Two proposals for the Django Code of Conduct.

[Kevin Daum]

I have submitted two pull requests for the code of conduct:

• #84, to let folks who belong to a wide variety of social identities know that yes, even they are welcome here, and
• #86, to make explicit the currently implicit policy that someone's abusive behavior outside the django community may have an adverse effect on their ability to participate within the django community.

I welcome your feedback. 

Thanks,

Kevin Daum

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Number 84 sounds fine. #86 is just looking for trouble. You were wise in 84 to keep it positive and not enumerate a list of "banned" behaviour. To have 86 be anything beyond providing a weapon to be used by anyone looking to be "victimized" in order to silence those whom they disagree with, you would have to absolutely list the behaviours you don't want to tolerate. Frankly 84 is about toleration and acceptance whereas 86 can do nothing but increase intolerance ultimately.

best regards,

-- Ben Scherrey

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[Daniele Procida]

On Sun, Sep 7, 2014, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Number 84 sounds fine. #86 is just looking for trouble. You were wise in 84
>to keep it positive and not enumerate a list of "banned" behaviour. To have
>86 be anything beyond providing a weapon to be used by anyone looking to be
>"victimized" in order to silence those whom they disagree with, you would
>have to absolutely list the behaviours you don't want to tolerate. Frankly
>84 is about toleration and acceptance whereas 86 can do nothing but
>increase intolerance ultimately.

The only change of substance in <https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/86> is the addition of one sentence:

In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a
person's ability to participate within them.

which is the case already - this just makes it explicit.

"May affect" give us plenty of scope for a measured and proportionate response - it may just mean we watch them more carefully.

Daniele

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Daniele,

    Nothing you've written disagrees with what I said, nor do you address the core concern I bring up about the "change of substance" which is chock full of opportunities for the law of unintended consequences to come up and bite us all. Re-reading the existing documents, I find that this language introduces an entirely different tone to the language of these policies and, again, implies some dangerous precedents beyond what the writers may intend. Whether intentional or not, they aren't good and should be avoided.

-- Ben

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[Daniele Procida]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Nothing you've written disagrees with what I said, nor do you address
>the core concern I bring up about the "change of substance" which is chock
>full of opportunities for the law of unintended consequences to come up and
>bite us all.

What in your opinion is (or was) the "change of substance" in <https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/pull/86>?

I didn't see any but a very minor one, that only makes explicit something that was already the case.

>Re-reading the existing documents, I find that this language
>introduces an entirely different tone to the language of these policies
>and, again, implies some dangerous precedents beyond what the writers may
>intend.

Which language in pull request 86?

Daniele

[Benjamin Scherrey]

I thought I made my objections pretty clear in my original email but I'll attempt to be more pedantic about it now. The specific language in the PR 86 is:

"In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them." for both faq.html and index.html. 

I disagree with your assertion "that only makes explicit something that was already the case" because that's a) not how I read it and b) completely impossible to reasonably enforce or expect. I hope that what is occurring is simply a matter of "I don't think it means what you think it means" but what you're really saying here is that all people on this planet must comply with our "code of conduct" at all times in all places or risk being removed from our community - right after, mind you ironically, claiming to support an encourage the participation of all individuals. So what is this code of conduct that we're imposing on all of humanity for the salvation of the world? Fortunately there is, literally, a list:

  <ul>

    <li>Violent threats or language directed against another person.</li>

    <li>Sexist, racist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.</li>

    <li>Posting sexually explicit or violent material.</li>

    <li>Posting (or threatening to post) other people's personally identifying information ("doxing").</li>

    <li>Personal insults, especially those using racist or sexist terms.</li>

    <li>Unwelcome sexual attention.</li>

    <li>Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.</li>

    <li>Repeated harassment of others. In general, if someone asks you to stop, then stop.</li>

  </ul>

So lets see... anyone who has done any of the following completely outside the context of the Django community or forums is now not welcome to participate:

1) Ever threatened to or actually spank their children.

2) Ever used violence or threat there-of to defend another person from same.

3) Ever posted a naked or somewhat explicit picture of themselves or others in a private message to another person or in a forum, such as a photo site like flickr.

4) Dox'd a person who is clearly engaging in criminal activity under a pretense of anonymity.

5) Ever repeated a joke with sexual or racial content.

6) Ever asked someone out or complemented another person on their looks who didn't want it.

7) Said it's ok for someone to do any of the above.

8) Said or did it twice.

Seriously?!?! This *is* really what you're saying. (BTW - I've done all of the above at one time or another so ban me now.)

Of course some of these (but not all - and it depends a lot about whom) may seem outrageous but they are true to the letter of the code of conduct. I agree these things probably don't belong in the context of a Django discussion or group but I do not believe you can enforce elimination this conduct outside of same. And - then there's just the ability to agree to disagree. One can very credibly argue that many religions or political philosophies are racist, sexist, etc. Are all practicing members of same now banned from participation in Django? This RP language says yes.

Now that I have, again, been responsive to your dismissal of my objections, please do me the courtesy of re-reading my original (and this) email and attempt to be responsive to it's content.

thank you,

  -- Ben Scherrey

Daniele

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[Stephen Burrows]

Ben,

Just to clarify, it sounds like what you're saying is the following: If there were a member of the django community who (may this never be the case) was harassing members of the django community, but limited their harassment to non-django-specific forums, you would want it to not affect their participation in django spaces.

Is that correct? If so, is that a blanket statement or does it depend in your mind what exactly they've done? For example, what if they had a single hateful tweet? What if they had five? What if they orchestrated a harassment campaign that drove someone from their home?

Where would you draw the line?

I would also like to point out that the code of conduct doesn't seem to contain any statements about how it's enforced. Generally speaking, policies like this operate with a certain number of warnings, followed by escalation if that doesn't stick - except in extreme cases. It even says explicitly *in* the policy:

Don’t forget that it is human to err and blaming each other doesn’t get us anywhere, rather offer to help resolving issues and to help learn from mistakes.

I understand that you're concerned about the application of the policy, but it seems like you're (perhaps unintentionally) exaggerating the scope and purpose of the policy to support your point. 

--Stephen

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[Stephen Burrows]

Turns out there *is* a document detailing enforcement policies and it *does* involve a range of possible responses to violations.

https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com/blob/master/templates/conduct/enforcement.html

https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/enforcement-manual/

[Robert Grant]

Yeah I agree with Ben; this is one of those highly conservative things that might sound good, but just allow more and more extreme responses to nonconformist behaviour. Every unpleasant system at some point had good intentions, and asked the question, "But why wouldn't you want people to be like this?"

The answer is: I don't know, but there are almost certainly things that the current lack of rules allow that I also like, and I won't like it when they're gone.

Similarly, as Ben makes clear, while you may intend one thing when writing down rules, you actually open them up to any interpretation, and things can get much more extreme than you intended. That's one of the reasons people start liberal but become conservative; they want change, but no, we didn't think anyone would ever do that! And if you say, "But we won't let things go bad" then the obvious answer is: you have written rules, or you have dictators. Having both is the same as having dictators. All it'll do is expose inconsistencies when the dictators don't like unforseen implications of rules, and so override them, or they'll interpret the rules in non-obvious ways to get people to stop doing things they feel they're allowed to do (e.g. people call smacking your kids "beating" them, because "beatings are bad" is a rule we agree with).

But I'm a liberal at heart :) I can see that it's very attractive to be able to come down hard on people who offend you, but without a lot more detail it's probably just going to cause a lot of aggravation and drive people to more liberally educated communities.

The community doesn't seem so vast that it needs self-appointed governers, but possibly I'm wrong there.

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Hi Stephen,

   No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that the scope of what is apparently being attempted (precisely as stated) cannot be constrained in a manner that is objective or inline with the rest of the inclusionary aspects of the policy.

   It's already dangerous ground to start enumerating forbidden behaviors. You get the exact problem with Old Testament "thou shall nots". It's arguably easier to enforce or understand it in the context of a Django-relevant forum but it's a real slippery slope to then try to apply it universally.  Your second paragraph are excellent examples of just how impossible it is to make such a policy useful and inline with it's original (presumable but not always) intent.

   Better to have a code of conduct that describes how to behave in an affirmative fashion in the context of Django interactions than to attempt to create a speech and behavior code which lists banned actions. The enforcement document you pointed out in your following post is exactly the kind of absurd hubris that these things inevitably devolve to. Check this out: "If the incident involves physical danger, any member of the working group may -- and should -- act unilaterally to protect safety." The fact that anyone thought it necessary to have to include this content in a policy statement just goes to show how far out these things actually do get interpreted.

   I'm frankly embarrassed for the Django community to have such nonsense as official policy. Is there an actual problem that needs solving here? Do have have some level of incidents that actually violate common sense policies of individual freedom and personal responsibility that we need a conduct code of this far reaching scope? If so I haven't seen it but I am prepared to be educated otherwise.

   Hope that clarifies my concerns and thanx for your response.

  -- Ben Scherrey

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[Aymeric Augustin]

All,

I appreciate the effort you're putting into explaining your arguments. However, the relationship with the original proposal is becoming increasingly unclear.

Hopefully by now you've voiced your arguments. I think it's time to let the Code of Conduct committee decide whether to accept the proposed changes.

Thanks for your understanding.

-- 

Aymeric.

[Daniele Procida]

On Mon, Sep 8, 2014, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I thought I made my objections pretty clear in my original email but I'll
>attempt to be more pedantic about it now. The specific language in the PR
>86 is:
>
>"In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a
>person's ability to participate within them." for both faq.html and
>index.html.
>
>I disagree with your assertion "that only makes explicit something that was
>already the case" because that's a) not how I read it and b) completely
>impossible to reasonably enforce or expect.

I can assure you that if we became aware of someone's problematic behaviour then depending on the behaviour we could do anything from keeping a careful eye on the individual to - in extreme cases - banning them from participation.

"Violations of this code outside these spaces may affect a person's ability to participate within them" is correct. It doesn't mean that action will be taken, but that it may be.

That's already the case. If a known harrasser subscribes starts posting to one of our email lists, we might have a quiet word with them, just for example.

>I hope that what is occurring is
>simply a matter of "I don't think it means what you think it means" but
>what you're really saying here is that all people on this planet must
>comply with our "code of conduct" at all times in all places or risk being
>removed from our community - right after, mind you ironically, claiming to
>support an encourage the participation of all individuals.

Being removed from the community would be the last, not the first, course of action.

>So what is this
>code of conduct that we're imposing on all of humanity for the salvation of
>the world?

You've had your points answered twice already, politely both times. If you want to make sarcastic remarks for your own amusement, don't expect any more replies.

Daniele

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Daniele,

    You're reading me completely wrong. I am not being sarcastic at all. I'm pointing out the absurdity that one style of "code of conduct" inevitably leads to versus another affirmative style which could actually serve it's intended purpose. I'm not against any code - I'm quite specifically supportive of one style and very aware and concerned about the ramifications of the other. I don't know how much more clear I can make the point than I already have.

    Thus far, however, your only response to my actual concern is assurances that people will "do the right thing and be reasonable". Forgive me if that holds absolutely no water with me because, even if I were to trust you personally, you have no power to enforce such an assurance. But I understand that's the best you can do because that is the best that can ever be done with this type of thing. So the only responsible action is don't go there. If you're going to make a policy that is completely open to any individual's interpretation then you've actually set back the community and have laid the foundation to harm to the very thing you're trying to protect. 

    You keep using the term "known harasser" but attempts to codify what that is exactly are impossible via lists of "forbidden speech/actions". I welcome evidence to the contrary but I'm fairly experienced in such matters and don't anticipate any forthcoming. In some circles I might be a bit more forgiving for willfully ignoring these facts. But this is a programming group for goodness sakes! We know how to be specific about things and the dangers of opening up things to ambiguity. We can do better. So given this, why not just go with an affirmative policy stating how people should conduct themselves and demonstrate good intentions without the need to codify "evil things"? I think it accomplishes what you want to do and, best of all, could actually work!

-- Ben Scherrey

Daniele

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[Stephen Burrows]

If you think you could do it better, maybe you should submit your own version for consideration. I assume that's how the process works.

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[Russell Keith-Magee]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for these suggestions.

By way of settings expectations - a patch of this nature has a little more procedural overhead than a normal patch, because it requires a change to our community policies. Regardless of the merit (or otherwise) of a specific proposal, a change to these policies needs to be ratified by the core team and the DSF membership before it goes into effect.

Discussions on the ticket itself from people outside those groups is definitely welcome - the broader opinion and attitudes of the community will be considered as part of the ratification process. But it's not something that a small group of people can quickly agree on and commit. 

Russ %-)

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[Kevin Daum]

Thanks Russ, I assumed as much, having read https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/changes/. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps Daniele's keynote talk at Djangocon this year, combined with the already very good Django code of conduct, caused me to assume too much of this community's progression towards appreciating both the need of diversity in tech and the actual conditions required to bring that about. 

Benjamin, you asked if there is an actual problem that needs solving. Yes. Absolutely. It is a systemic one within the world of software development and I am excited to be a part of a particular software development community that is taking proactive steps towards the goal of a safe, supportive environment for everyone who is working towards that same goal. The quality of our software will reflect the quality of our community. Here is just a tiny sample of reading for any who are interested in learning why these kinds of policies are so important:

1. See the recent case of Anita Sarkeesian, which is one sort of situation I have in mind when writing down a policy such as this:
   https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/504718160902492160/photo/1
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/29/gaming-vlogger-anita-sarkeesian-is-forced-from-home-after-receiving-harrowing-death-threats/
2. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/abuse-as-ddos, including this bit: "Just like with computer security, you should have plans in place to identify and address attacks. At conferences, user groups, and other events, this can take the form of a code of conduct along with a policy for enforcement. In workplaces, this often takes the form of an employee handbook. These types of policies help mitigate attacks when they happen, so that decisions don’t have to be made on the fly when something goes wrong. These policies are far from perfect fixes for everything, but they’re better than doing nothing."
3. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-open-source-identity-crisis. By the way, I'm proud that the one time this author links to something django-related, it's this situation in which the core devs wisely and quickly made the right choice.

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Hi Kevin,

   And thanx for responding to my question about the need for such a policy with Django. Last night, as I had not yet had a response from anyone about this question I searched the archives of both django groups looking for any events or circumstances in which the code of conduct was invoked as I had no personal recollection of any such thing. I found some innocuous reference in the django-users group (wrongly suggesting that this coming policy was going to increase female participation) and in django-developers, one actual circumstance where its use was threatened - not surprisingly as part of the one example you provided that actually has anything to do at all with the Django community. Sadly, it's invocation was precisely used in the manner that I had feared - to stifle debate and threaten a person who was making valid and reasonable arguments (no doubt in the middle of a flame war but he/she wasn't the flamer). When I saw the name of the person who invoked the code of conduct I was even more disappointed as it was someone that I otherwise have a profound respect for.

    Other than this I was not surprised to see zero evidence for the need for such a policy as there don't seem to be any threatening events of the like that your email raises. These problems may exist elsewhere but not amongst the general django community that I've ever seen. 

    Understand my background. I own a software development company that was a VERY early adopter of Django way before the 1.0 days. I expect I was certainly one of the first thousand developers to use Django in a real-life situation once it got outside of the newspaper where it was created. My company is one of the first to build commercial systems for clients on top of Django. My staff even has a few little commits into the django code base over the years, although minor, but we were proud nonetheless to be able to contribute in some small way. I've attended my share of PyCons (prior to the invention of DjangoCon which I hope to attend one day) and have always found the community very open and inclusive of all types. This is a Good Thing (TM). I've even sent 5 staff to the event, four of which happened to be women. My team now consists of 34+ people, all but two of which are in a technical capacity. WE are geeks who seek out other geeks who want to be appreciated solely based on merit. We happen to have about a 40% female colleague share and explicitly do NOT have a diversity policy (nor will we ever have an HR department but that's another story). I simply am strong at identifying and attracting people with strong potential and the market is so extremely competitive that one must leave no stone unturned in order to find the best. THAT is the one way that a more inclusive group will come into being and for the right reasons.

    So I have actually achieved what everyone is crying out for and can't seem to figure how to accomplish. It wasn't difficult. I'm here to tell you that diversity policies and codes of conduct, in my experience consulting to dozens of commercial, government, and educational organizations in my 30+ years of experience have never once helped achieve their stated goals and, many times, have hurt both the organization and it's intended beneficiaries. True to my experience, the one threatened invocation of the code of conduct for Django fits right in line with my experience of such policies, sadly. 

    Therefore, I hope everyone appreciates that I'm fully invested in Django and attracting the best & brightest into our community. I think you'll see Kevin, that I supported your first PR but have very grave concerns about the second for the reasons I've already gone into great detail about. I do believe completely that both were put forward with good intentions. I'm all for policies that put forward good examples of appreciated behavior and add to the general sense of inclusiveness which I think your first one does. It scares the hell out of me when people start enumerating banned conduct and speech - and I wish more people understood the issue as well as I about why. That's why I'm quite vocal about this.

    Thanx for your time and interest,

   -- Ben Scherrey

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[Robert Grant]

Good email. This one won't be that good.

Boiling my verbose email down to two sentences:

We seem to already have a private group of people who make decisions in secret and pronounce a verdict on issues, and who can to a large extent control the community. If this is the case, and they already have total control should they choose to exercise it, a Django ASBO won't give any extra power over - and thus protection against - griefers/bullies/whatever.

Just to hedge my bets, if the group does decide to create the ASBO, could it be called the Anti-Social Django Act?

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[Kevin Daum]

I'm going to attempt to reach out to some folks who I think might be more likely than us to benefit from a code of conduct and ask if they have anything to add. I'm not mounting a public campaign, I just think we're missing some important perspectives. 

[Stephen Burrows]

Benjamin,

I believe there have been serious issues with harassment of women specifically at previous DjangoCons (though there may not be mention of it on the mailing lists.) It has definitely been a major issue at other tech conferences and tech meetups. That was a major factor in the recent push in the tech world to have better anti-harassment / code of conduct policies. See also: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents (and the rest of the wiki, really).

Here is a short selection of other links that talk about this issue, with various relations to Django / DjangoCon specifically.

http://geekfeminism.org/2013/08/15/that-time-i-wasnt-harassed-at-a-conference/

http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2012/05/24/narrowing-gender-gap-open-source-community/

http://juliaelman.com/blog/2012/jun/3/lets-get-little-louder/

I could just keep going, but I don't want to overwhelm people (slash you) with too many links. If you want more, you can use google.

If you think a policy like this doesn't need to exist, you are IMO, frankly, very wrong. But if you think it just needs to be written differently, stop talking about it and show us what that would look like!

--Stephen

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[Benjamin Scherrey]

Hi Stephen,

    Out of your three links only the 3rd describes an actual harassment occurring at a Django-related event. It also describes that as soon as the person reported it to the conference director she got an immediate positive response by the director who seems to have made every attempt to be helpful despite the lack of a written policy being in place at the time. Your first link is written by someone who described how exceptional DjangoCon is in that she was never harassed. 

    So far we have exactly one documented example and TPTB took it seriously right away. To me, this hardly justifies any need for an explicit "anti-harassment" policy. In fact, all "zero-tolerance" policies are, by definition, "zero-thought" policies and quite dangerous. There is no evidence that they help and tons of evidence that they do harm and are abused - which I have already documented in the first and only (so far as I can tell) threat of invocation of the existing policy.

    By your statement "stop talking about it and show us what that would look like" It seems clear, unfortunately, that you haven't bothered to read my posts, including my very first response to the PRs in question, because I have already done just that. I'm very emphatically for an affirmative policy of inclusiveness and positive conduct which the first PR supported. I am even more emphatically against a speech and conduct code that lists banned speech and behavior which the second PR makes even worse. 

    With an affirmative policy you don't need to ban certain conduct. If someone acts outside of this policy they are quickly reminded about what kind of community group this is and offered suggestions in which they might re-work their approach in order to fit in and be more effective in their participation. If they do something that is outside of the law, witnesses can swear out a warrant against them as we are not the police, despite the appearance that some people seem to want to behave as such. I have found this kind of policy to be very effective in maintaining a high signal-to-noise ratio and makes it very clear that there is no fertile ground here in which to seed hostile acts of any kind.

-- Ben

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[Benjamin Scherrey]

Kevin,

    Again I believe your heart is in the right place but the presumption in your message is that there are people who need and deserve special protection above and beyond other members of the community. While, well intentioned, we all know how the road to hell got paved. A good policy is one that affords benefits to all members equally or it shouldn't be in place at all. That's why I propose an affirmative policy which is inclusive rather than a speech or conduct code which never works as their stated purpose would claim.

    That said, I welcome any thoughtful critiques or feedback on any of the assertions and recommendations I have made. I would especially like to know what aspect of an affirmative policy someone who supports the other kind finds deficient and have real evidence supporting their position if that is the case.

    best regards,

  -- Ben Scherrey

[kate heddleston]

I wholeheartedly support the measure to change the language and more explicitly state that behavior in discordance with the Django code of conduct outside the walls of Django events can affect participation within the walls of Django events. The community itself spans both spaces, and you cannot effectively create a safe space for community members during the week of DjangoCon while ignoring behavior at all other times. 

As for the code of conduct containing affirmative rules that lay out behavior that attendees should follow, I am also in support of that. I look forward to the PR that contains the rules and guidelines detailing recommended conference behavior.

Many of the counterarguments do not address the change at hand but the code of conduct as a whole and call for an objective application of these rules to community members. Objectivity for a set of rules regarding humans is a tall order. Even the law recognizes its lack of objectivity and has in place checks and balances; the Constitution is a great document in part because it lays forth a set of somewhat ambiguous guidelines that are open to interpretation in their application. Objectivity is not the goal with the code of conduct; the goal is to create rules that help others understand how to make our community a safe space for all people. If you are concerned with how the code of conduct is enforced, you should open a thread to discuss the checks and balances the Django community puts in place when reviewing code of conduct violations.

[barbara.shaurette]

As someone who has been the target of harassment at conferences (I've been lucky, only minor incidents for me, although the same can't be said for other of my female colleagues), I prefer explicit over implicit. If someone is a harasser outside the community, I won't feel safe encountering them in a conference setting either.

That said, I trust the discretion of the core team and the DSF membership and I'll be interested to see how they decide on the matter.

[Alex Gaynor]

When Jacob and I originally drafted the CoC, we specifically included an enumeration of some disallowed behaviors on the recommendation of the Ada Initiative -- it was their view that the list helped to minimize rules lawyering, whereby someone attempts to explain how they could not have known their behavior was disallowed.

On reflection, I completely agree with their reasoning and am very glad we included it.

Alex

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 11:43 AM, barbara.shaurette <barbara....@gmail.com> wrote:

As someone who has been the target of harassment at conferences (I've been lucky, only minor incidents for me, although the same can't be said for other of my female colleagues), I prefer explicit over implicit. If someone is a harasser outside the community, I won't feel safe encountering them in a conference setting either.

That said, I trust the discretion of the core team and the DSF membership and I'll be interested to see how they decide on the matter.

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[Jeremy Dunck]

As someone affected by an issue that would fall under the proposed change [1], I still support an explicit guideline about external behavior influencing internal acceptance.  The safety of all members is more important than the risk of misapplication of the rule.

[1] http://doubleunion.tumblr.com/post/77929475144/how-not-to-support-women-in-tech

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[Daniele Procida]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014, Alex Gaynor <alex....@gmail.com> wrote:

>When Jacob and I originally drafted the CoC, we specifically included an
>enumeration of some disallowed behaviors on the recommendation of the Ada
>Initiative -- it was their view that the list helped to minimize rules
>lawyering, whereby someone attempts to explain how they could not have
>known their behavior was disallowed.

It's important to list things like this. The fact that it's impossible to list every possible one is not a good reason not to list some.

No-one thinks that their behaviour is objectionable, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. Explicitly mentioning particular examples of behaviour helps make it harder for someone to "not realise" that what they are doing is unwelcome.

Daniele

[Stephen Burrows]

Benjamin,

Out of your three links only the 3rd describes an actual harassment occurring at a Django-related event. 

Actually, even the third link doesn't describe harassment occuring at a Django-related event. It described harassment by a Django community member at a non-Django event. And it describes an organizer flailing to know what to do because they *didn't* have a policy. I'm a little confused how the takeaway is "everything about that was fine" rather than "they should maybe have had a policy". I will certainly agree that it was better than the alternative, which would have been the organizer ignoring or dismissing her concerns.

The other two links do talk about how exceptional DjangoCon is. And part of that was that DjangoCon has an explicit code of conduct. So again, I feel like you've missed the point. Codes of conduct do work.

By my statement "stop just talking about it and show us what that would look like" I mean that you should write down the actual text of the "affirmative policy" that you keep talking about. Write down the policy. In detail. So that we can actually review what you think would be good. It's fine to talk about your principles, and I don't necessarily disagree with an affirmative policy, but right now all I'm getting from you is principles. So again, please stop just talking about it and show us what it would look like. As in, again, to be entirely explicit, write the policy you would like to see so that we can read it.

This is particularly important if you actually want constructive feedback. I can't give you feedback on something I can't see.

And please keep in mind that you are also motivated by good intentions, and we all know which road is paved with those. In other words, good intentions are not enough on any side of any argument.

Best,

Stephen

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[kate heddleston]

I also agree with listing the things people shouldn't do at conferences. Listing lines that they should stay within is good. Listing lines they shouldn't cross is also good. A code of conduct can happily have both.

[Aymeric Augustin]

On 9 sept. 2014, at 19:54, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So far we have exactly one documented example and TPTB took it seriously right away. To me, this hardly justifies any need for an explicit "anti-harassment" policy.

I believe the success of the code of conduct is measured by how rarely it is needed.

If it never needs to be brought up, then it has achieved its goal.

So thanks for confirming that it works well :-)

--
Aymeric.

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Aymeric,

    You don't believe that one should also consider how it is used? I have already documented that the single ever documented threatened use of the existing code of conduct was not to protect anyone from harassment but, in fact, was used to stifle someone's thoughtful and reasoned argument and end debate on a point. Exactly the kind of thing that I commonly see in the rest of the world where such speech and conduct codes are applied. They inevitably lead to this and I find that coercive and destructive. Evil in the name of good is twice as evil.

    I will also note that I have made several direct assertions about the positive aspects and negative aspects of certain policies. The sudden influx of people speaking in support for a speech and conduct code that enumerates forbidden activities have all chosen not to respond to any of these assertions with reasoned arguments or provide any assertions of their own backed up by evidence. None. Zero. I think that speaks very much towards the quality of their arguments and the resulting policies if their preferences are chosen. Sadly, I also anticipated this when I replied to Kevin's latest post asking for those who supported the speech code to respond to my concerns directly because the usual tactic by people wishing to impose such things is to argue around the subject rather than address the real documented problems with it. Alex gets partial credit for at least giving some specific support (the Ada group's recommendation) for why he wants it but no one has bothered to address the clear and present documented dangers of such a thing as I have argued.

    Again, getting back to the subject of the two PRs, 84 is fine but 86 is way out of line because you've then imposed a speech and conduct code on the entire universe without any context of having anything to do with Django. Nothing good can come of this.

-- Ben

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[James Bennett]

I have been involved in building and participating in and running technically-oriented groups for fifteen years. I've seen a lot of stuff.

The most common problem pattern I have seen is the "I'm not touching you" game. To understand what this means, imagine parents driving a car, with two children in the back seat. Child A keeps poking Child B, so the parents instruct Child A to stop touching Child B. A few moments later, things resume, but now Child A says "I didn't touch him, the sleeve of my shirt touched him, you didn't say the sleeve of my shirt couldn't touch him". And away we go as Child A comes up with ever more convoluted technicalities to try to keep harassing Child B while still claiming it "wasn't against the rules".

The "I'm not touching you" game is also a favorite of many types of people on the internet. Avoiding it requires policies which contain both affirmative and negative statements (i.e., lists of things encouraged/expected, lists of things forbidden) as well as a certain amount of discretion -- even, dare I say, a vague but probably large amount -- to be left in the hands of whichever person or persons will be responsible for enforcement, so that we don't end up playing "I'm not touching you" until the end of time. That little bit of discretion to step outside the stark technicalities and just bluntly deal with such people makes, in my experience at least, all the difference between a workable and an unworkable policy.

So those are things that need to be in our CoC. If they make you uncomfortable, if you don't trust the leaders of this community to handle things fairly and responsibly, if you are chilled, silenced and terrified byt the idea that harassing behavior would result in ostracism from the Django community, then perhaps the Django community is simply not the place for you, because the kind of community we want to have and the kind of community you want to have may not be compatible.

[Aymeric Augustin]

Benjamin,

Please read my email again. I did not take a side in the debate.

I didn’t say anything about the two PRs or your arguments.

I didn’t support your position but I didn’t reject it either.

Please realize that your answer expresses prejudice about my beliefs and that it paints me as a clueless person for no good reason. It attempts to force me to pick a side, and rather aggressively, while I’m not ready to do so in public.

Please consider that I’m unfamiliar with the American cultural standards that underlie this entire debate and uncomfortable with participating as a non-native speaker, as the topic is too sensitive to allow for approximative vocabulary.

That said, may I suggest kindly that you cool down a bit and read what others write?

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[Benjamin Scherrey]

Aymeric,

    I'm afraid I don't understand your protest about my reply to you. You very clearly took a position that the policy was effective because of how rarely it has had to have been invoked. You didn't make any case whatsoever to justify your belief that this was a causation relationship - in fact there is no evidence to support this, and you neglected to consider the dangers of a policy that enumerates banned speech and actions, which I have provided evidence to support a concern. Your message was a direct reply to mine, contrary to my argument, and so I replied. This is not painting you as clueless (at least not my language, anyway) but simply replying to the point you made.

   Next you then make the personal judgement, again without any basis, that I am irrational and not reading what other people have written on this topic. Well I reject that completely. Not only have I read every posting on this topic carefully, you'll see I've also researched the history of both django group archives and scoured the internet for information supporting both sides of this debate. Your reply, however, seems to suggest you really haven't bothered to read the concerns about a speech code that I have posted because it, as do almost all the other replies, completely ignores these concerns despite actual evidence supporting them. I suggest you follow your own advice.

-- Ben

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[kate heddleston]

Ben,

Aymeric has the right to opt out of this conversation at anytime if he is uncomfortable. You may continue to share your opinions on the topic to the group as a whole but there is no need to directly address him if he does not want that.

Kate

[Reinout van Rees]

On 08-09-14 09:16, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:
>
> So lets see... anyone who has done any of the following completely
> outside the context of the Django community or forums is now not welcome
> to participate:

You mention a number of things you aren't allowed to ever have done
somewhere else in your life. "He who's innocent is allowed to throw the
first stone", you might say.

What is the intention of the change-in-wording? My guess is as follows.
I remember reading some harrasment blog post two years ago. In which
someone blatantly misbehaved in a bar during a conference. Nothing was
done from the conference's side because it was after conference hours in
a non-at-the-conference bar and not at a conference-sponsored event.

To my eyes, the change of wording in the pull request only *intends* to
put a stop to the
it-was-in-a-random-bar-and-not-at-the-official-django-conference excuses.


Reading the entire thread, it doesn't seem like the intention is to
start a full-out thought police. In your opinion, wouldn't this
mailinglist thread be enough of a safeguard against unwanted use of the
pull request?


Reinout

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[Benjamin Scherrey]

James,

    I'm completely aware of the kind of situation you're describing in some technical communities. I also don't find any evidence of it whatsoever in ours, as I've pointed out repeatedly and have repeatedly asked for evidence of by those who think a speech and behavior code is justifiable. So far none has been forthcoming. You then ask "if you don't trust the leaders of this community to handle things fairly and responsibly" well my friend, that has already happened as I described before in this community. So you seem focused on the theoretical while I'm far more interested in what has actually happened.

   I'm curious to know - exactly what are the goals that people expect from a speech and conduct code? Does anyone for this actually think that such a policy is going to achieve these goals and do so without causing more harm than good? I believe, when thoughtfully considered and viewing the evidence that is publicly available to all, that they must fail. Is that not a very simple burden of evidence that any such policy should have to over come before being adopted? I should hope so and, thus far, all those supporting have completely ignored the downside and have provided no evidence supporting the need for one in our community. Other communities, perhaps, but then I don't participate in those. I like the think that the Django community, far before the existence of any such policy and continuing today, is already beyond the "I'm not touching you game". Don't break what doesn't need fixing. We really should apply a "first do no harm" test against any such policies designed to control people's behavior and speech - especially when we have the hubris to then attempt to impose such policies outside the context of Django which is exactly what the 2nd PR does.

   This last bit, however, "if you are chilled, silenced and terrified by the idea that harassing behavior would result in ostracism from the Django community" I'm afraid is personally insulting and distasteful. No one, especially me, has made any argument of the sort and it's an attempt to say "if you're against the code then you must be for that kind of behavior". My position is, as I'm sure people are tired of by now, very well documented. It's not the intention of the policy that concerns me, it is the (again documented) abuse of such that I have a very big problem with. And you seem to be perfectly willing to drop myself, and others who are very much invested in Django from the community for disagreeing and I find that rather sad. I expect you have no idea who I am but I have followed you for some time and my opinion of you has, thus far, been much higher than that.

thanx,

  -- Ben Scherrey

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[Benjamin Scherrey]

Reinout,

    Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I agree with and understand the intent. Unfortunately those with said intent seem to have elected to ignore the law of unintended consequences which I have attempted to spell out and demonstrate. Such policies and intentions aren't always practical to enforce and do more harm than good - making bad law. My experience is that a policy of affirmative inclusion accomplishes everything that can be accomplished without the negative side effects.

best,

  -- Ben

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[Benjamin Scherrey]

Kate,

    What you did there is a perfect example of how to enforce an affirmative inclusive conduct policy. My reply was not intended (and hopefully not perceived as such) to belittle him but rather to clarify the record of what my position was and the facts of my effort to support them. I will attempt to do so more generally going forward and hope that we can all concentrate on the points raised rather than personalities involved. 

Thanx,

 -- Ben

[Brenda W]

Looks like this community reached consensus several posts ago -- unless Benjamin is boss of codes of conduct, it should be merged now.

[Audrey Roy Greenfeld]

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 3:07:57 PM UTC-7, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:

James,

    I'm completely aware of the kind of situation you're describing in some technical communities. I also don't find any evidence of it whatsoever in ours, as I've pointed out repeatedly and have repeatedly asked for evidence of by those who think a speech and behavior code is justifiable. So far none has been forthcoming. You then ask "if you don't trust the leaders of this community to handle things fairly and responsibly" well my friend, that has already happened as I described before in this community. So you seem focused on the theoretical while I'm far more interested in what has actually happened.

   I'm curious to know - exactly what are the goals that people expect from a speech and conduct code? Does anyone for this actually think that such a policy is going to achieve these goals and do so without causing more harm than good?

I actually do think that more good than harm can come from this :)

I checked the diff of #86. It is no different other than adding the DSF's opinion a bit more explicitly. It says "may affect," which is an opinion. There might be better ways to word it, and the CoC might need a bit of refactoring because #86 brings in some overlapping opinion, but the overall intent is good. 

As a longtime free speech advocate, I also see no formal restrictions imposed upon my rights by the specific words in #86.

 

I believe, when thoughtfully considered and viewing the evidence that is publicly available to all, that they must fail. Is that not a very simple burden of evidence that any such policy should have to over come before being adopted?

There is enough evidence. There have sadly been serious incidents in our community that have not been reported formally out of fear. Improving the CoC to better address the problem is certainly worthwhile. It may be impossible to eliminate serious incidents entirely, but at least we can try our best.

Audrey

[Shai Berger]

Ben,

Two points:

A) Your description of the threat-of-use-of-CoC incident, which appears to be
quite central to your argument (as a piece of evidence), is, as far as I can
see, inaccurate. The person who was threatened had started out reasonable, but
later made several disrespectful and prejudicial statements; it was only then
that the CoC was raised. Your repeated comments that the CoC was used to
silence legitimate opposition reflect quite badly on the people who brought the
CoC up in that discussion; I suggest that you reconsider those.

B) I think you are misinterpreting the intentions and functions of the CoC.
First, it is not formal law but a set of guidelines. It is not comprehensive
in any way, and not expected to be applied by machines; you made a logical
jump from "bad behavior outside Django fora may have consequences within" to
"telling a dirty joke to your friends will get you banned from conferences".
That is a serious leap of (lack of) faith. Second, the CoC is not intended to
transform the community -- rather, it expresses and explicates the standards
already in force. The same is true for the addition in PR 86, as has been
noted in its description.

Shai.

[Benjamin Scherrey]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 5:43 AM, Audrey Roy Greenfeld <aud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 3:07:57 PM UTC-7, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:

   I'm curious to know - exactly what are the goals that people expect from a speech and conduct code? Does anyone for this actually think that such a policy is going to achieve these goals and do so without causing more harm than good?

I actually do think that more good than harm can come from this :)

Thinking and wishing do not constitute support for a position, especially when evidence to the contrary have already been presented.

I checked the diff of #86. It is no different other than adding the DSF's opinion a bit more explicitly. It says "may affect," which is an opinion. There might be better ways to word it, and the CoC might need a bit of refactoring because #86 brings in some overlapping opinion, but the overall intent is good. 

 

Again no one is arguing with the presumed intent. It is the unintended consequences that are of concern. I'm glad you agree that it needs "refactoring" but no such modifications that resolve these concerns come to my mind. I welcome any efforts.

As a longtime free speech advocate, I also see no formal restrictions imposed upon my rights by the specific words in #86.

That's because they're not formal, they are implied and very real as the situation has already happened the one and only time the policy has been invoked by TPTB. Does this bother no one but me? As a free speech advocate one should recognize that no one has the right to not be offended as people choose what does and does not offend them. An affirmative policy works best in preventing the initiation of behavior or speech that does not attempt to be beneficial to the community as a whole. That is ultimately the best that can be achieved through policy and a worthy goal.

 

 

I believe, when thoughtfully considered and viewing the evidence that is publicly available to all, that they must fail. Is that not a very simple burden of evidence that any such policy should have to over come before being adopted?

There is enough evidence. There have sadly been serious incidents in our community that have not been reported formally out of fear. Improving the CoC to better address the problem is certainly worthwhile. It may be impossible to eliminate serious incidents entirely, but at least we can try our best.

I'm sorry but this is not evidence, it is hearsay or, at best, conjecture. It cannot be debated and determined what, if any policy, could have had a positive impact in either preventing the incident or improving its outcome ex-post-facto. I've asked for such evidence and received exactly none. Nothing is preventing anyone from providing documentation of such specific incidences which could easily have names modified to protect those involved. I would argue any changes to a CoC should have a reasonable and justifiable (through evidence) expectation of benefit without causing harm. I have made an evidence-backed case that #86 fails on this point. No one has done the contrary.

-- Ben 

Audrey

 

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 2:51 AM, James Bennett <ubern...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have been involved in building and participating in and running technically-oriented groups for fifteen years. I've seen a lot of stuff.

The most common problem pattern I have seen is the "I'm not touching you" game. To understand what this means, imagine parents driving a car, with two children in the back seat. Child A keeps poking Child B, so the parents instruct Child A to stop touching Child B. A few moments later, things resume, but now Child A says "I didn't touch him, the sleeve of my shirt touched him, you didn't say the sleeve of my shirt couldn't touch him". And away we go as Child A comes up with ever more convoluted technicalities to try to keep harassing Child B while still claiming it "wasn't against the rules".

The "I'm not touching you" game is also a favorite of many types of people on the internet. Avoiding it requires policies which contain both affirmative and negative statements (i.e., lists of things encouraged/expected, lists of things forbidden) as well as a certain amount of discretion -- even, dare I say, a vague but probably large amount -- to be left in the hands of whichever person or persons will be responsible for enforcement, so that we don't end up playing "I'm not touching you" until the end of time. That little bit of discretion to step outside the stark technicalities and just bluntly deal with such people makes, in my experience at least, all the difference between a workable and an unworkable policy.

So those are things that need to be in our CoC. If they make you uncomfortable, if you don't trust the leaders of this community to handle things fairly and responsibly, if you are chilled, silenced and terrified byt the idea that harassing behavior would result in ostracism from the Django community, then perhaps the Django community is simply not the place for you, because the kind of community we want to have and the kind of community you want to have may not be compatible.

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[Benjamin Scherrey]

Hi Shai,

    I really appreciate you for being the first person to directly respond to this most critical issue in this debate. You are correct, this incident is quite central to my point and concern. However, I have again reviewed the group thread under discussion where the incident occurred and found absolutely nothing that comes close to violating the CoC from the person who was quite directly threatened to either shut up or be banned. It doesn't get much clearer than that. 

    I also agree that this reflects very poorly on the person invoking the CoC, a person that I have admired and respected for some time. My personal belief is that this person was reacting more to the general flame war set off by others not part of the community but, unfortunately, misapplied it to a person who was giving very on-topic, valid, and constructive debate in a respectful manner. In fact this person was personally attacked multiple times but refused to be baited and reply in kind to (apparently) her attackers. But that's how these things go and good people get hurt. Absolutely no one benefited and the attempt to apply the CoC inappropriately was also called out by another person.

    You seem to disagree with that assessment. I would welcome any quotes from this person that you feel are, in context, contrary to the CoC because I don't find them. And remember that we are a world community and cannot mis-apply or impose western political correctness on speech that is germane and relevant to the topic.

    Regarding your second paragraph, I don't disagree with the intent (but am highly dubious as to its actual outcome) but I'd simply ask what about a solely affirmative speech policy does not adequately (and better) accomplish what you desire? There is much downside to an enumerated speech/behavior policy and, as of yet, no justification for going beyond a more positive direction. I'm curious to hear your views on this.

  best regards,

  -- Ben Scherrey

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[James Bennett]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 6:25 PM, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:

    I really appreciate you for being the first person to directly respond to this most critical issue in this debate. You are correct, this incident is quite central to my point and concern. However, I have again reviewed the group thread under discussion where the incident occurred and found absolutely nothing that comes close to violating the CoC from the person who was quite directly threatened to either shut up or be banned. It doesn't get much clearer than that. 

I went back and took a look at the thread. The comments were heated, but specifically I see things like referring to the terms "person of color" and "PoC" as "ridiculous", followed up by an example meant to mock the terms.

Those are terms which are widely used by people both to self-identify and to talk about issues they face as a result of their racial background. If you believe that calling it "ridiculous" and mocking it is acceptable behavior, then I think the divide between your conception of "acceptable" and the community's definition of "acceptable" may be a bit too large for any meaningful discussion to take place.

[Benjamin Scherrey]

The lead in to that post was "I think a lot of recent changes in the language are harmful. Many common, short, clear, and concise words and phrases are being replaces with long, vague, sterile versions. Not only in the IT field, but everywhere." and then the poster went on to demonstrate her case with the example of the logically misapplied term "person of color" that is now popular amongst some minorities in the USA and probably other western countries. In the context of the debate and in truthful fact the person was being empathetic and not biased in any way. In fact she was pointing out how the term itself is biased and making a very good point as well. It was entirely germane to the speech concerns she raised and did not attack any race or person at all. Unfortunately she hit one of the politically correct landmines and those with an American-bias immediately jumped on her for it quite inappropriately. The person who called out the attempt to misapply the CoC on her also made this point.

I'm American but have lived around the world and currently reside in Thailand. I have had many (actually almost every once they learn I'm American) mixed and white S. Africans ask me if they lived in America could they be considered African Americans as well. Interesting question. My friends from Liberia, West Africa wonder in amazement at the terms Americans use to describe black people who have clearly never been to Africa. If one leaves their bias behind they will discover why many people find these terms absurd and misapplied. None of this makes them racist.

So, yes, in the context of the debate that was going on the CoC was invoked to kill speech neither intended to insult anyone and was clearly making a point germane to the core issue of the discussion of concerns about imposing American political correctness on the group. Turns out she was right.

Could TPTB directed the conversation another way? Yes. But rather than use reason, this person elected to use the threat of force against this person who was espousing a concern in the interest of the community and making a genuine attempt to make the community a better place.

-- Ben

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[holdenweb]

Just for the record, I've been running DjangoCon for five years now and we've had anti-harassment policies in place for four of them in the shape of a publicized code of conduct.

I have no information to confirm your belief, but I can say with absolute truth that nobody has ever, despite the policy's including the telephone numbers of both a male and a female organizer, reported any issue of harassment at DjangoCon while I've been running it. Had such incidents been reported they would most certainly have ben actioned, though there is no "penal code" detailing specific punishments for specific offenses - each case must be treated on its circumstances.

regards

 Steve

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 10:27:31 AM UTC-7, Stephen Burrows wrote:

Benjamin,

I believe there have been serious issues with harassment of women specifically at previous DjangoCons (though there may not be mention of it on the mailing lists.) It has definitely been a major issue at other tech conferences and tech meetups. That was a major factor in the recent push in the tech world to have better anti-harassment / code of conduct policies. See also: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents (and the rest of the wiki, really).

Here is a short selection of other links that talk about this issue, with various relations to Django / DjangoCon specifically.

http://geekfeminism.org/2013/08/15/that-time-i-wasnt-harassed-at-a-conference/

http://www.caktusgroup.com/blog/2012/05/24/narrowing-gender-gap-open-source-community/

http://juliaelman.com/blog/2012/jun/3/lets-get-little-louder/

I could just keep going, but I don't want to overwhelm people (slash you) with too many links. If you want more, you can use google.

If you think a policy like this doesn't need to exist, you are IMO, frankly, very wrong. But if you think it just needs to be written differently, stop talking about it and show us what that would look like!

--Stephen

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 9:33 AM, Kevin Daum <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm going to attempt to reach out to some folks who I think might be more likely than us to benefit from a code of conduct and ask if they have anything to add. I'm not mounting a public campaign, I just think we're missing some important perspectives. 

On Tuesday, September 9, 2014 3:15:10 AM UTC-4, Robert Grant wrote:

Good email. This one won't be that good.

Boiling my verbose email down to two sentences:

We seem to already have a private group of people who make decisions in secret and pronounce a verdict on issues, and who can to a large extent control the community. If this is the case, and they already have total control should they choose to exercise it, a Django ASBO won't give any extra power over - and thus protection against - griefers/bullies/whatever.

Just to hedge my bets, if the group does decide to create the ASBO, could it be called the Anti-Social Django Act?

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 7:33 AM, Benjamin Scherrey <prote...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Kevin,

   And thanx for responding to my question about the need for such a policy with Django. Last night, as I had not yet had a response from anyone about this question I searched the archives of both django groups looking for any events or circumstances in which the code of conduct was invoked as I had no personal recollection of any such thing. I found some innocuous reference in the django-users group (wrongly suggesting that this coming policy was going to increase female participation) and in django-developers, one actual circumstance where its use was threatened - not surprisingly as part of the one example you provided that actually has anything to do at all with the Django community. Sadly, it's invocation was precisely used in the manner that I had feared - to stifle debate and threaten a person who was making valid and reasonable arguments (no doubt in the middle of a flame war but he/she wasn't the flamer). When I saw the name of the person who invoked the code of conduct I was even more disappointed as it was someone that I otherwise have a profound respect for.

    Other than this I was not surprised to see zero evidence for the need for such a policy as there don't seem to be any threatening events of the like that your email raises. These problems may exist elsewhere but not amongst the general django community that I've ever seen. 

    Understand my background. I own a software development company that was a VERY early adopter of Django way before the 1.0 days. I expect I was certainly one of the first thousand developers to use Django in a real-life situation once it got outside of the newspaper where it was created. My company is one of the first to build commercial systems for clients on top of Django. My staff even has a few little commits into the django code base over the years, although minor, but we were proud nonetheless to be able to contribute in some small way. I've attended my share of PyCons (prior to the invention of DjangoCon which I hope to attend one day) and have always found the community very open and inclusive of all types. This is a Good Thing (TM). I've even sent 5 staff to the event, four of which happened to be women. My team now consists of 34+ people, all but two of which are in a technical capacity. WE are geeks who seek out other geeks who want to be appreciated solely based on merit. We happen to have about a 40% female colleague share and explicitly do NOT have a diversity policy (nor will we ever have an HR department but that's another story). I simply am strong at identifying and attracting people with strong potential and the market is so extremely competitive that one must leave no stone unturned in order to find the best. THAT is the one way that a more inclusive group will come into being and for the right reasons.

    So I have actually achieved what everyone is crying out for and can't seem to figure how to accomplish. It wasn't difficult. I'm here to tell you that diversity policies and codes of conduct, in my experience consulting to dozens of commercial, government, and educational organizations in my 30+ years of experience have never once helped achieve their stated goals and, many times, have hurt both the organization and it's intended beneficiaries. True to my experience, the one threatened invocation of the code of conduct for Django fits right in line with my experience of such policies, sadly. 

    Therefore, I hope everyone appreciates that I'm fully invested in Django and attracting the best & brightest into our community. I think you'll see Kevin, that I supported your first PR but have very grave concerns about the second for the reasons I've already gone into great detail about. I do believe completely that both were put forward with good intentions. I'm all for policies that put forward good examples of appreciated behavior and add to the general sense of inclusiveness which I think your first one does. It scares the hell out of me when people start enumerating banned conduct and speech - and I wish more people understood the issue as well as I about why. That's why I'm quite vocal about this.

    Thanx for your time and interest,

   -- Ben Scherrey

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Kevin Daum <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Russ, I assumed as much, having read https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/changes/. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps Daniele's keynote talk at Djangocon this year, combined with the already very good Django code of conduct, caused me to assume too much of this community's progression towards appreciating both the need of diversity in tech and the actual conditions required to bring that about. 

Benjamin, you asked if there is an actual problem that needs solving. Yes. Absolutely. It is a systemic one within the world of software development and I am excited to be a part of a particular software development community that is taking proactive steps towards the goal of a safe, supportive environment for everyone who is working towards that same goal. The quality of our software will reflect the quality of our community. Here is just a tiny sample of reading for any who are interested in learning why these kinds of policies are so important:

1. See the recent case of Anita Sarkeesian, which is one sort of situation I have in mind when writing down a policy such as this:
   https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/504718160902492160/photo/1
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/29/gaming-vlogger-anita-sarkeesian-is-forced-from-home-after-receiving-harrowing-death-threats/
2. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/abuse-as-ddos, including this bit: "Just like with computer security, you should have plans in place to identify and address attacks. At conferences, user groups, and other events, this can take the form of a code of conduct along with a policy for enforcement. In workplaces, this often takes the form of an employee handbook. These types of policies help mitigate attacks when they happen, so that decisions don’t have to be made on the fly when something goes wrong. These policies are far from perfect fixes for everything, but they’re better than doing nothing."
3. http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-open-source-identity-crisis. By the way, I'm proud that the one time this author links to something django-related, it's this situation in which the core devs wisely and quickly made the right choice.

On Monday, September 8, 2014 9:37:16 PM UTC-4, Russell Keith-Magee wrote:

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for these suggestions.

By way of settings expectations - a patch of this nature has a little more procedural overhead than a normal patch, because it requires a change to our community policies. Regardless of the merit (or otherwise) of a specific proposal, a change to these policies needs to be ratified by the core team and the DSF membership before it goes into effect.

Discussions on the ticket itself from people outside those groups is definitely welcome - the broader opinion and attitudes of the community will be considered as part of the ratification process. But it's not something that a small group of people can quickly agree on and commit. 

Russ %-)

On Sun, Sep 7, 2014 at 9:10 AM, Kevin Daum <kevin...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have submitted two pull requests for the code of conduct:

• #84, to let folks who belong to a wide variety of social identities know that yes, even they are welcome here, and
• #86, to make explicit the currently implicit policy that someone's abusive behavior outside the django community may have an adverse effect on their ability to participate within the django community.

I welcome your feedback. 

Thanks,

Kevin Daum

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[Josh Smeaton]

(I found I've said "correct me if I'm wrong" in nearly every paragraph I've written - so please, correct anything below that you don't agree with)

I've been wanting to stay out of this conversation because, as Aymeric put it, it is a very sensitive topic. But I've got a few things to say.

It seems like the main issue is that:

1) Portions of the django community would like the code of conduct to guide decision makers when particularly egregious actors outside of django spaces wish to participate within django spaces.

2) Different portions of the django community are worried that (some of) the code of conduct rules attempt to enforce professional behaviour in non-professional environments. (As an aside, I think some people are unaware that certain settings *are* professional environments, like after-work drinks with colleagues).

An example brought up previously showed a twitter feed with outright threats and abuse. I think that we can all agree that that particular person would not be welcome at a django event.

However, I don't think repeating a joke to a friend at lunch on a weekend, that is overheard, should preclude someone from participating at an event. I would hope that we'd all agree to this too.

I act in a professional manner when I'm at work, a workplace function, or any kind of industry event. I act in a respectful manner when I'm around family. I do not hold myself to those standards when I'm with friends in private or semi-private environments - and I would hope that the django community wouldn't either.

It's ok to say that "discretion" can be applied by the relevant organiser - but as others feel that a list of exclusions should apply to behaviour, I feel that a list of exclusions could be applied to "outside these spaces" if the rest of #86 was merged.

Is there language we could use that would allow organisers at a conference to effectively deny entry to someone that threatens and abuses via twitter, yet doesn't exclude someone that isn't behaving professionally outside of a professional environment? Would that even solve the problem being discussed?

Regards,

Josh

[Josh Smeaton]

Ben,

I know you haven't advocated the removal of the CoC (or #84 for that matter), but you've questioned speech and behaviour limitations upthread, so I thought I would include my thougths of a CoC in general.

Just because the code of conduct hasn't been used for intervention (forgetting the one instance you've mentioned for now), it doesn't mean that it's not a useful tool to have. I would like to think that common sense would prevail, but we've seen instances in similar communities where it has not. You should not (IMO) need a CoC to tell you not to tell sexual jokes at a conference. The organisers should not need (IMO) a CoC to justify intervention. 

But certain groups of people feel safer or more included attending events where they feel like professional behaviour is encouraged and enforced where necessary. Some attendees that may not have a complete idea of what constitutes professional behaviour can learn from the CoC. And organisers have clear direction (authority) of what constitutes desirable behaviour. I, personally, feel that calling out specific negative behaviour is useful for the educational aspect. It is clear that some people have, at other conferences, not been aware that their behaviour was inappropriate. Codifying certain examples of undesirable behaviour seems like a good thing to me.

The language of #86 does not introduce new "examples" of positive or negative behaviour though. It specifically tries to apply the existing code to non-django spaces, so I think that debating the merits of inclusive or exclusive behaviour should probably belong to a separate discussion.

Regards,

Josh

[Kevin Daum]

Benjamin (and all others still paying attention),

I love the Django code of conduct. It's not perfect but it's quite good. How does a person who claims one or even many historically marginalized identities know that the Django community is a safe place for them without a published and enforced code of conduct? It can be scary enough to enter into a field as white- (at least here in the U.S.) and male-dominated as software development even with a code. Without one, you have no guarantee that _safety_ is going to be given a higher priority than making sure those with power and privilege have the freedom to say whatever they want, whenever they want. 

I'm glad that you're staff is comprised of 40% women. That is truly something to be applauded. It's something I have never been able to achieve myself and I'd be interested in hearing (elsewhere, not in this thread) how you were able to do that. I hope that those women feel safe in their working environment. I hope that when harassment does occur (let's be honest, it's a matter of when, not if), they are not burdened with both the pain of what they've experienced _and_ the difficulty of having to figure out to whom to report it and how. I hope their complaints will be taken seriously. 

You want people to address your warning against unintended consequences. Here goes. I think you're exaggerating this risk. We are not trying to enforce an anti-social behavior code on the entire universe for all time. What #86 does, as I noted in the commit message, is make an already implicit policy explicit. It simply says, in deliberately vague language, that if a member of the Django community is treated abusively by another member of the Django community _outside_ a Django forum and that abuse is reported to the conduct committee, the committee will not reject the report outright simply on the basis of where the alleged abuse occurred. The committee will take the report seriously and _may_ choose to act upon it. As Daniele said early in this discussion, the language and the intent provide plenty of room for a measured and proportionate response, which may, as has been said, be no response. 

You want people to address your conviction that affirmative language is better. Here goes. I agree with you that affirmative language is most helpful. It's certainly much more enjoyable to read and discuss since it reflects the positive vision of where we _want_ to be. On the other hand I also agree with the Ada initiative and others in this thread that the list of don'ts is also necessary, for the reasons that have already been stated ("I'm not touching you," rule lawyering, etc.). As wonderful and socially advanced as you think the Django community is, surely even you can agree that we cannot control who will be entering the community in the future. In fact, that's what we all want, right? We want a community open to all. Some of those people entering the community in the future _may_ need the don'ts spelled out for them. It may not be their fault, either. They may simply have never had helpful and constructive relationships with people very different from themselves modeled for them. 

Or consider presenters. Humor is an excellent method of holding an audience's attention. It's handy for a presenter to have a published CoC so they know which jokes are appropriate in this community and which to avoid. Heck, _I_ need the CoC for that. 

Ultimately what this comes down to is that those of use with power and privilege are going to have to give some of that up in order to share it with those who haven't historically had it. Just one example of this playing out in practice is giving up some of my right to free speech in order to ensure that others feel welcome. For me, this looks like spending time  reflecting on the words I use and how they affect people very different than myself _and then changing my words_. Since that takes a lot of effort, I won't always be doing it; therefore I expect to be called out on using oppressive language, knowing I will be unlearning my conscious and unconscious prejudices all my life. I hope to respond to such corrections in a way that encourages folks to keep being honest about how they experience the community. This is the cost of creating and maintaining an inclusive community. 

I do not think need we need detailed records of reported abuse in order to justify this change. Even if zero abuse has ever happened in the Django community (which we all know not to be true, since we are humans and we're _all_ jerks sometimes), it's my position that this change is still valid and important. Why should we wait for something horrible to happen in order to put _the ability_ to offer protections in place? And, let's remember, the change is simply making explicit what is already policy. It's important to make it explicit because someone may not have known that they could report abuse that occurred elsewhere. Perhaps they've been avoiding Django gatherings because of abuse they've experienced; this might provide a way back for them. 

There. I have attempted to address the complaints you most consistently bring up and accuse us of not addressing directly. I expect you to quickly find problems with everything I've said. That's fine, but I'll say now that I may not respond. This discussion has taken a lot of time to follow and has been mentally and emotionally exhausting. I have a busy week and this may not fit into it anymore. What I don't expect is for you to submit a pull request offering the affirmative, positive reworking of the CoC that you have proposed, so you have an opportunity to surprise me there. Regardless, your criticism has provided me with the opportunity to more thoroughly think through and explain my rationale behind this change. For that I thank you. 

Kevin

[Josh Smeaton]

Kevin,

> It simply says, in deliberately vague language, that if a member of the Django community is treated abusively by another member of the Django community _outside_ a Django forum and that abuse is reported to the conduct committee, the committee will not reject the report outright simply on the basis of where the alleged abuse occurred

Perhaps the wording could then be closer to the intent. Something like "if a member of the Django community is treated abusively by another member of the Django community outside of a Django forum, and is reported, it will warrant investigation and may result in action". I think that language is more precise, and gets around the problems stated by Ben. If there is agreement, I'll be happy to open a PR against #86.

>  I expect you to quickly find problems with everything I've said.

I don't think this is particularly fair. Ben has been very vocal (and mostly solo), but he has been quite respectful to the people he is discussing the topic with.

Regards,

Josh

[Daniele Procida]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2014, Josh Smeaton <josh.s...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Perhaps the wording could then be closer to the intent. Something like "if
>a member of the Django community is treated abusively by another member of
>the Django community outside of a Django forum, and is reported, it will
>warrant investigation and may result in action".

The problematic behaviour doesn't need to be reported, and it doesn't need to be either by a member of the community or towards a member of the community.

I know at least a couple of individuals whose behaviour in other spaces means that they would be watched very closely if they turned up at one of our events, even if they haven't yet caused any Django-related problems.

Of course it's true that reported problems will be investigated, but that process is described in some detail already elsewhere.

Daniele

[Benjamin Scherrey]

Hi Josh,

    I agree with and understand your sentiments. However, you are basically arguing that since we cannot count on the common sense of the user community to behave professionally in professional environments, we must therefore count on the commonsense of TPTB who will enforce a speech and behavior code. This, in real life, never works out that way in my experience however well intended and the risks from consequences of a mistake of enforcement are far greater than a mistake of violation. I believe strongly that an affirmative policy is more than enough to inject a good bit of common sense and to provide a referral point to remind someone who seems to be crossing the line on how to better cooperate with the community. The potential for abuse is too high for a speech and behavior code as I believe I have already demonstrated in the one real life example of its invocation. Not sure what your justification for forgetting this instance is but I think it's critical evidence against a speech/behavior code - especially then opening its scope to non-Django related contexts.

    Whenever there is any doubt, always side with freedom. If, as you suggest, these are intended to be guidelines then people who make a simple mistake can be reminded and act accordingly which benefits everyone with a simple affirmative policy. If, instead, these are intended as zero tolerance principles then a small mistake gets overblown into something way more than it is and the entire community is damaged by it. This is exactly what a speech and behavior code ends up producing. We have one in place now. It's been abused once already. I'm not yet arguing for its elimination but let's certainly not expand it. Finally, I would also point out that the language of the existing code does not fit my understanding of your interpretation so am I correct in assuming you would want it clarified and perhaps softened?

thanx,

  -- Ben

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[Stephen Burrows]

Benjamin,

1. It's not a zero-tolerance policy, and it never has been. So all of your arguments based on that idea are null and void.

2. The only instance of "abuse" of the policy relates to behavior that was inappropriate even given cultural differences. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's okay to ridicule it. If Americans were to display similar behavior towards personal identities in other countries, I would hope that the CoC would be applied there as well.

3. The very first link that I provided you (to the timeline of incidents) [1] provided plenty of proof that Django needs a code of conduct. I still don't know if you bothered to look at it before complaining that nobody had offered you proof.

Yes, these events are not specifically in the Django sphere. But Django does not exist in a vacuum. It will continue to not exist in a vacuum. The issues of the tech world at large will affect us, and it's useful to have a document stating our position to let people know that this sphere is different.

If you want more information / proof / reasoning / whatever, I again highly recommend reading the rest of the geek feminism wiki (that the timeline of incidents is in). There is plenty of information there, and I don't feel like repeating it.

4. Write the policy you want to see. Submit a pull request. Scratch your itch. If this really bothers you so much, and you really think that an affirmative policy would be better, and you have enough free time to keep responding at such length to this thread, then you have enough time to actually write a policy down and share it with everyone, to actually try to convince people to switch to it.

Multiple people have asked you to do this. Your response? To complain that nobody is listening to your pleas to have an affirmative policy, and to repeat how much better an affirmative policy would be.

This kind of talk is cheap. And it's impossible to respond to. Because even if affirmative policies were strictly better – which I would dispute, and which other people have disputed, for various reasons which they have given – even then, there would be no way for people to evaluate whether that was the case.

Because the main person who's arguing that point refuses to provide a concrete example.

------

I don't really care whether you respond to the first two points. I'm more including them as information for you regarding my positions. I don't expect you to convince me (given your arguments so far) and I don't expect me to convince you (given your responses to people so far). And I'm fine with that. I almost don't want to include them, but I don't want you to accuse me of ignoring your arguments.

But please do take the time to actually consider points 3 & 4. And by consider I mean that I hope you'll actually read through geek feminism and that you'll actually write up the PR for an "affirmative" CoC so that people can actually have something to review.

And if you have to pick one, read the geek feminism wiki.

Best,

Stephen

[1] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

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[Kevin Daum]

On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 10:39:51 AM UTC-4, Josh Smeaton wrote:

Kevin,

> It simply says, in deliberately vague language, that if a member of the Django community is treated abusively by another member of the Django community _outside_ a Django forum and that abuse is reported to the conduct committee, the committee will not reject the report outright simply on the basis of where the alleged abuse occurred

Perhaps the wording could then be closer to the intent. Something like "if a member of the Django community is treated abusively by another member of the Django community outside of a Django forum, and is reported, it will warrant investigation and may result in action". I think that language is more precise, and gets around the problems stated by Ben. If there is agreement, I'll be happy to open a PR against #86.

I probably made that example too specific. I had Reinout's bar in mind when writing it. However, I agree with Daniele that the statement should allow the conduct committee to be responsive to a variety of abusive situations as those actors come into contact with the django community. 

 

>  I expect you to quickly find problems with everything I've said.

I don't think this is particularly fair. Ben has been very vocal (and mostly solo), but he has been quite respectful to the people he is discussing the topic with.

It was my expectation but was coming from frustration and I probably shouldn't have written it down. Benjamin, I apologize for making this public negative assumption about your approach. Thank you for surprising me on this one. 

[Andrew Pinkham]

Hi,
I am not qualified enough to express an opinion on the matter of the DCoC. However, I have a few questions:

- Have we consulted a psychologist or a specialist on the topics of community inclusion and protection? Their knowledge/research could be instrumental in determining the best way to write and implement a code of conduct.

- Am I correct in assuming that the sole aforementioned invocation of the DCoC was the following?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/Y_Tq7w4PAeI/WurT7J3Rcd0J

- Would it be correct to state that, with or without this wording, the results of breaking the DCoC would be identical? Is it correct to say that the new wording is for the benefit of being clear and open, such that new members better understand the rules?

- These rules have been referred to several times as guidelines to adhere to. Would it be in the interest of the community to say as much on the DCoC webpage (rather than or alongside "rules")?

- The issue of Free Speech (I'm assuming the American definition), has been invoked a few times. In what way would this new clause inhibit Free Speech?

Thanks you,
Andrew

[Russell Keith-Magee]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 6:11 AM, Andrew Pinkham <m...@andrewsforge.com> wrote:

Hi,
I am not qualified enough to express an opinion on the matter of the DCoC. However, I have a few questions:

- Have we consulted a psychologist or a specialist on the topics of community inclusion and protection? Their knowledge/research could be instrumental in determining the best way to write and implement a code of conduct.

 

Yes. The original draft text came from the "Speak Up" project; the Ada Initiative - a specialist group dealing with inclusivity and engagement of women in technical spaces - was consulted during the drafting process, and their suggestions (such as specifically enumerating infringing behaviours) were incorporated into the text.

- Am I correct in assuming that the sole aforementioned invocation of the DCoC was the following?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/Y_Tq7w4PAeI/WurT7J3Rcd0J

 

- Would it be correct to state that, with or without this wording, the results of breaking the DCoC would be identical? Is it correct to say that the new wording is for the benefit of being clear and open, such that new members better understand the rules?

 

I believe so. One of the issues that has been referred to the Code of Conduct committee was specifically about activities outside "official" Django spaces. These changes serve to clarify the fact that we don't turn a blind eye to infringing activities just because they weren't conducted "on our turf".

- These rules have been referred to several times as guidelines to adhere to. Would it be in the interest of the community to say as much on the DCoC webpage (rather than or alongside "rules")?

The current text (https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/) does say something to this effect; specifically, Paragraph 3: "This isn’t an exhaustive list of things that you can’t do. Rather, take it in the spirit in which it’s intended - a guide to make it easier to enrich all of us and the technical communities in which we participate."

Of course, P2 also refers to the document as being a set of "rules". Altering P2 (or the updated location as a result of PR#84) to say "This code" rather than "these rules" makes sense to me.

Yours,

Russ Magee %-)

[Elena Williams]

Additional points:

Firstly #86 is probably already happening informally.

It is fair to be "explicit" (as Barbara suggested), for the people who this may effect.

For example, I have been quietly told to steer clear of certain individuals with known poor behavior and in turn passed such information on to others (this may be prejudicial, but sorry, there's no way I wouldn't do everything I can to protect younger females in the community). 

Secondly, most harassment does not get reported -- if you think otherwise please ask around. Personally I'm so jaded, I'd probably never report anything that didn't require being reported to the cops (despite there having been colourful incidences, even in this community). When I was in my early 20s I had the scarring experience of having been forced to report workplace harassment (someone else observed) and it driving me out of the job. And the rest. Besides even if I wanted to report something I wouldn't really know how to and I'd be embarrassed, shy and undoubtedly play it down. 

Finally in my extremely personal opinion I'm .. skeptical about how effective CoCs are at handing individual incidents BUT strong evidence suggests a correlation between CoC use and female attendance -- better than anything else that's ever been attempted and that's good enough for me (to fight for).

---
Elena :)
@elequ

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