Add a simple code of conduct based on ruby community guidelines #10233
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This was discussed at the systemd hackfest during ASG2018, and we agreed to use the Ruby text [1] with the enforcement clause based on the "contributor covenant". I obviously modified the text where applicable to refer to systemd. [1] https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/conduct/ Fixes 10148.
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It is better if the CoC field becomes green in https://github.com/systemd/systemd/community. |
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Hmm, it seems that this only supports two fixed texts. |
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It's just a matter of renaming the markdown file: |
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| ## Enforcement | ||
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| Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported by contacting the project team at systemd-conduct@googlegroups.com. This team currently consists of David Strauss <<david@davidstrauss.net>>, Ekaterina Gerasimova (Kat) <<Kittykat3756@gmail.com>>, and Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek <<zbyszek@in.waw.pl>>. It is also possible to contact any member directly. |
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It's unclear what should be done if someone wants to report a violation about a person who receives those reports, which is unlikely given that only @keszybz regularly shows up on GitHub. Nevertheless, I think it's worth addressing.
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The assumption was that the individual email addresses would help in this case: the reporter could pick who they want to report this to.
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Maybe, it would be helpful to explicitly say that "In the unfortunate event that you wish to make a complaint against some member, you may instead contact any of the other member(s) individually." I borrowed this from https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct#Reporting.
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Yes, I think that the intent is pretty clear in this case. If you have a suggestion for better wording, that'd be great. I wasn't very happy with this version, but I couldn't come up with something better but still fairly brief.
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Ah, I'll submit a PR with your suggested text.
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| # The Systemd Community Conduct Guidelines | |||
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| This document provides community guidelines for a safe, respectful, productive, and collaborative place for any person who is willing to contribute to systemd. It applies to all “collaborative spaces”, which is defined as community communications channels (such as mailing lists, submitted patches, commit comments, etc.). | |||
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According to https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel, the use of the mailing list is subject to https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/CodeOfConduct/. Which code of conduct takes precedence there?
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Good point. Fd.o must have added this fairly recently. Maybe we could ask change to the following:
Use of all freedesktop.org lists is subject to our Code of Conduct, unless stated otherwise in the list description.
and then add "Use of this list is covered by the systemd code of conduct." .
| - Participants will be tolerant of opposing views. | ||
| - Participants must ensure that their language and actions are free of personal attacks and disparaging personal remarks. | ||
| - When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions. | ||
| - Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated. |
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According to these guidelines, it seems to be totally fine to, for example, use "he" as a gender-neutral pronoun and "guys" as a general vocative in the documentation, commit messages and everywhere else. It doesn't seem to be right, given that the idea behind that issue was to, quoting the author of #10148, "send the signal that the project welcoming and inclusive".
Just to be clear, I'm not opposed to code of conducts. It's just that I think that they should be taken seriously, because they're supposed to prevent or mitigate very sensitive issues.
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I've reread the guidelines several times and it seems to me that if someone will in a very general and polite way say that, for example, a certain group of people is incapable of writing code, then I should assume good intentions and tolerate those opposing views. If my understanding is correct, it seems that the code of conduct, in fact, makes the situation worse, because, previously, I could always refer to GitHub's terms of use, where it's stated clearly that content discriminatory or abusive toward any individual or group shouldn't be posted, but now it's very unclear to me what exactly I can do with these set of vague principles. Everybody seems to be fine as long as they're polite enough to avoid "disparaging personal remarks".
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Yeah, but I don't think we can ever cover each and every case. Dunno, there are many other cases that are not covered either but this or by the github's terms, like for example repeatedly posting messages with similar content to the point of being obnoxious. At some point we'd ask such a person to stop and if that doesn't help, moderate them, even though we don't have an explicit rule. I don't think we can cover each and every case upfront. Instead, the goal of this short file is to state intent, and I think it server that purpose well.
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I don't think it's possible to cover everything either.
the goal of this short file is to state intent
Then probably it should be called the guideline or something like that. From my perspective, a code of conduct looks like https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct (which is very thorough and transparent especially regarding the enforcement and reporting). And it also covers posting repeated comments because it's not constructive and therefore discouraged :-)
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Just to clarify, what I'm trying to say is that it's one thing to have a set of very vague rules and more or less informal way to resolve conflicts, but it's another thing to have the same set of vague rules with an enforcement clause and a team dedicated to enforce them in a way "that is deemed necessary and appropriate to the circumstances". This combo might actually scare people off and that's probably why there is no enforcement clause at https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/conduct/.
Anyway, it's possible that I'm missing something because I wasn't at the conference.
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@keszybz if you prep a new PR updating the text, could you also rename it to the name github suggests (see above), and most importantly, change "Systemd" → "systemd" in the title? ;-) |
Hopefully this will be enough to let github notice that we have a coc now and display the green checkmark: systemd#10233 (comment)
It wasn't clear enough: systemd#10233 (comment)
This was discussed at the systemd hackfest during ASG2018, and
we agreed to use the Ruby text [1] with the enforcement clause based on
the "contributor covenant". I obviously modified the text where applicable
to refer to systemd.
[1] https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/conduct/
Fixes #10148.