Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Philippa Cowderoy]

There is a wide spectrum of bad faith behaviour. It may be simply not 
caring if one causes harm ("recklessness", if you like), through 
attempts to undermine the culture of a space or community, to attempts 
to cause people material harm.


The wider Haskell community has witnessed all of these, even if not 
everyone is sufficiently aware of it. On the "material harm" end of the 
spectrum, an incident in 2016 grew sufficiently infamous that friends 
with no connections to the FP community in general, computer science or 
the computing industry were sending me messages of sympathy and support 
- and I was forced to take some "opsec" measures to safeguard both 
myself and others.


The nature of both this spectrum and of bad faith makes this a difficult 
problem to deal with and one that mustn't be oversimplified - not all 
acts are equal and the cultural impacts are complex. But people acting 
in bad faith - some of them persistently and possibly even with a degree 
of coordination - is indeed the root problem I'm highlighting.


Thanks for your time and effort on this,

Philippa

On 09/12/2018 18:03, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
What this email seems to suggest to me is that our guidelines assume 
good faith, and yet some participants act in bad faith. I agree this 
is not well accounted-for in the guidelines. (However, the guidelines 
were designed with the GHC Steering Committee in mind, where members 
join by way of a nomination and selection process and can be removed 
-- quite unlike the broader Haskell community.)


Before thinking about specific words / documents that solve the 
problem, I want to be sure I understand the problem you're 
highlighting. Is it the presence of bad faith actors, specifically?


Thanks for coming forward with these concerns.

Richard

On Dec 6, 2018, at 4:59 PM, Philippa Cowderoy > wrote:


I lack the energy to contribute to GHC directly, but these guidelines 
are far too easy to abuse by someone acting in bad faith and we know 
that bad faith actors have been adjacent to our community and acted 
on things that have taken place within it.


From where I'm sitting, guidelines like this risk doing even more 
damage than not having any. Not only do they lack the means to handle 
incidents that have already occurred, they actively discourage the 
community from finding those means.


As someone these guidelines have been drafted to help include, I fear 
they increase the burden on my participation and that of others like 
me. For a community to hold together without sinking to the worst of 
behaviour, there needs to be some acceptance that we will all fail to 
act in good fatih on occasion, that some people will act in bad faith 
and that behaviour in bad faith may take a great deal of explaining 
to anyone who is not the target of it or familiar with its mechanisms.


I have spent a great deal of time running spaces within the wider 
community and I have witnessed these things repeatedly. I also lack 
the resources some people here have available to mitigate the risks 
others have openly posed to members of the community including myself 
and Simon.


One solution - whether GHC itself needs it or not - might be to pair 
guidelines for respectful communication with guidelines for when 
respectful communication is failing to occur.


Simon, I appreciate both the work you've put in and your love for the 
communty. I hope you can appreciate that where I appear to be cynical 
or even sowing discord here, I am acting out of love and care for a 
community that at its best has done a great deal for me. I apologise 
for being the one to open up what I see as a somewhat inevitable 
discussion.


On 06/12/2018 10:35, Simon Peyton Jones via Haskell wrote:

Friends
As many of you will know, I have been concerned for several years about the standards 
of discourse in the Haskell community.  I think things have improved since the period 
that drove me to write my Respect 
email, 
but it's far from secure.
We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering 
Committee  at ICFP in 
September, and many of us have had related discussions since.  Arising out of that 
conversation, the GHC Steering Committee has decided to adopt these
   Guidelines for respectful 
communication

We are not trying to impose these guidelines on members of the Haskell 
community generally. Rather, we are adopting them for ourselves, as a signal 
that we seek high standards of discourse in the Haskell community, and are 
willing to publicly hold ourselves to that standard, in the hope that others 
may choose to follow suit.
We are calling them "guidelines for respectful communication" rather than a "code of 
conduct", because we want to encourage good communication, rather than focus on bad 

Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Jean-Marie Gaillourdet]

Hi

On 10.12.18 12:12, Alex Silva wrote:

On 10/12/2018 12:06, Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:
The intelligence is crucial here. It is not democratically distributed 
[[my goodness, am I already insulting people?!]], so we will always 
need Constitutions, Catechisms, sportmanship rules, etc., even without 
the accompanying  "criminal codes".  The text of Simon is NOT a 
proposal to introduce  Haskell Inquisition.




You are assuming that intelligent people cannot act in bad faith, which 
is neither true in this community or in general.


That is your interpretation, he could also assume that intelligent 
people usually know better than to behave badly in technical forums --- 
and elsewhere.


Regards,
Jean-Marie


--
Bunkyo-Ku-Straße 1a
67663 Kaiserslautern
j...@gaillourdet.net
+49 176 10 6321 04
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Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Alex Silva]

Hi,

On 10/12/2018 12:06, Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:
The intelligence is crucial here. It is not democratically distributed 
[[my goodness, am I already insulting people?!]], so we will always need 
Constitutions, Catechisms, sportmanship rules, etc., even without the 
accompanying  "criminal codes".  The text of Simon is NOT a proposal to 
introduce  Haskell Inquisition.




You are assuming that intelligent people cannot act in bad faith, which 
is neither true in this community or in general.


Cheers,
--
- alex
https://unendli.ch/
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Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Jerzy Karczmarczuk]

Le 09/12/2018 à 19:03, Richard Eisenberg a écrit :

What this email seems to suggest to me is that our guidelines assume 
good faith, and yet some participants act in bad faith. I agree this 
is not well accounted-for in the guidelines.

...

I don't really think that Philippa Cowderoy's warning
/... guidelines like this risk doing even more damage than not having 
any. Not only do they lack the means to handle incidents that have 
already occurred, they actively discourage the community from finding 
those means.

/
points to a true danger. Teaching a "correct" behaviour is anyway a 
never-ending process.
Although I have seen a good deal of nastiness on the Web, practically 
never related to Haskell. There have been some doctrinal, not very 
serious disputes, occasionally an X or Y had too much adrenaline, but 
the true bad faith is something at most marginal. Perhaps the reason is 
-- I cite Simon: /The Haskell community is such a rich collection of 
*intelligent*, passionate, and committed people/.
The intelligence is crucial here. It is not democratically distributed 
[[my goodness, am I already insulting people?!]], so we will always need 
Constitutions, Catechisms, sportmanship rules, etc., even without the 
accompanying  "criminal codes".  The text of Simon is NOT a proposal to 
introduce  Haskell Inquisition.


In the context of the Haskell community, spending time on prevention & 
punishment of potential bad faith seems to me a bit horrible.


Ben Lippmeier says
/The way I see it, guidelines for Respectful Communication are 
statements of the desired end goal, but they don’t provide much 
insight as to the root causes of the problems, or how to address them. 
At the risk of trivialising the issue, one could reduce many such 
statements to “Can everyone please stop shouting and be nice to each 
other.”/
It is true  that most etiquette rules, as vestimentary  codes, etc. are 
somehow superficial, but the "root causes of the problem" may be 
terribly complicated. It is possible to degenerate a communication 
system without shouting or being manifestly brutal/impolite, and here 
and there the wish to be '/effective/' wins over the diplomacy.


Some of my students stopped  asking questions on the Stack Overflow 
forum because of that, and there are many other places avoided by 
newbies, by fragile people... Sending people away because of 
(apparently; often not so) duplicate questions, "downvoting", forming 
casts of power-enabled "gurus", who behave disrespectfully, since they 
are gurus, issuing statements such as: "read /some/ tutorial, and /then/ 
come back", etc., all this exists, may trigger angry answers, but does 
not implies bad faith (although too often signals somehow weak knowledge 
of psychology).


Let's be optimistic. I think that it would do a favour for the [larger] 
community, if Simon agreed to send the guidelines to haskell-cafe (and 
perhaps to some forum outside Haskell as well), I knew many people (my 
former students for example), who read only the  -café list...


Live long and prosper.  
Jerzy Karczmarczuk
[France.]
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Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Richard Eisenberg]

What this email seems to suggest to me is that our guidelines assume good 
faith, and yet some participants act in bad faith. I agree this is not well 
accounted-for in the guidelines. (However, the guidelines were designed with 
the GHC Steering Committee in mind, where members join by way of a nomination 
and selection process and can be removed -- quite unlike the broader Haskell 
community.)

Before thinking about specific words / documents that solve the problem, I want 
to be sure I understand the problem you're highlighting. Is it the presence of 
bad faith actors, specifically?

Thanks for coming forward with these concerns.

Richard

> On Dec 6, 2018, at 4:59 PM, Philippa Cowderoy  wrote:
> 
> I lack the energy to contribute to GHC directly, but these guidelines are far 
> too easy to abuse by someone acting in bad faith and we know that bad faith 
> actors have been adjacent to our community and acted on things that have 
> taken place within it.
> 
> From where I'm sitting, guidelines like this risk doing even more damage than 
> not having any. Not only do they lack the means to handle incidents that have 
> already occurred, they actively discourage the community from finding those 
> means.
> 
> As someone these guidelines have been drafted to help include, I fear they 
> increase the burden on my participation and that of others like me. For a 
> community to hold together without sinking to the worst of behaviour, there 
> needs to be some acceptance that we will all fail to act in good fatih on 
> occasion, that some people will act in bad faith and that behaviour in bad 
> faith may take a great deal of explaining to anyone who is not the target of 
> it or familiar with its mechanisms.
> 
> I have spent a great deal of time running spaces within the wider community 
> and I have witnessed these things repeatedly. I also lack the resources some 
> people here have available to mitigate the risks others have openly posed to 
> members of the community including myself and Simon.
> 
> One solution - whether GHC itself needs it or not - might be to pair 
> guidelines for respectful communication with guidelines for when respectful 
> communication is failing to occur.
> 
> Simon, I appreciate both the work you've put in and your love for the 
> communty. I hope you can appreciate that where I appear to be cynical or even 
> sowing discord here, I am acting out of love and care for a community that at 
> its best has done a great deal for me. I apologise for being the one to open 
> up what I see as a somewhat inevitable discussion.
> 
> On 06/12/2018 10:35, Simon Peyton Jones via Haskell wrote:
>> Friends
>> As many of you will know, I have been concerned for several years about the 
>> standards of discourse in the Haskell community.  I think things have 
>> improved since the period that drove me to write my Respect 
>> email 
>> , but 
>> it's far from secure.
>> We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering 
>> Committee 
>>  at ICFP in September, and 
>> many of us have had related discussions since.  Arising out of that 
>> conversation, the GHC Steering Committee has decided to adopt these
>>   Guidelines for respectful 
>> communication
>>  
>> 
>> We are not trying to impose these guidelines on members of the Haskell 
>> community generally. Rather, we are adopting them for ourselves, as a signal 
>> that we seek high standards of discourse in the Haskell community, and are 
>> willing to publicly hold ourselves to that standard, in the hope that others 
>> may choose to follow suit.
>> We are calling them "guidelines for respectful communication" rather than a 
>> "code of conduct", because we want to encourage good communication, rather 
>> than focus on bad behaviour.  Richard Stallman's recent 
>> post  
>> about the new GNU Kind Communication 
>> Guidelines 
>>  expresses the same idea.
>> Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar 
>> approach 
>> .
>> Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment 
>> here
>>  
>> .
>>Perhaps they can evolve so that other Haskell committees (or even 
>> individuals) feel 

Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Ben Lippmeier]

> On 7 Dec 2018, at 6:47 pm, Jonathan Lange  wrote:
> 
> In particular, her suggestion about pairing guidelines for respectful 
> communications with guidelines for what to do when things break down is an 
> excellent one, and has worked well in other communities to help those on the 
> fringes of a community feel welcome and able to contribute.


I’ll also back this up. Over the last couple of years I’ve been involved in 3 
separate communities which have struggled with many of the same issues. The way 
I see it, guidelines for Respectful Communication are statements of the desired 
end goal, but they don’t provide much insight as to the root causes of the 
problems, or how to address them. At the risk of trivialising the issue, one 
could reduce many such statements to “Can everyone please stop shouting and be 
nice to each other.” (CEPSSaBNTEO)

Here are two templates for problems that I’ve seen over and over, and not 
necessarily in this community. The names used are placeholders.

1) Alice has become very interested in a particular technical issue and wants 
to change the direction of Project X to address it. Alice has contributed to 
Project X on and off, but did not start it and is not currently leading it. The 
main developer is Bob who agrees that the issue exists, but is focused on other 
things right now, and isn’t motivated to have a long discussion about something 
he sees as a minor detail. Alice continues to post on a public list about the 
issue, until Bob becomes exasperated and replies with something like “yes, but 
I don’t care about that right now”. Alice thinks the comment is directed at her 
personally, posts a hurt reply, then Charlie, Debbie, and Edward chime in about 
whether or not that was an appropriate communication. There is a thread on 
Reddit with 50 comments from people that Alice and Bob have never heard of. 
Both Alice and Bob are demotivated by the whole experience, and future 
potential contributors to Project X stumble across the Reddit post and decide 
they don’t want to get involved anymore.

2) Charlie and Debbie have been building System Y for the last 10 years as a 
side project, which over time has grown to be a key part of the public 
infrastructure. Both Charlie and Debbie are well known and respected by the 
community, but don’t always have time to fix bugs promptly. System Y also has 
some long standing issues that everyone grumbles about, but also know how to 
work around. Edward works for Company Z, which has recently formed to do 
consulting in this area. Company Z has publicly stated that they will invest 2 
million dollars improving the public infrastructure, and plan to build a 
replacement for System Y. Some think that Edward is trying to take over System 
Y as a marketing exercise, others think System Y should have been replaced long 
ago, others think that Edward should just start funding Charlie and Debbie's 
work on System Y full time, instead of trying to build a new system from 
scratch. Charlie and Debbie are overwhelmed with all the emails and have less 
and less time to actually fix bugs in System Y. Next, Harold, who has been 
watching from the sidelines, posts a long tirade about all the reasons that 
Company Z is a terrible company doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. 
Charlie barely knows Harold, but posts a small comment agreeing with the 
general sentiment. Edward sees the comment and promises himself that there is 
no way the ungrateful System Y people are ever getting any of his money. Two 
years later both System-Y and Company Z’s SystemY-Prime are in common use, do 
basically the same thing, and everyone grumbles about both.

The root problems here are differences in motivation, miscommunication, and the 
Internet Amplification Effect (IAE). Harsh posts in public forums are a surface 
effect that feeds back and exacerbates the underlying problems. People like 
Harold who stoke the flames don’t tend to read the Respectful Communication 
guidelines, and everyone always feels justified in their own opinions. There is 
published work on dealing with conflicts in online communities [1], but I don’t 
pretend to be an expert. 

Perhaps an interested party could start a wiki page with statements of the form 
“If you feel like X is happening then consider doing Y.” This might also help 
people that are not naturally good at understanding the thoughts and 
motivations of other people, and work better when such advice is written down.

Peace,
Ben.

[1] Managing Conflicts in Open Source Communities
Ruben Van Wendel De Joode, 2004.

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Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Jonathan Lange]

I normally lurk here, but I agree with Philippa, and am grateful to her for
saying what I was thinking.

In particular, her suggestion about pairing guidelines for respectful
communications with guidelines for what to do when things break down is an
excellent one, and has worked well in other communities to help those on
the fringes of a community feel welcome and able to contribute.

jml

On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 10:00 PM Philippa Cowderoy 
wrote:

> I lack the energy to contribute to GHC directly, but these guidelines are
> far too easy to abuse by someone acting in bad faith and we know that bad
> faith actors have been adjacent to our community and acted on things that
> have taken place within it.
>
> From where I'm sitting, guidelines like this risk doing even more damage
> than not having any. Not only do they lack the means to handle incidents
> that have already occurred, they actively discourage the community from
> finding those means.
>
> As someone these guidelines have been drafted to help include, I fear they
> increase the burden on my participation and that of others like me. For a
> community to hold together without sinking to the worst of behaviour, there
> needs to be some acceptance that we will all fail to act in good fatih on
> occasion, that some people will act in bad faith and that behaviour in bad
> faith may take a great deal of explaining to anyone who is not the target
> of it or familiar with its mechanisms.
>
> I have spent a great deal of time running spaces within the wider
> community and I have witnessed these things repeatedly. I also lack the
> resources some people here have available to mitigate the risks others have
> openly posed to members of the community including myself and Simon.
>
> One solution - whether GHC itself needs it or not - might be to pair
> guidelines for respectful communication with guidelines for when respectful
> communication is failing to occur.
>
> Simon, I appreciate both the work you've put in and your love for the
> communty. I hope you can appreciate that where I appear to be cynical or
> even sowing discord here, I am acting out of love and care for a community
> that at its best has done a great deal for me. I apologise for being the
> one to open up what I see as a somewhat inevitable discussion.
> On 06/12/2018 10:35, Simon Peyton Jones via Haskell wrote:
>
> Friends
> As many of you will know, I have been concerned for several years about the 
> standards of discourse in the Haskell community.  I think things have 
> improved since the period that drove me to write my Respect 
> email 
> , but 
> it's far from secure.
> We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering 
> Committee 
>  at ICFP in September, and 
> many of us have had related discussions since.  Arising out of that 
> conversation, the GHC Steering Committee has decided to adopt these
>   Guidelines for respectful 
> communication
>  
>
> We are not trying to impose these guidelines on members of the Haskell 
> community generally. Rather, we are adopting them for ourselves, as a signal 
> that we seek high standards of discourse in the Haskell community, and are 
> willing to publicly hold ourselves to that standard, in the hope that others 
> may choose to follow suit.
> We are calling them "guidelines for respectful communication" rather than a 
> "code of conduct", because we want to encourage good communication, rather 
> than focus on bad behaviour.  Richard Stallman's recent 
> post  
> about the new GNU Kind Communication 
> Guidelines 
>  expresses the same idea.
> Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar 
> approach 
> .
> Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment 
> here
>  
> .
>Perhaps they can evolve so that other Haskell committees (or even 
> individuals) feel able to adopt them.
> The Haskell community is such a rich collection of intelligent, passionate, 
> and committed people. Thank you -- I love you all!
> Simon
>
>
>
>
>
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>

Re: [Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Philippa Cowderoy]

I lack the energy to contribute to GHC directly, but these guidelines 
are far too easy to abuse by someone acting in bad faith and we know 
that bad faith actors have been adjacent to our community and acted on 
things that have taken place within it.


From where I'm sitting, guidelines like this risk doing even more 
damage than not having any. Not only do they lack the means to handle 
incidents that have already occurred, they actively discourage the 
community from finding those means.


As someone these guidelines have been drafted to help include, I fear 
they increase the burden on my participation and that of others like me. 
For a community to hold together without sinking to the worst of 
behaviour, there needs to be some acceptance that we will all fail to 
act in good fatih on occasion, that some people will act in bad faith 
and that behaviour in bad faith may take a great deal of explaining to 
anyone who is not the target of it or familiar with its mechanisms.


I have spent a great deal of time running spaces within the wider 
community and I have witnessed these things repeatedly. I also lack the 
resources some people here have available to mitigate the risks others 
have openly posed to members of the community including myself and Simon.


One solution - whether GHC itself needs it or not - might be to pair 
guidelines for respectful communication with guidelines for when 
respectful communication is failing to occur.


Simon, I appreciate both the work you've put in and your love for the 
communty. I hope you can appreciate that where I appear to be cynical or 
even sowing discord here, I am acting out of love and care for a 
community that at its best has done a great deal for me. I apologise for 
being the one to open up what I see as a somewhat inevitable discussion.


On 06/12/2018 10:35, Simon Peyton Jones via Haskell wrote:

Friends
As many of you will know, I have been concerned for several years about the standards 
of discourse in the Haskell community.  I think things have improved since the period 
that drove me to write my Respect 
email, 
but it's far from secure.
We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering 
Committee at ICFP in September, 
and many of us have had related discussions since.  Arising out of that conversation, 
the GHC Steering Committee has decided to adopt these
   Guidelines for respectful 
communication

We are not trying to impose these guidelines on members of the Haskell 
community generally. Rather, we are adopting them for ourselves, as a signal 
that we seek high standards of discourse in the Haskell community, and are 
willing to publicly hold ourselves to that standard, in the hope that others 
may choose to follow suit.
We are calling them "guidelines for respectful communication" rather than a "code of 
conduct", because we want to encourage good communication, rather than focus on bad behaviour.  Richard 
Stallman's recent post about the new GNU Kind Communication 
Guidelines expresses the same idea.
Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar 
approach.
Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment 
here.
   Perhaps they can evolve so that other Haskell committees (or even individuals) 
feel able to adopt them.
The Haskell community is such a rich collection of intelligent, passionate, and 
committed people. Thank you -- I love you all!
Simon




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[Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

[Simon Peyton Jones via Haskell]

Friends
As many of you will know, I have been concerned for several years about the 
standards of discourse in the Haskell community.  I think things have improved 
since the period that drove me to write my Respect 
email, 
but it's far from secure.
We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering 
Committee at ICFP in September, 
and many of us have had related discussions since.  Arising out of that 
conversation, the GHC Steering Committee has decided to adopt these
  Guidelines for respectful 
communication

We are not trying to impose these guidelines on members of the Haskell 
community generally. Rather, we are adopting them for ourselves, as a signal 
that we seek high standards of discourse in the Haskell community, and are 
willing to publicly hold ourselves to that standard, in the hope that others 
may choose to follow suit.
We are calling them "guidelines for respectful communication" rather than a 
"code of conduct", because we want to encourage good communication, rather than 
focus on bad behaviour.  Richard Stallman's recent 
post about the new GNU Kind Communication 
Guidelines expresses the 
same idea.
Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar 
approach.
Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment 
here.
   Perhaps they can evolve so that other Haskell committees (or even 
individuals) feel able to adopt them.
The Haskell community is such a rich collection of intelligent, passionate, and 
committed people. Thank you -- I love you all!
Simon



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