Dear list
The community code of conduct (xep-0458) came up for an approval vote in
a recent board meeting.
I've gone through the document and am writing down my thoughts and
feedback here.
Quoted parts are directly from the document.
> The examples in this document of what not to do are intended to be
just that - examples. They are not intended to be exhaustive. Many of
these examples have formal definitions, either in law or elsewhere - in
general, if you are reliant on such a definition to argue why your
behaviour might be acceptable, you have already lost the argument.
I don't think it's in the purview of this document to pre-emptively
decide whether someone has "won" or "lost" an argument. Even phrasing it
that way, as a competition, is in my opinion problematic.
> Ordinarily, the XMPP Standards Foundation welcomes and encourages
participation in XSF Activities, but this guiding principle allows the
XSF to partially or completely exclude anyone from any activity, for any
reason.
I think the phrasing "for any reason" is too harsh and leaves this
document open to abuse. It makes it sound as if the XSF claims the right
to be capricious. I would drop that last bit.
> By explicitly stating that this Code of Conduct applies this allows
the XSF to sanction bad behaviour outside of XSF Activities should the
need arise.
I'm against this statement as written. What someone does in their
private life, unrelated to the XSF and outside of XSF activities has no
bearing on the XSF and the XSF has no justifiable basis to sanction that
person for it.
Also "bad behaviour" is incredibly broad. What is "bad behaviour"? In
some societies things that are considered bad behaviour are celebrated
in other societies. Social norms change and a sentence such as this
makes this document and its related process open to abuse.
This makes me think of Brendan Eich who got fired by Mozilla for
donating money to a campaign against gay marriage. With this kind of
wording in the document, I wouldn't be surprised if something similar
could be attempted in the XSF. I would be against that, particularly
because it's outside the purview of the XSF. The argument made in
Mozilla at the time was that Eich's act caused Mozilla employees to feel
"excluded", a word that pops up regularly in this document as well.
Ideally politics is left outside of the XSF and I've made the argument
before that the XSF is apolitical and we should not get involved in
politics. One of my concerns of a document such as this is that it can
be used as a tool to start political fights and campaigns inside the XSF.
> using sexualised language in your erotic fiction hobby is likely to
be irrelevant to this Code of Conduct.
The use of "likely" here leaves the door open to sanction people for
their private endeavors.
> It may also be in some cases people may prefer to report informally;
while reporting "properly" is preferred, the Conduct Team should strive
to handle informal reports in the same way if possible.
To me this reads as encouraging gossip and for the Conduct Team to
respond to gossip. If someone doesn't report formally, I don't think the
Conduct Team should get involved in any dispute.
> The Conduct Team may ask for further information from you, the person
accused of bad conduct, or others who were present
This sentence and most of this section is written as if the reader is
the reporter. I find this biased. It might also be that the reader is
being reported, and I therefore think this should all be written in the
3rd person, i.e. no use of "you".
>Finally, the Conduct Team will make a decision on sanctions or other
action.
This makes it sound like some action will be taken. In some cases, no
actions might be taken.
Considering the "Security Considerations" section.
> It is possible for almost any behaviour to have some argument why it
is not, in fact, exclusionary, and why it's just someone taking offence
too easily. It also is possible for the Code of Conduct to be weaponised
for exclusionary purposes, by using the complaints mechanism to stall or
silence valid debate.
There are other ways to weaponise a CoC and not just to silence debate,
but also to exclude and create ideological conformity inside the XSF.
There are of course situations where this might be valid, for example
someone openly expressing illegal speech (e.g. calling for genocide
etc.), but IMO the bar should be very high here.
I see the terms "inclusion" and "exclusion" used a lot in this document,
but I don't see anything about tolerance. Tolerance means that while you
don't necessarily approve of someone's personal decisions, you tolerate
it in order to keep the peace and to not let the disagreement interfere
with goal or task at hand.
Regards
JC
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