True to my experience, the one threatened invocation of the
code of conduct for Django fits right in line with my experience of such
policies, sadly.
Therefore, I hope everyone appreciates that I'm fully invested in
Django and attracting the best & brightest into our community. I think
you'll see Kevin, that I supported your first PR but have very grave
concerns about the second for the reasons I've already gone into great
detail about. I do believe completely that both were put forward with good
intentions. I'm all for policies that put forward good examples of
appreciated behavior and add to the general sense of inclusiveness which I
think your first one does. It scares the hell out of me when people start
enumerating banned conduct and speech - and I wish more people understood
the issue as well as I about why. That's why I'm quite vocal about this.
Thanx for your time and interest,
-- Ben Scherrey
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Kevin Daum <kevin.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Russ, I assumed as much, having read
> https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/changes/.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Perhaps Daniele's keynote talk at Djangocon this year, combined with the
> already very good Django code of conduct, caused me to assume too much of
> this community's progression towards appreciating both the need of
> diversity in tech and the actual conditions required to bring that about.
>
> Benjamin, you asked if there is an actual problem that needs solving. Yes.
> Absolutely. It is a systemic one within the world of software development
> and I am excited to be a part of a particular software development
> community that is taking proactive steps towards the goal of a safe,
> supportive environment for *everyone *who is working towards that same
> goal. The quality of our software will reflect the quality of our
> community. Here is just a tiny sample of reading for any who are interested
> in learning why these kinds of policies are so important:
>
>
> 1. See the recent case of Anita Sarkeesian, which is one sort of
> situation I have in mind when writing down a policy such as this:
> https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/504718160902492160/photo/1
>
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/29/gaming-vlogger-anita-sarkeesian-is-forced-from-home-after-receiving-harrowing-death-threats/
> 2. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/abuse-as-ddos, including this
> bit: "Just like with computer security, you should have plans in place to
> identify and address attacks. At conferences, user groups, and other
> events, this can take the form of a code of conduct along with a policy for
> enforcement. In workplaces, this often takes the form of an employee
> handbook. These types of policies help mitigate attacks when they happen,
> so that decisions don’t have to be made on the fly when something goes
> wrong. These policies are far from perfect fixes for everything, but
> they’re better than doing nothing."
> 3. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-open-source-identity-crisis.
> By the way, I'm proud that the one time this author links to something
> django-related, it's this situation
>
> <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Django_primary-replica_terminology_patch_dispute>
> in which the core devs wisely and quickly made the right choice.
>
>
>
>
> On Monday, September 8, 2014 9:37:16 PM UTC-4, Russell Keith-Magee wrote:
>>
>> Hi Kevin,
>>
>> Thanks for these suggestions.
>>
>> By way of settings expectations - a patch of this nature has a little
>> more procedural overhead than a normal patch, because it requires a change
>> to our community policies. Regardless of the merit (or otherwise) of a
>> specific proposal, a change to these policies needs to be ratified by the
>> core team and the DSF membership before it goes into effect.
>>
>> Discussions on the ticket itself from people outside those groups is
>> definitely welcome - the broader opinion and attitudes of the community
>> will be considered as part of the ratification process. But it's not
>> something that a small group of people can quickly agree on and commit.
>>
>> Russ %-)
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 9:10 AM, Kevin Daum <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I have submitted two pull requests for the code of conduct:
>>>
>>> - #84 <https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/84>, to let
>>> folks who belong to a wide variety of social identities know that yes,
>>> even
>>> they are welcome here, and
>>> - #86 <https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/86>, to make
>>> explicit the currently implicit policy that someone's abusive behavior
>>> outside the django community *may* have an adverse effect on their
>>> ability to participate within the django community.
>>>
>>> I welcome your feedback.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Kevin Daum
>>>
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