On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 at 13:19, Sam Whited <[email protected]> wrote: > > Note also that this is not intended to mean that any XMPP developer's > > behaviour will be scrutinised constantly - using, for example, racist > > language in a talk about your XMPP project would be problematic here, > > but using sexualised language in an unrelated setting is likely to be > > irrelevant to this Code of Conduct. > > While I think it's fine to call out that we won't actively police > behavior outside of XSF functions (which seems reasonable), I don't > think that makes them irrelevant to the CoC. If we do hear about and > verify some egregious behavior outside of the XSF we still may not want > that person representing the XSF. > > If nothing else I'd remove "is likely to be irrelevant to this CoC" and > put the decision in the hands of the working group. > > There is a lot of history around this particular issue in other organisations where the Code of Conduct has been applied unexpectedly to activities outside its obvious remit, and to (what some believe) are political ends. There are even cases where Codes of Conduct have been changed in order to make this the case retroactively. I'm not going to go into specifics of cases, but it's an area where I entirely understand that people are concerned.
Now, yes, I think there are cases where behaviour in an unrelated setting is likely to be an issue for us, but what I don't want to imply is that just because using sexualised language in a Summit would be a serious problem, that means you can't have a hobby writing erotic fiction. My point is that behaviour is often contextual, and unless other people reasonably think it reflects on us, we should keep out. So if someone tweets something that - if said in our chatrooms, for example - would be against our Code of Conduct, I would be very reticent to suggest the Conduct Team should take any action beyond, at worst, reminding that person that their tweet would be seen as exclusionary in our community. To do otherwise risks becoming exclusionary ourselves, which is counter to the whole point. But, as noted, if they were a Board member, say, that changes the dynamic considerably. That said, a lot of behaviour that's against the Code of Conduct is actually flat-out illegal, ranging from hate speech to actual murder, and that's a different matter - though jurisdictional differences apply of course - I would assume that actual illegal behaviour does reflect on us. As always, textual suggestions here are welcome. > > please do call it out to that person at the time > > Should we define how this is done? I assume it means "gently mention > that you don't believe this lives up to the CoC in the venue the > behavior occurred in or in the chat" and not "post in every single > forum you can find about it and include the users home phone number > and email". > > The latter is itself against the CoC, so hopefully not. But yes, my intent here was that - if people feel able to do so - to calmly and gently express their concerns, privately or otherwise in response - and not escalate things into a vicious row. > > Who you report it to depends on who was involved in the incident. > > Can this be clarified? I would assume we'd always want to go to the > contact team unless it was a member of the contact team (then maybe the > board, or if they're the same, the rest of the board). > > Yes, Jonas also pointed out this wasn't obvious, though you're spot on in terms of the reasoning here. That said, I don't know if we want to ignore complaints (and I don't like that word) if they have been reported incorrectly. My concern in this is that I don't want a level of formality to dissuade people from reporting incidents because they're minor, or they feel more intimidated by the process than the incident itself. > > The Conduct Team will always hand its recommendation on Sanctions or > > other Actions to the Board. The Board will discuss and vote on these > > "in camera" (ie, not in public and not minuted). > > It seems like there's not much point having a conduct team if the board > also has to relitigate their decisions. I'd just allow the board to > delegate this authority fully (which presumably they could do anyways > and this document doesn't curtail board power?) > > I was in two minds about this, so thanks for raising it. I went for Board ratification of decisions mostly for the ease of managing the authority, but also in part because then the Conduct Team becomes an investigatory and deliberatory team instead of both judge and jury. But you're right in that this might end up with Board relitigating the decisions rather than just providing the final go-ahead decision and acting as a blame deflector. I am very open to opinions here. > > In high profile cases, the result will be announced publicly. > > I'd also just say "At the conduct teams discretion" instead of limiting > it to "high profile" cases which seems vague and confusing. > > Yes, there's a balancing act between providing expectations to the community and providing guidance to the Conduct Team here. What I'm aiming at here is that if there's a public discussion storm over the incident, then that would suggest the result is announced publicly. But broadly, the result and incident should be kept as low-key as possible, I think - not to "cover up", but to avoid escalation. So while I'd rather not make it entirely a matter of the team's discretion, perhaps more guidance and more observation that the announcement is part of the "action" is warranted. > > While the sanctions described herein are, by their nature, > > exclusionary, and much of the behaviour discussed is negative, the > > intent is the opposite - we want to maximize inclusion, and promote > > positive behaviours. > > This is great, but feels out of place at the end of a section > about appeals. > > Yes, it was originally in the introduction, but an early steer from Ralph was to minimize the introduction and get straight to the Code itself; sloppy editing on my part has put it in an awkward place. > Also a general nit picky note for the editor: all the various hyphens > should be converted to em-dashes and "a XEP" should be "an XEP" (I > thought? Maybe that's not true in all dialects but I didn't think this > is one that would change). > > Overall this is a great start, thank you! Thanks for your very useful review; I'll continue to consider much of what you've said and may change my mind later because of it. Dave.
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