Technical ability/skill should be specifically enumerated

[apapadimoulis]

Conferences should be a place where attendees of all skill/ability levels can feel comfortable learning and participating. They are not.

The common practice of lambasting newbies for their solutions, or labeling those who are less skilled/experienced as idiots, morons, stupid, etc., not only discourages these folks from trying to learn or participate, but creates a hostile environment for the “non-elite” members of the community.

To address this gap in the CoC, "technical ability/skill" should be added as a specifically-enumerated type of harassment to avoid. This should be either before or after “technology choices”, because the term “technology choices” is not nearly covering enough, and should be kept separate anyway.

I can submit the pull request, but I see several have not been accepted (and have no discussion).

[remy]

I'm only commenting on the PRs that haven't been merged: a good number are translations waiting for a +1 from another native speaker. There's also a decent amount that change a single word here or there and whilst that's great, I think it might be useful to fork this CoC and use the language that suits the conference.

I think this really points out that the one big thing that's missing from this repo that this CoC is a merely a starting point and even a template for your own CoCs.

I hope that explains (at least a bit).

[apapadimoulis]

Since very few conferences will tweak this, and the others look towards this project as guidance for how to create a good environment for their own communities, this project has become the "golden standard" for CoC. Whether or not that was the goal, that's what it is now. I can't even count the number of times that I’ve seen "certain, *unskilled* developers, ::wink-wink::" used as a euphemism for females and Asians. By not including ability/skill-based harassment in the standard, you may as well just give a free pass for that using this type of language. Moreover, this creates a hostile environment for those trying to learn (who, by the way, are often female and Asian). This is one of the many challenges we need to overcome to be more inclusive and less monoculture. Each conference could somehow learn this on their own through surveys, etc... or we could simply update the golden standard, and let the conferences decide which types of conduct/harassment are ok, and which aren't. Shouldn't this be part of the "starting point and template" for a CoC?