On 1/8/16 1:20 AM, Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
Hi!
And yes, I am aware that a large part of the concern is the definition
of "malicious jackass who hurts people" and "hostile, insulting storm".
Not only that. But that even if we have the definition, nobody walks
around with a convenient label of "malicious jackass who hurts people"
on their foreheads. That's not where the problem lies. What we'd be
dealing with is people coming to us complaining said something offensive
to them (or to somebody) at resource X, which may not even be public,
conveniently providing only evidence that supports it, and we'd have to
decide whether it's true or not, knowing no context, no prior history,
no full information about what happened, etc. And since we declared
universal jurisdiction, not taking sides is no longer an option.
Sure, and the CRT would be fully within their rights to say "this is not
a real issue" or "this is too unrelated to the project".
In practice, based on my experience elsewhere I think we're likely to
see two broad categories of issue:
1) This conversation is getting too aggressive, why don't you both go
outside for a while to cool down then come back and hug it out.
2) Seriously, that's not even remotely OK by any stretch of the
imagination, get the heck out.
And by nipping the first one in the bud more often, the second becomes
less acceptable and therefore less common.
I'd also say that the first one can be handled more or less privately in
most cases, and I'm fine with that. It's category two where the public
review would be more needed. Although in both cases the accuser and
accused (or the issue reporter and the other parties involved, if we
want to be less draconian in the wording) will know who each other are.
It's inappropriate for them not to, and in practice impossible for them
not to either so let's not even pretend.
There *is* a risk of that turning into a "morality clause". That's
true. But it could go either direction on such matters, not necessarily
just in the "evil PC witch hunt" direction. That's where, as has been
That's not exactly encouraging phrase - it's like saying "take this
pill, it would not *necessarily* kill you, it could go both ways". Would
you take it?
A pill is an excellent analogy. Pick up any medication off the shelf at
your local drugstore. Take too little of it and it does nothing. Take
too much and you'll get sick, possibly die. Take an appropriate amount
and it helps cure what ails you.
We acknowledge the potential dangers of over-doing it, even put it on
the label, and yet we all use medication on a regular basis for all
sorts of things and are generally much healthier for it.
The Goldilocks Rule applies here, as in most places.
Do you think we can find 5 people in the PHP community that we can trust
to make fair decisions (NOT that we would always agree with, but that
are fair) that don't fall too far into "thought policing", in *any*
direction? If not, then the community is already lost beyond all hope
Again, as I explained already before, it's not a matter of people being
"corrupt" or "unfair". It's the matter of dealing with uncertain
information and also - unfortunately - potentially some dishonest
players trying to abuse the system. People can be misled and manipulated
- that happens routinely to much more robust systems than ours, such as
courts - so ignoring it and not having security against it besides "we
are all good people, we can do no wrong" looks naive to me.
Feel free to swap "unfair" for "mislead". We're not perfect
(obviously), and no conflict resolution team will be either. But I am
confident that we can find 5 people in PHP who are fair enough,
insightful enough, and impartial enough to get the job done.
Judges are human and subject to bias, but we still have laws and courts
and are a better society for it. Honestly the point you're making
sounds close to "perfect or nothing", which if applied generally would
preclude PHP from existing. :-)
--
--Larry Garfield
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