On "why is this necessary": Earlier this year, Nick Coghlan wrote an excellent blog post on why he considers fighting abuse in open source communities (Linux, in particular) key to getting the best contributions and making his projects the strongest they can be. A quote:
"Instead, what I do care about, passionately, is *helping the best ideas win* (where I include "feasible" as part of my definition of "best"). Not the "best ideas from people willing to tolerate extensive personal abuse". The best ideas anyone is willing to share with me, period. And I won't hear those ideas unless I help create environments where all participants are willing to speak up, not just those that are prepared to accept a blistering verbal barrage from a powerful authority figure as a possible consequence of attempting to participate." The whole post is worth a read: http://www.curiousefficiency.org/posts/2015/01/abuse-is-not-ok.html Wikitech is not LKML, but a new contributor isn't going to know that (and still, they can look through the archives and find personal attacks!). A CoC is one way that we communicate that that's not how we act, and that's not how we tolerate other people acting. -Frances On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 9:57 AM, Frances Hocutt <fhoc...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > I was also at the Wikimania session where we worked on this draft. I > strongly support this effort. Best practices for codes of conduct include > clearly defined consequences for breaches, as well as named behaviors that > are unacceptable (as not everyone shares the same "common sense", and > people interested in behaving badly tend to rules-lawyer as well). Our > Phabricator etiquette is lacking both of these, and it does not cover the > rest of our technical spaces. An effective code of conduct has been shown > to be effective at bringing people from underrepresented groups--and their > contributions!--to events and projects. Screening technical contributors by > their willingness to take a risk of poor treatment is a terrible idea if we > want to get as many good contributions as we can. > > -Frances > > On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 8:43 AM, Oliver Keyes <oke...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > >> Thank you for drafting this up, Matt. Who's "we" here? >> >> On 6 August 2015 at 20:19, Matthew Flaschen <mflasc...@wikimedia.org> >> wrote: >> > On 08/06/2015 08:17 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote: >> >> >> >> We're in the process of developing a code of conduct for technical >> >> spaces. This will be binding, and apply to all Wikimedia-related >> >> technical spaces (including but not limited to MediaWiki.org, >> >> Phabricator, Gerrit, technical IRC channels, and Etherpad). >> > >> > >> > I forgot to mention (but this is in the draft), it also applies to >> physical >> > spaces, including but not limited to hackathons. >> > >> > >> > Matt Flaschen >> > >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > Engineering mailing list >> > engineer...@lists.wikimedia.org >> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/engineering >> >> >> >> -- >> Oliver Keyes >> Count Logula >> Wikimedia Foundation >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Engineering mailing list >> engineer...@lists.wikimedia.org >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/engineering >> > > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
