Re: [gentoo-council] Extent of Code of Conduct enforcement

[Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>]

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On 13:24 Fri 25 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> Eventually, this was revised here:
> http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-council/msg_ba125098c929ea31f34051dfb009d436.xml
> advantage that it did not require any approval at all, but it most
> certainly *did* imply revisions to the Code of Conduct itself, because
> effectively it stripped out any authority from the (non-existent)
> proctors and instead identify a small group of people who would take
> aside CoC violators (in private) and suggest they quit doing whatever
> they were doing wrong.  For the record here, my response to this was:
> 
> [quote]
> 'Nice idea and worth a try.  I have one concern.  Since we are talking
> CoC here, I'd like to emphasise that "assholeness" should be determined
> within the guidelines of the CoC.  Not by some person's own conception
> of "assholeness" --- I'd hate to see a flame war about just who is being
> the asshole in any particular instance.'
> [/quote]
> 
> As best as I can tell, this proposal was *APPROVED*, and at 20080214, was left like this:
> 
> ================================
> Code of Conduct enforcement
> ---------------------------
> 	Promote individual devs responding to people who are being jerks.
> 	Keep responses private, unless that person gets out of hand.
> 
> 	dberkholz will get things going.
> 	To help or get advice, contact him.
> ===================================
> 
> I think the final intent was that Council expected the Code of Conduct
> to be pretty much self-enforcing, driven by members of the community who
> cared enough to take violators aside and calm them down, beat them over
> the head, or whatever.
> 
> So, my question remains:  Did this resolution ever make it into a
> revision of the Code of Conduct or not.  I thought it did, but can't
> find it.  If it didn't, it probably should, and this entire discussion
> should be interpreted with that intent.

Let me share my interpretation to make sure we're on the same page. The 
whole idea here is that there is no new official global response team 
like the proctors.

Nothing changed about the abilities & authorities of individual groups 
that were already in charge of their specific areas.

> In passing, I'll note something else.  The underlying assumption of the
> entire Code of Conduct threads over five months last year was that:
> 
> [quote from Donnie]
> 
> A primary focus of CoC enforcement is deterrence from continued 
> violation, so permanent action is unnecessary. Thus, what seems 
> necessary is a way to take rapid, private, temporary action.
> 
> [/quote from Donnie]
> 
> The focus here was on errant developers, but by validating userrel's role in
> all of this, we know it now explicitly applies to the entire community.
> However, the underlying "immediate and temporary" assumptions still apply,
> I would think.  Anything else would be a fundamental change as best as I
> can tell, and discussion should be framed and clearly understood on that
> context.

It's always desirable for people to change their behavior, but 
unfortunately it doesn't always happen.

Here, the first sentence you quoted is the important one. The second 
sentence only deals with the deterrence part of the first sentence. 
Nothing is addressed about the permanent action, because that email was 
about creating a new proctors-like group, and devrel/userrel already 
existed for permanent action.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

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