proposal, take 2

[Mitchell Baker]

I'm not done, but want to get this piece out there. i want to talk to
Deb about conflicts but she's on vacation today. So I'm posting this
rewritten version, even though it doesn't have the conflict and
resolutions sessions fleshed out. i've gotten as far as raising issues.
But I suspect there is a lot about what happens after that that
interacts with employment law, and i want to learn something about that
first.

apologies for the poor formatting. I haven't had time to think about a
wiki.


Code of Conduct

The Mozilla Code of Conduct describes the type of community we are
building. It works in conjunction with
-- the Anti-Harassment/Discrimination Policy which sets out protections
and obligations of employees, and is crafted with specific
jurisdictional legal definitions and requirements in mind.
-- Mozilla groups for escalation and dispute resolution.

This Code of Conduct covers our behaviour as members of the Mozilla
Community, in forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, bug,
event, public meeting or private correspondence.


Inclusiveness and Diversity

Mozilla is an inclusive organization. We welcome and support diversity,
including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.

Mozilla-based activities should be inclusive and should support
diversity, including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity,
gender, gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.

Some Mozillians may identify with activities or organizations that do
not support the same inclusion and diversity standards as Mozilla.
When this is the case:

(a) support for exclusionary practices must not be carried into
Mozilla activities.
(b) support for exclusionary practices in non-Mozilla
activities should not be expressed in Mozilla spaces.
(c) when if (a) and (b) are met, other Mozillians should treat
this as a private matter, not a Mozilla issue.

Interaction Style

Be considerate. [link to material Deb prepared]
Be respectful. [link to material Deb prepared]
Be collaborative. [link to material Deb prepared]
Try to understand different perspectives
Anger should not lead to threats of violence [link to something re
humor and its risks?]
Empower others. [link to material tbd. this would include
something about openness.]

First, if you are comfortable having a direct talk with the other
person, this is a good way to start.
If you're not comfortable having a direct conversation, identify one or
more people you trust. It will be helpful to identify whether the
conflict is because someone is flaming, or behaving in a troll like
manner or just won't listen? Or is it because the person has touched on
a personal or identity issue?
The Conductors group was formed to deal with difficult communications;
and with helping people learn how to communicate in a more productive
way. So if the issue is someone is communications style the Conductors
are a good place to start. You can contact the group, or any member of
it. If you don't know anyone in the group ask people you trust for a
recommendation to someone in the group. Or you can talk to the module
owner Stormy Peters. Stormy is the module owner because she has a lot
of experience but also because of her discretion. She may or may not be
able to help you resolve the issue, but discretion should not be an
issue. If you're not comfortable with anyone in the Conductors group
that's an issue for the Module Ownership peers. Once again you can
contact the group or any particular member of it. If that still
doesn't lead to anyone you trust to raise the issue then Mitchell is
probably the last resort.

If the issue is a personal identity issue the options above are of
course all still available. In addition, [NOTE: deb is on vacation, so
i need to leave a place-holder her until I can talk to her about this.]

[Mitchell Baker]

Missed a header

Raising Issues

[Tim Chevalier]

On Apr 5, 5:39 pm, Mitchell Baker <mitch...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> Inclusiveness and Diversity
>
> Mozilla is an inclusive organization.  We welcome and support diversity,
> including (without limitation)  in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
> gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.

Is there a reason why "sexual orientation" was omitted?

Cheers,
Tim

[Mitchell Baker]

no reason, i made a pass at shortening. I think Deb added it to the
formatted version:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Code_of_Conduct/V2Draft

ml

[Fred Wenzel]

Two formal nits: Is there a reason why we need to put the lengthy list
of personal characteristics in there twice?

And "Inclusiveness and Diversity", no. 3 reads "when if", is that
intentional?

Thanks,
Fred

On Thu Apr 5 19:23:20 2012, Mitchell Baker wrote:
> On 4/5/12 6:17 PM, Tim Chevalier wrote:

[Asa Dotzler]

If we're going to have an explicit list, (which I'm not in favor of) I
think we had better at least include disability, color, sex, and
national origin. They seem as or more important than some on the current
list.

- A

[Fred Wenzel]

On Thu Apr 5 19:57:49 2012, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> On 4/5/2012 7:23 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:

> If we're going to have an explicit list, (which I'm not in favor of) I
> think we had better at least include disability, color, sex, and
> national origin. They seem as or more important than some on the
> current list.

I am also not in favor of an explicit list.

That said, I believe "color" and "race" are meant to represent the same
thing, as do "gender" and "sex", and "ethnicity" and "national origin".
So the only one really missing from the ones you list is disability
(which I agree should be covered, if we're going to have to have an
explicit list in the first place).

~F

[Kyle Huey]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 8:08 PM, Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> That said, I believe "color" and "race" are meant to represent the same
> thing, as do "gender" and "sex", and "ethnicity" and "national origin".
> So the only one really missing from the ones you list is disability
> (which I agree should be covered, if we're going to have to have an
> explicit list in the first place).
>

Er, no. None of the pairs you provided are the same thing.

- Kyle

[L. David Baron]

On Thursday 2012-04-05 20:08 -0700, Fred Wenzel wrote:
> That said, I believe "color" and "race" are meant to represent the same
> thing, as do "gender" and "sex", and "ethnicity" and "national origin".
> So the only one really missing from the ones you list is disability
> (which I agree should be covered, if we're going to have to have an
> explicit list in the first place).

Gender and sex aren't the same; see, e.g.,
http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/

Ethnicity and national origin don't feel the same to me; I feel
pretty strongly that we should include national origin, as one of my
more radical political views is a strong belief in freedom of
movement, including across national boundaries, i.e., that we
shouldn't discriminate based on citizenship or legal residency
status. Though perhaps what I'm talking about is *nationality*
rather than *national origin*.

-David

--
𝄞 L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/ 𝄂
𝄢 Mozilla http://www.mozilla.org/ 𝄂

[Fred Wenzel]

On Thu Apr 5 20:17:39 2012, Kyle Huey wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 8:08 PM, Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
>> That said, I believe "color" and "race" are meant to represent the same
>> thing, as do "gender" and "sex", and "ethnicity" and "national origin".
>> So the only one really missing from the ones you list is disability
>> (which I agree should be covered, if we're going to have to have an
>> explicit list in the first place).
>>
>

> Er, no. None of the pairs you provided are the same thing.

Fair enough. I should have probably said, cover similar ground.

~F

[Fred Wenzel]

On 4/5/12 8:25 PM, L. David Baron wrote:

> On Thursday 2012-04-05 20:08 -0700, Fred Wenzel wrote:
>> That said, I believe "color" and "race" are meant to represent the same
>> thing, as do "gender" and "sex", and "ethnicity" and "national origin".
>> So the only one really missing from the ones you list is disability
>> (which I agree should be covered, if we're going to have to have an
>> explicit list in the first place).
>

> Gender and sex aren't the same; see, e.g.,
> http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/
>
> Ethnicity and national origin don't feel the same to me; I feel
> pretty strongly that we should include national origin, as one of my
> more radical political views is a strong belief in freedom of
> movement, including across national boundaries, i.e., that we
> shouldn't discriminate based on citizenship or legal residency
> status. Though perhaps what I'm talking about is *nationality*
> rather than *national origin*.

Thanks for the insights, David!

I think we are showing pretty well how no list will satisfy everyone :-/

~F

[Robert Accettura]

On Apr 5, 2012, at 11:08 PM, Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> On Thu Apr 5 19:57:49 2012, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> On 4/5/2012 7:23 PM, Mitchell Baker wrote:

>> If we're going to have an explicit list, (which I'm not in favor of) I
>> think we had better at least include disability, color, sex, and
>> national origin. They seem as or more important than some on the
>> current list.
>
> I am also not in favor of an explicit list.
>

> That said, I believe "color" and "race" are meant to represent the same
> thing, as do "gender" and "sex", and "ethnicity" and "national origin".
> So the only one really missing from the ones you list is disability
> (which I agree should be covered, if we're going to have to have an
> explicit list in the first place).

Color (commonly called "skin tone") and race are not the same. For
example in Indian and African American communities there is
discrimination against lighter/darker skinned individuals. Both
parties from a US law perspective can be the same
race/ethnicity/nationality. I know there are other examples but don't
know them off the top of my head.

Disability is missing and i'm pretty sure in some places IQ and/or
aptitude scores where not directly relevant (this matters to some
folks)... We could go on.

Yea, lists are bad… if your classification (sigh) isn't on the list
presumably you're second rate (and that's a reasonable conclusion for
someone to make)… at least that's the message being sent to those who
don't make the cut. I don't think that should be the message… I
think it distracts from the point of a CoC by demonstrating the
authors care more about some (who are cited) than others.

It's also a bit insulting to those of us who believe /all/ forms of
discrimination are wrong as opposed to certain types.

Don't forget it must include "any other protected classes in your
legal jurisdiction" as this community extends beyond a state/country.

[Daniel Glazman]

On Apr 6, 2:39 am, Mitchell Baker <mitch...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> This Code of Conduct covers our behaviour as members of the Mozilla
> Community, in  forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, bug,
> event, public meeting or private correspondence.

The mention of "private correspondence" above could be illegal in a
few countries. FWIW, even an employer has not right at all to observe
or comment a "private correspondence" here in France, even sent from a
computer belonging to the employer and on employer's network...

</Daniel>

[Mike Hommey]

> Inclusiveness and Diversity
>
> Mozilla is an inclusive organization. We welcome and support diversity,
> including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
> gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.
>
> Mozilla-based activities should be inclusive and should support
> diversity, including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity,
> gender, gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.

I'll echo others in that listing some categories is not a good idea.

Funny enough, Debian is also discussing a diversity statement right now,
and the current text is:

-----8<--------------------------------8<-----------------------------

The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.

It doesn't matter how you define yourself or how others define you:
we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone
as long as they interact constructively with our
community.

While much of the work for our project is technical in nature,
we value and encourage contributions to Debian from those with
expertise in other areas and welcome such contributors in our community.

---------------->8----------------------------------->8----------------

(From http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2012/04/msg00037.html)

That sounds more inclusive to me.

Mike

[Deb Richardson]

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com> wrote:
> I think we are showing pretty well how no list will satisfy everyone :-/

But the list is important, and is essentially what we've been talking
about for the past few days. A list won't necessarily satisfy
everyone, no, and it will likely never be exhaustive, but in a
situation where we can explicitly call out people and groups who
suffer a power imbalance it's important that we do so. Specificity
matters a great deal in these things.

I wish I could explain why more clearly or eloquently that others have
done, but I don't know if I can. But here goes anyways... :)

I am, in almost all ways, one of the privileged -- I am a straight,
white, college-educated, upper-middle-class and employed woman living
in a first world country in the 21st century. But there once was a
time where I would not have been allowed to vote or work. There once
was a time (shockingly recently) I would not have been allowed to make
major purchases or apply for credit without a male signatory. Women
continue to be oppressed in systemic ways in countries throughout the
world, including our own. I am extraordinarily fortunate that other
incredible and brave people have stood and fought these fights on my
behalf in the past. If it weren't for their work and empathy and
understanding, I would not be in the position I am today.

What we're dealing with now are similar battles for other oppressed
groups. Systemic oppression is often completely invisible until
explicitly called out and acknowledged. The list is an effort to
acknowledge those power imbalances, and to ensure that the people in
those groups understand that they are not invisible and that they are
explicitly welcome in our community, not forgotten. Not an
afterthought.

It's not easy, and it will probably never be exhaustive, but I believe
the list matters a lot. "Included by default" is not enough, because
there is no reassurance of real acknowledgement and understanding.

I hope my understanding of this is correct at least -- if I'm not, or
if I'm missing some aspects of it, please correct me.

~ d

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

On 4/6/12 2:39 AM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
> I'm not done, but want to get this piece out there. i want to talk to
> Deb about conflicts but she's on vacation today. So I'm posting this
> rewritten version, even though it doesn't have the conflict and
> resolutions sessions fleshed out. i've gotten as far as raising issues.
> But I suspect there is a lot about what happens after that that
> interacts with employment law, and i want to learn something about that
> first.
>
> apologies for the poor formatting. I haven't had time to think about a
> wiki.
>
>
> Code of Conduct
>
> The Mozilla Code of Conduct describes the type of community we are
> building. It works in conjunction with

Isn't that already covered by the manifesto ? Are we really thinking
that people need a law to be polite ?

> -- the Anti-Harassment/Discrimination Policy which sets out
> protections and obligations of employees, and is crafted with specific
> jurisdictional legal definitions and requirements in mind.
> -- Mozilla groups for escalation and dispute resolution.

How does that scale on the web ? The web is global , which code of law
applies and how do we decide which one we follow ? Some things will make
sense in countries yy and zz but will not at all in tt and hh.

> This Code of Conduct covers our behaviour as members of the Mozilla
> Community, in forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, bug,
> event, public meeting or private correspondence.

Private correspondence ? How can then that correspondence be labelled
private ? I come from a culture where you'll say plenty of bad things in
private , and then be done with it. If I can't let my feeling go away by
expressing them when I have them I'll certainly feel like I'm not part
of the "community" and will leave.

> Inclusiveness and Diversity
>
> Mozilla is an inclusive organization. We welcome and support diversity,
> including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
> gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.
>
> Mozilla-based activities should be inclusive and should support
> diversity, including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity,
> gender, gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.

I'd like to be way more open. I don't like the list at all. We shouldn't
try to pinpoint who (ie listing things that define humans on the way
they act) , and put more focus on how people should interact with one
another.

> First, if you are comfortable having a direct talk with the other
> person, this is a good way to start.
> If you're not comfortable having a direct conversation, identify one or
> more people you trust. It will be helpful to identify whether the
> conflict is because someone is flaming, or behaving in a troll like
> manner or just won't listen? Or is it because the person has touched on
> a personal or identity issue?

How does a new comer do that ? How do they find a trusted person. How
will they trust.


That being said I really think that the Manifesto covers all this
already - I don't see how adding some police infrastructure is going to
make it easier and friendlier to interact in the mozilla space.

if we can't trust people for what they say or think or the way they
behave, why would we trust of accept what they want to contribute ?

Ludo
--
@lhirlimann on twitter
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing

[Teoli]

On 06/04/12 04:38, Deb Richardson wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> I think we are showing pretty well how no list will satisfy everyone :-/
>
> But the list is important, and is essentially what we've been talking
> about for the past few days.

You feel the list is important. Reading the comments here, it looks we
are far to be at a broad consensus about this. Do you plan to simply
ignore dissent voices?

[Deb Richardson]

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Teoli
<news.fak...@localhost.invalid> wrote:
> You feel the list is important. Reading the comments here, it looks we are
> far to be at a broad consensus about this. Do you plan to simply ignore
> dissent voices?

I'm not ignoring dissenting voices, I'm working to convince them
otherwise by explaining as clearly and carefully as I can why the list
is important. And I'm spending a lot of time and effort doing so.

My question to you is: are you just going to ignore all of the people
who disagree with your dismissal of the list as irrelevant? Are you
going to ignore people who are personally concerned about this because
they are represented on that list? It's a very tricky thing
dismissing the voices of these people because of the very power
imbalances we've been talking about. It's not always simply a matter
of opinion.

I also want it to be clear that I'm not the one making the final call
here, I'm just a participant in the discussion. Mitchell is driving
this process and owns the final result. These decisions are
ultimately hers.

~ d

[Anthony Ricaud]

On 06/04/12 02:39 , Mitchell Baker wrote:
> Mozilla is an inclusive organization. We welcome and support diversity,
> including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
> gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.

On a day-to-day basis, I feel that we experience more discrimination
based on knowledge of English, location on Earth and employment status.
Since we interact mostly through written media and we are a meritocracy,
I think 99% of the time we don't suffer from age, culture, ethnicity,
gender, gender-identity, race or religious views discrimination, simply
because we can't tell who's behind the screen in the first place.

But everyday, non-employees don't receive Air Mozilla announcements,
can't join lots of Vidyo meetings. Everyday, poor English speakers can't
participate in a debate as quickly as fluent English speakers can.
Everyday, meeting hours are mostly based on Mountain View work hours. I
know many people are working on improving this situation and it's a good
thing. But if we want to talk about inclusiveness, I think those
problems have a significant impact on the project.

[Alina Mierlus]

> On a day-to-day basis, I feel that we experience more discrimination
> based on knowledge of English, location on Earth and employment status.
> Since we interact mostly through written media and we are a meritocracy,
> I think 99% of the time we don't suffer from age, culture, ethnicity,
> gender, gender-identity, race or religious views discrimination, simply
> because we can't tell who's behind the screen in the first place.
>
> But everyday, non-employees don't receive Air Mozilla announcements,
> can't join lots of Vidyo meetings. Everyday, poor English speakers can't
> participate in a debate as quickly as fluent English speakers can.
> Everyday, meeting hours are mostly based on Mountain View work hours. I
> know many people are working on improving this situation and it's a good
> thing. But if we want to talk about inclusiveness, I think those
> problems have a significant impact on the project.

I can't agree more, Anthony!

--
Alina Mierlus
@alina_mierlus

[Gregg Lind]

Mitchell,

That debian language feels better to me (and sings more) than a lot of what is in the v2. Though i would augment it thusly...

> It doesn't matter how you define yourself or how others define you [1]:

> we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone
> as long as they interact constructively with our
> community.
>

[1] including, but not limited to: sex, gender, physical ability, age, nationality, citizenship, language, location, sexual orientation, neurotypical status, (and others I missed on the list)

[Gregg Lind]

Mitchell,

That debian language feels better to me (and sings more) than a lot of what is in the v2. Though i would augment it thusly...

> It doesn't matter how you define yourself or how others define you [1]:

> we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone
> as long as they interact constructively with our
> community.
>

[Tim Chevalier]

On Apr 6, 7:23 am, Anthony Ricaud <anth...@ricaud.me> wrote:
> On 06/04/12 02:39 , Mitchell Baker wrote:
>
> > Mozilla is an inclusive organization.  We welcome and support diversity,
> > including (without limitation)  in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
> > gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.
>
> On a day-to-day basis, I feel that we experience more discrimination
> based on knowledge of English, location on Earth and employment status.
> Since we interact mostly through written media and we are a meritocracy,

Do you really think we are a meritocracy? If I look at who is involved
in Mozilla, I see a racial balance that is different from the
underlying communities from which we originate. I see a gender balance
that is very different from what exists in the world. And, of course,
the very set of communities from which Mozilla contributors originate
(I just went to new-hire orientation last week -- there was a slide
with a map of countries where both employees and volunteers live, and
certain parts of the world were conspicuously absent) is not
representative. To believe that Mozilla is a meritocracy, one would
have to believe that men, white people, and people from Europe, North
America and parts of Asia are more meritorious than women, people of
color, and people from Africa, South America, and other parts of Asia.
Do you believe that?

Cheers,
Tim

[Siddharth Agarwal]

On 06-04-2012 22:34, Tim Chevalier wrote:
> Do you really think we are a meritocracy? If I look at who is involved
> in Mozilla, I see a racial balance that is different from the
> underlying communities from which we originate.

That is not what the word "meritocracy" means. The word "meritocracy"
means we discriminate based on technical ability and merit.

I see no evidence of bias based on race or gender rather than on
technical merit.

[Lukas Blakk]

It is hard to see what's not there. When questioning the use of the term
'meritocracy' the question is 'who even gets to be in this meritocracy
pool in the first place?'. One needs access to technology, to learn how
to excel at it, to be able to establish themselves in a community and
gain respect, have access to network/bandwidth, and often to have other
sources of financial support while working on open source projects
(something often used to demonstrate legitimacy as a serious programmer
in our world) -- all of these ways we measure meritocracy sit on a base
that not every person gets to access. There's a meritocracy alright,
but it's from a limited pool - the limits come from some of the systemic
oppression as has been mentioned before.

Acknowledging that these flaws exists doesn't make what we do any less
awesome, it just means we have room for improvement.

-Lukas

--
*-*-*-*-*
Release Manager, Mozillian
http://mzl.la/LukasBlakk

[Daniel Glazman]

On Apr 6, 7:04 pm, Tim Chevalier <catamorph...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Do you really think we are a meritocracy? If I look at who is involved
> in Mozilla, I see a racial balance that is different from the
> underlying communities from which we originate. I see a gender balance
> that is very different from what exists in the world. And, of course,
> the very set of communities from which Mozilla contributors originate
> (I just went to new-hire orientation last week -- there was a slide
> with a map of countries where both employees and volunteers live, and
> certain parts of the world were conspicuously absent) is not
> representative. To believe that Mozilla is a meritocracy, one would
> have to believe that men, white people, and people from Europe, North
> America and parts of Asia are more meritorious than women, people of
> color, and people from Africa, South America, and other parts of Asia.
> Do you believe that?

!?!?!
I am so shocked I am unable to describe it with anything but "WOW"...

Sorry, but I am now off this whole discussion. I am not here to save
the World from all Human Kinds' errors, I'm here to make progress a
project and a community I love, and I don't want that project and
community to be lobbyists for any other cause but the Open Web.

</Daniel>

[Robert Kaiser]

Robert Accettura schrieb:

> It's also a bit insulting to those of us who believe /all/ forms of
> discrimination are wrong as opposed to certain types.

+1 (though I'm not sure about "insulting" as it's a quite strong word)

Robert Kaiser

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 4/6/12 1:07 PM, Siddharth Agarwal wrote:
> On 06-04-2012 22:34, Tim Chevalier wrote:
>> Do you really think we are a meritocracy? If I look at who is involved
>> in Mozilla, I see a racial balance that is different from the
>> underlying communities from which we originate.
>
> That is not what the word "meritocracy" means. The word "meritocracy"
> means we discriminate based on technical ability and merit.

In our online interactions, given no knowledge of the counterparty, the
best we can do is discriminate based on perceived technical ability and
merit.

If we _do_ know the counterparty, either through previous interactions
or in a personal context, that colors the interaction. That's just a
fact of life. Our minds use heuristics and shortcuts whenever they can.
In a purely technical context, if the module owner for a module says
something technical about that module, we default to giving it a greater
weight based on past interactions than if a newcomer says something
technical about that module, instead of carefully analyzing both
statements on their merits as standalone statements. I'm not saying
this is necessarily wrong, or that we could function effectively if we
did not do this to some extent, but it's _definitely_ something to be
aware of.

But the other important point above is the part about _perceived_
ability and merit. As contrasted with actual.

> I see no evidence of bias based on race or gender rather than on
> technical merit.

A part of perceived merit is communication style. And communication
style is in fact somewhat correlated with gender (and in some cases
race), for all sorts of reasons.

Or to put it bluntly, we perceive someone as more meritorious if that
person can handle adversarial communication and is more outspoken. By
"we" I mean the Mozilla project, though this is a more general
phenomenon, both in the open source world and in society in general.

If you see no evidence of bias toward people who can deal with hostile
bug comments and what is fundamentally a somewhat adversarial review
system, you're not looking very hard, I'm afraid... And, again,
handling of adversarial situations is somewhat correlated with all sorts
of traits including gender, socioeconomic background, etc.

Again, this is something to be aware of (e.g. when doing reviews). It
can be hard, and I won't claim to always succeed at it personally. But
pretending the issue is not there won't help either.

-Boris

[Mitchell Baker]

On the question of whether a list of specific categories of diversity
will be included --

I personally prefer the Debian approach, which is more articulate
version of what I originally proposed.

However, it is very clear that there is a significant group of people
for whom seeing particular categories listed is profoundly important,
and without this specific language the whole effort feels ineffective.

This is one of those areas where I think we should say "maybe not
everyone understands this" ("groks" this,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok) but we'll take a step in your
direction,"

So we'll have a list.

mitchell

[Mitchell Baker]

Anthony

I am also very disturbed about this. (You might not think so, living in
California as I do, but I am getting increasingly vocal about this.

I would like to separate out this topic however, and return to it after
the Code of Conduct piece has been resolved. Please feel free to raise
it again, either here or to me at that point.

mitchell

[Robert Kaiser]

Deb Richardson schrieb:

> But the list is important, and is essentially what we've been talking
> about for the past few days.

So we need to point out some groups that are more equal than others? :(

Robert Kaiser

[Mitchell Baker]

On 4/6/12 3:58 AM, Ludovic Hirlimann wrote:

>> Code of Conduct
>>
>> The Mozilla Code of Conduct describes the type of community we are
>> building. It works in conjunction with
>
> Isn't that already covered by the manifesto ? Are we really thinking
> that people need a law to be polite ?

A few things.
First, inclusion is not about politeness. It's about being clear we
support people of diverse groups. This is different than politeness.
One can be politely exclusionary. Mozilla activiites and communications
should not do this.

On the question of politeness, we do have a lot of issues about poor
communication style. So having something that says as a community that
is not our aspiration, we have mechanisms to move in this direction is
important. We created the Conductors for this reason, this work creates
an underlying reason for them.

Interesting point re the Manifesto -- i wonder if the manifesto should
be in here. I think the Manifesto is a bit more about the nature of
the internet, and this is a bit more about the community interactions,
so i think both work together.

>
>> -- the Anti-Harassment/Discrimination Policy which sets out
>> protections and obligations of employees, and is crafted with specific
>> jurisdictional legal definitions and requirements in mind.
>> -- Mozilla groups for escalation and dispute resolution.
>
> How does that scale on the web ? The web is global , which code of law
> applies and how do we decide which one we follow ? Some things will make
> sense in countries yy and zz but will not at all in tt and hh.

That's why this policy is aimed at employees -- to deal with the legal
requirements and different jurisdictions. Figuring out how to same some
basic things as a commu

Yes, this is important. This policy is specifically crafted to deal
with legal requirements, its applicable to employees and different
jurisdications. Harassement and discrimination aren't OK anywhere in
our community, but will need different mechanisms.

>
>> This Code of Conduct covers our behaviour as members of the Mozilla
>> Community, in forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, bug,
>> event, public meeting or private correspondence.
>
> Private correspondence ? How can then that correspondence be labelled
> private ? I come from a culture where you'll say plenty of bad things in
> private , and then be done with it. If I can't let my feeling go away by
> expressing them when I have them I'll certainly feel like I'm not part
> of the "community" and will leave.

Yes, i looked at this phrase and wondered if "private" means "not
Mozilla." if it's the latter then I don't think it works. I left it in
thinking it meant -- if you send me mail about Mozilla activities (ie,
private mail, not a mailing list post) then the same rules apply. That
needs some editing.

>
>> Inclusiveness and Diversity
>>
>> Mozilla is an inclusive organization. We welcome and support diversity,
>> including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
>> gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.
>>
>> Mozilla-based activities should be inclusive and should support
>> diversity, including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity,
>> gender, gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.
>
> I'd like to be way more open. I don't like the list at all. We shouldn't
> try to pinpoint who (ie listing things that define humans on the way
> they act) , and put more focus on how people should interact with one
> another.

I understand, but we're going to have a list for the reasons in my last
email on this topic.

>
>
>
>> First, if you are comfortable having a direct talk with the other
>> person, this is a good way to start.
>> If you're not comfortable having a direct conversation, identify one or
>> more people you trust. It will be helpful to identify whether the
>> conflict is because someone is flaming, or behaving in a troll like
>> manner or just won't listen? Or is it because the person has touched on
>> a personal or identity issue?
>
> How does a new comer do that ? How do they find a trusted person. How
> will they trust.

Yes, there is the question of what to do if you don't think there is
anyone you trust. I'll mull on that.
>
Mitchell

[Siddharth Agarwal]

On 06-04-2012 22:54, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
> Our minds use heuristics and shortcuts whenever they can. In a purely
> technical context, if the module owner for a module says something
> technical about that module, we default to giving it a greater weight
> based on past interactions than if a newcomer says something technical
> about that module, instead of carefully analyzing both statements on
> their merits as standalone statements.

Yes, it's one of the five bases of social power French and Raven
identified [1], called expert power. Heuristically, I don't see anything
wrong with giving it greater prior weight.

[1] http://resource.udallas.edu/132/bases_of_social_power.pdf

> A part of perceived merit is communication style. And communication
> style is in fact somewhat correlated with gender (and in some cases
> race), for all sorts of reasons.

Agreed, but the point I'm trying to make is that I see no evidence of
discrimination based *directly* on gender and race *on top of*
communication style. In other words, *given* a white middle-class
cisgendered man and a black lower-class transgendered woman, both
equally shy, I see no evidence Mozilla project leaders would
discriminate against the latter. To at least the extent of perceived
ability, I believe Mozilla is a meritocracy. (Yes, we need to be more
inclusive of shy people. I hope whatever Mozilla social contract is
finally agreed upon addresses this.)

[Majken Connor]

I do want to support those groups, but I wonder if we could use a different
mechanism. They want to make sure specific groups are protected. Everyone
else does, too, but we feel like everyone is covered when we say
*everyone.* I think Teoli (sp?) made a stronger point that the minorities
not listed will be more hurt by having a list. So far the groups that
should be in this list are groups that have a lot of activism, and
representation at Mozilla, specifically women and LGBT.

When WoMoz was formed, several of us were a bit bothered by it and wished
it were a diversity group with a larger scope. What about doing that, and
making a diversity module? Would that be enough to show people that we
*are* serious about promoting diversity and protecting those groups in
Mozilla? That groups mandate could have an exhaustive list of groups that
should be promoted and protected. There's so much going on right now, with
hackasaurus (my daughter just went to a march break camp for girls) and
Mozilla Reps are all over the world. There's no WoMoz SIG in the works as
far as I can tell though, we could fix that.

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 1:29 PM, Mitchell Baker <mitc...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> On the question of whether a list of specific categories of diversity will
> be included --
>
> I personally prefer the Debian approach, which is more articulate version
> of what I originally proposed.
>
> However, it is very clear that there is a significant group of people for
> whom seeing particular categories listed is profoundly important, and
> without this specific language the whole effort feels ineffective.
>
> This is one of those areas where I think we should say "maybe not everyone

> understands this" ("groks" this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Grok<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok>)

> but we'll take a step in your direction,"
>
> So we'll have a list.
>

> mitchell

> ______________________________**_________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/governance<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance>
>

[Anthony Ricaud]

On 06/04/12 19:29 , Mitchell Baker wrote:
> Anthony
>
> I am also very disturbed about this. (You might not think so, living in
> California as I do, but I am getting increasingly vocal about this.
>
> I would like to separate out this topic however, and return to it after
> the Code of Conduct piece has been resolved. Please feel free to raise
> it again, either here or to me at that point.
>
> mitchell
>

I'm ok talking about the specifics of this topic at a later time. But if
we're going to list categories as you said, I don't see how those 3 are
less important than the other ones currently listed.

(I'm still not ok with a list but looks like this is a done deal)

[Siddharth Agarwal]

On 06-04-2012 22:43, Lukas Blakk wrote:
> It is hard to see what's not there. When questioning the use of the term
> 'meritocracy' the question is 'who even gets to be in this meritocracy
> pool in the first place?'.

You're correct that the bar for entry into Mozilla is high, but that's
the cost of doing the best we can. We have to discriminate on technical
merit for us to survive and effect any sort of change anyway.

> There's a meritocracy alright,
> but it's from a limited pool - the limits come from some of the systemic
> oppression as has been mentioned before.

I'm deeply aware of that -- I live in a country with a history of
thousands of years of social stratification and oppression, the
repercussions of which I see around me every single day -- and it
really, really concerns me. However, I think that's precisely what
Anthony was saying: that the wording captures much of the historical
context of privilege but less of the current, more direct context.

Besides, not discriminating on language is untrue anyway -- you need to
know English (or French, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese, I
think -- correct me if I'm wrong) to communicate effectively to be hired
at MoCo. Our job requirements (e.g. [1], picked arbitrarily) state
"excellent written and verbal communication skills", but we're not going
to hire someone fluent in Afghan but with no knowledge of English.

[1] http://careers.mozilla.org/en-US/position/oe2jWfwf

> Acknowledging that these flaws exists doesn't make what we do any less
> awesome, it just means we have room for improvement.

To the extent that these flaws exist, they're a product of history. As I
see it, the power structures that exist in Mozilla are not based
directly on race, gender, etc, but on technical ability, both actual
(code doesn't lie) and perceived. Therefore, I'd prefer any normative
contract call out cases where actual technical ability doesn't match
perceived ability -- shyness and aversion to conflict being a great
example -- than calling out classes of people that have been subjugated
historically but are not directly discriminated against at Mozilla.

Historical oppression is a serious problem and needs to be solved, but
we need to pick our battles.

[Siddharth Agarwal]

On 06-04-2012 23:49, Siddharth Agarwal wrote:
> hire someone fluent in Afghan

Sorry, I meant Afghani, more commonly known as Pashto.

[Mitchell Baker]

We're actually having a microcosm of the discourse that societies have
regarding discrimination.

I also am of the opinion that great imbalances in gender, culture, age,
etc often have structural issues as one of the causes. That structural
issue could be (a) a social issue that is simply reflected in a
particular organization. It could be systematic oppression.

I believe the first is true of Mozilla. We are not demonstrably more
diverse than the communities from which we arise. I am *very* hopeful
that the latter is *not* true of Mozilla. To date, I don't believe it
is the case.

I see that the assertions there are no structural issues at play to be
infuriating to some of us. I see the assertion that the diversity
balance inside Mozilla is the result of systematic impression *by
Mozilla* to be infuriating to some.

I plan to work from the following point of view:

-- There are systematic social issues that result in diversity
imbalances in life, which are reflected in Mozilla.
-- Our perceptions of those issues and how to address them will differ
based on a number of things, one of which is our own experiences with
diversity issues.
-- Mozilla is committed to supporting all people within Mozilla.
-- We don't yet have a way of discussing the relationship of the broader
social issues of diversity imbalance to Mozilla. We're trying to do
this now and we're struggling.

mitchell

[Justin Dolske]

On 4/6/12 4:38 AM, Deb Richardson wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Fred Wenzel<fwe...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>> I think we are showing pretty well how no list will satisfy everyone :-/
>
> But the list is important, and is essentially what we've been talking
> about for the past few days. A list won't necessarily satisfy
> everyone, no, and it will likely never be exhaustive, but in a
> situation where we can explicitly call out people and groups who
> suffer a power imbalance it's important that we do so. Specificity
> matters a great deal in these things.

Agreed.

In many ways the CoC is an expansion of "be X in regards to Y". We've
got a list for the X items (inclusive, considerate, empowering, etc), it
seems only reasonable to list the Y items as well.

I like the approach of having the X-list be crisp and easy to take in.
Done right it projects a power that dense walls of legal text do not.
But I think the opposite is true for the Y-list. It's already a single
cognitive item -- flavors of humans -- so some reasonable detail doesn't
make it harder to grok.

Justin

[Anthony Ricaud]

On 06/04/12 19:04 , Tim Chevalier wrote:
> To believe that Mozilla is a meritocracy, one would
> have to believe that men, white people, and people from Europe, North
> America and parts of Asia are more meritorious than women, people of
> color, and people from Africa, South America, and other parts of Asia.
> Do you believe that?
>
> Cheers,
> Tim
>

Are you really asking me if I'm a misogynist, racist and xenophobe?

Your logic is wrong here. See Lukas and Siddharth comments about the
limited pool that we pick from.

[Justin Dolske]

On 4/6/12 10:29 AM, Mitchell Baker wrote:
> On the question of whether a list of specific categories of diversity
> will be included --
>
> I personally prefer the Debian approach, which is more articulate
> version of what I originally proposed.
>
> However, it is very clear that there is a significant group of people
> for whom seeing particular categories listed is profoundly important,
> and without this specific language the whole effort feels ineffective.
>
> This is one of those areas where I think we should say "maybe not
> everyone understands this" ("groks" this,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok) but we'll take a step in your
> direction,"
>
> So we'll have a list.

Ha. I should have read this message before writing my last. We even both
used "grok". :)

I'm curious, does anyone feel the Ubuntu list [1] is substantially
incomplete (ie, missing something obvious/important)? It seems
reasonable to me. The key point being that seems to touch all the
_major_ areas of current/recent discrimination in society. I.E., one
could possibly strike "technical ability" as being reasonably covered by
an "including but not limited to" clause, but many of the others would
be eyebrow-raising omissions.

Justin

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/project/about-ubuntu/diversity

[Justin Dolske]

On 4/6/12 10:21 AM, Daniel Glazman wrote:

> !?!?!
> I am so shocked I am unable to describe it with anything but "WOW"...
>
> Sorry, but I am now off this whole discussion. I am not here to save
> the World from all Human Kinds' errors, I'm here to make progress a
> project and a community I love, and I don't want that project and
> community to be lobbyists for any other cause but the Open Web.

I just don't understand how replies like this constructively add to the
discussion. (And didn't we _just_ have a subthread here a couple days
ago about "escalating language"?)

Justin

[Blake Winton]

Yes, we do, because if you don't point out specific groups, it's far too
easily read as either meaningless platitudes or supporting the groups
who are already in power. (As an analogy, if I hold up a window in
front of a grey screen, the window often looks grey. Sometimes it needs
some orange paint to show that it's there.)

(In an ideal world, we would just be able to say "We welcome everyone",
or better "Like the rest of the world, we welcome everyone", or better
nothing at all, because it's not an issue. Unfortunately, we don't live
in that world yet.)

(If you want to discuss the topic with me further, please email me
instead of continuing the thread… :)

Thanks,
Blake.

[Gervase Markham]

On 06/04/12 19:46, Mitchell Baker wrote:
> -- We don't yet have a way of discussing the relationship of the broader
> social issues of diversity imbalance to Mozilla. We're trying to do
> this now and we're struggling.

Mozilla works to preserve and protect the open web. But we don't go all
the way down the stack. We don't put solar-powered WiFi repeaters up
trees in rural Africa so that we can bring the web to people who don't
have it yet.

Can we draw a similar line in terms of diversity at Mozilla? It might
look something like this... Mozilla should do its best to welcome
everyone who knocks on its door with a genuine desire to contribute. If
there are wider issues which mean the diversity of people doing the
knocking is, in the view of a particular Mozillian, imbalanced in some
way, then there are other organizations which work to change such
balances, and that Mozillian should dive right in with one of those
organizations (or start one!) and work to deal with the imbalances that
most concern them.

Gerv

[Robert Accettura]

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 1:04 PM, Tim Chevalier <catamo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Do you really think we are a meritocracy? If I look at who is involved
> in Mozilla, I see a racial balance that is different from the

> underlying communities from which we originate. I see a gender balance
> that is very different from what exists in the world. And, of course,
> the very set of communities from which Mozilla contributors originate
> (I just went to new-hire orientation last week -- there was a slide
> with a map of countries where both employees and volunteers live, and
> certain parts of the world were conspicuously absent) is not

> representative. To believe that Mozilla is a meritocracy, one would

> have to believe that men, white people, and people from Europe, North
> America and parts of Asia are more meritorious than women, people of
> color, and people from Africa, South America, and other parts of Asia.
> Do you believe that?

So in a nutshell, the gender inbalance, which is seen in primary and
secondary education, as well as a language barrier (as mentioned by
others but Mitchell wants that as another topic)... is specifically
Mozilla's fault?

I'd again like to see some specific examples of how Mozilla
discourages women in CS and pushes volunteers away from certain
regions. I'm virtually certain that's not the case. I think it's
actually been the opposite. WoMoz has been working to encourage women
towards CS. Mozilla's international communities have been growing.

Mozilla is primarily English speaking. That is a barrier, and
localization teams as well as multilingual contributors are serving as
liaisons the best they can. They do amazing work (look at growth in
non-english speaking countries). That's 100% their doing. Most of
these teams are quite small too. They are IMHO the most
under-appreciated in the community.

However this list is in English, and has community wide impacts. I
don't see you or anyone else translating every message you create in
several languages to encourage more participation. Not that I expect
that. English is a barrier. Language is a barrier for all
communities where people interact. I don't think there are any
exceptions to that rule. English is however a requirement for many
aspects of participation. It's the defacto standard language for most
of CS.

But to blame Mozilla for these things seems unjustified. Mozilla is a
meritocracy... for those that participate. There is a natural bias
against those who don't have access to computers, electricity or
internet access (economic means). As well as language. There have
been various attempts to bridge that, but nobody has found answer a
universal fix. I don't think there is a fix. I don't think there is
any intent to hold a bias. Groups like WoMoz prove to me you're
wrong.

[Majken Connor]

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 4:30 PM, Gervase Markham <ge...@mozilla.org> wrote:

> On 06/04/12 19:46, Mitchell Baker wrote:
>

>> -- We don't yet have a way of discussing the relationship of the broader
>> social issues of diversity imbalance to Mozilla. We're trying to do
>> this now and we're struggling.
>>
>

> Mozilla works to preserve and protect the open web. But we don't go all
> the way down the stack. We don't put solar-powered WiFi repeaters up trees
> in rural Africa so that we can bring the web to people who don't have it
> yet.
>
> Can we draw a similar line in terms of diversity at Mozilla? It might look
> something like this... Mozilla should do its best to welcome everyone who
> knocks on its door with a genuine desire to contribute. If there are wider
> issues which mean the diversity of people doing the knocking is, in the
> view of a particular Mozillian, imbalanced in some way, then there are
> other organizations which work to change such balances, and that Mozillian
> should dive right in with one of those organizations (or start one!) and
> work to deal with the imbalances that most concern them.
>
> Gerv
>

> ______________________________**_________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/governance<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance>
>

Actually, we have the Mozilla Reps program which will start to help doing
this. Though I agree that the code should specifically be about how we
treat people who knock on the door. Mozillians are welcome to do their own
outreach, either with Mozilla's support or through other organizations, to
help people get to the door.

[Siddharth Agarwal]

On 07-04-2012 00:16, Mitchell Baker wrote:
> We're actually having a microcosm of the discourse that societies have
> regarding discrimination.
>
> I also am of the opinion that great imbalances in gender, culture,
> age, etc often have structural issues as one of the causes. That
> structural issue could be (a) a social issue that is simply reflected
> in a particular organization. It could be systematic oppression.
>
> I believe the first is true of Mozilla. We are not demonstrably more
> diverse than the communities from which we arise. I am *very* hopeful
> that the latter is *not* true of Mozilla. To date, I don't believe it
> is the case.

++.

I know Tim used the term "systematic oppression" above, but power,
prestige and privilege are contextual.

[The classic example for this being the American context, where Standard
English has overt sociolinguistic prestige while AAVE enjoys covert
prestige. This is something that watching the television show The Wire
and reading studies by William Labov opened my eyes to.]

WIthin the context of Mozilla, I haven't seen any evidence of the
discrimination Tim's talking about.

I believe a Mozilla social contract should deal with that context.

[Justin Dolske]

On 4/6/12 10:04 AM, Tim Chevalier wrote:
> On Apr 6, 7:23 am, Anthony Ricaud<anth...@ricaud.me> wrote:
>> On 06/04/12 02:39 , Mitchell Baker wrote:
>>
>>> Mozilla is an inclusive organization. We welcome and support diversity,
>>> including (without limitation) in age, culture, ethnicity, gender,
>>> gender-identity, language, race, and religious views.
>>
>> On a day-to-day basis, I feel that we experience more discrimination
>> based on knowledge of English, location on Earth and employment status.
>> Since we interact mostly through written media and we are a meritocracy,
>

> Do you really think we are a meritocracy?[...]

> To believe that Mozilla is a meritocracy, one would
> have to believe that men, white people, and people from Europe, North
> America and parts of Asia are more meritorious than women, people of
> color, and people from Africa, South America, and other parts of Asia.
> Do you believe that?

I've never seen "meritocracy" used around Mozilla in the way you seem to
be implying. Have you actually seen people using it that way?

The standard usage is that decisions (especially technical decisions)
get made by people in the project with an established pattern of skill
and expertise in those areas. It's a counter to the mediocrity
(mediocracy?) of design-by-committee.

This isn't a judgement on people outside the Mozilla community, nor the
potential of those people. It can (and does) happen that as someone
starts participating and learns the ropes, they can establish merit over
new or existing areas in the project. As an example, there are without
doubt undiscovered programmers elsewhere in the world who are more
skilled than any of us. And people who could be, if only they could
afford a computer, or be allowed access to an education.

Perhaps that's a different meaning of "meritocracy" than you're
assuming, but it's the one we use.

Justin

[Zack Weinberg]

I would like to see some language addressing interactions between people
who are more central to the community and people who are more
peripheral; especially, people who consider themselves part of the
community and people who don't. It has been my experience that many
people are scared to get involved because they expect to be treated
badly by established contributors (see earlier message re bug reporting
specifically). It has also been my experience that a small number of
senior contributors regularly abuse other contributors and get away with it.

As an important special case: I don't know that this is *precisely* the
context to address this problem, but there's a self-reinforcing negative
interaction pattern I see pretty often in Bugzilla, particularly in what
I called "infamous bugs" earlier:

- User trips over infamous bug.
- User looks for bug in Bugzilla, finds it was reported many years ago
and has lots of people shouting at each other in the comment thread.

branch 1: User doesn't post anything, but writes us off as uninterested
in bug reports.

branch 2: User posts cranky comment in bug report, gets flamed and/or
lectured on bugzilla etiquette, writes us off as uninterested in bug
reports; probability of future users taking branch 1 goes up by epsilon.

We can't do much about the existence of the infamous bugs (I know all
too well how hard it is to fix some of them), but we *can* change the
bugzilla comment policy so that users who take branch 2 do *not* get
flamed or even lectured.

I don't think it's possible to overstate how easy it is for users to
write us off as *completely* *uninterested* in hearing about their
problems. As such, just about *any* policy change that makes us seem
less uninterested is worth doing IMHO.

zw

[Asa Dotzler]

On 4/6/2012 12:53 PM, Justin Dolske wrote:
> I'm curious, does anyone feel the Ubuntu list [1] is substantially
> incomplete (ie, missing something obvious/important)? It seems
> reasonable to me.

It seems to miss quite a few, IMO. I think at least half a dozen of
these two dozen are critical if we want to do a good job letting the
under-represented and discriminated against know that we welcome them.

Disability.
Native/Indigenous/Alien/Immigrant status.
Military status.
Disease/Wellness/Health status.
Homelessness.
Marital status.
Parental status.
Pregnancy.
Rural/Urban residency.
Personality type.
Personal Philosophy.
Criminal record / Convict status / former prisoners.
Sex.
Caste.
Atheism / non-religiousness.
Tribal affiliation.
Dialect.
Education.
Intelligence.
Geographic region.
Drug use (prescription, marijuana, alcohol, birth control, tobacco,
methadone, etc.)
Body modification.
Abuse Survivors.

[Asa Dotzler]

On 4/6/2012 1:10 PM, Blake Winton wrote:
> On 06-04-12 13:27 , Robert Kaiser wrote:
>> Deb Richardson schrieb:
>>> But the list is important, and is essentially what we've been talking
>>> about for the past few days.
>> So we need to point out some groups that are more equal than others? :(
>
> Yes, we do, because if you don't point out specific groups, it's far too
> easily read as either meaningless platitudes or supporting the groups
> who are already in power.

So what about the dozens (yes, dozens) of other groups of people who are
oppressed and discriminated against by those in power? They don't
deserve to be listed and we can't be bothered to understand them and
their disadvantages? If they don't have a lot of allies already in our
community then they don't get our understanding and support?

But the problem there is the more complete you make the list, the more
offensive is the omission you didn't think of. "Wow, all of these other
dis-empowered have Mozilla's support, but not me?"

In another post I listed a couple dozen additional groups that cover
cases I'm personally familiar with. I'm sure that's far from complete.

- A

[Asa Dotzler]

On 4/6/2012 10:13 AM, Lukas Blakk wrote:
> There's a meritocracy alright,
> but it's from a limited pool - the limits come from some of the systemic
> oppression as has been mentioned before.

Just to be clear, are you saying that the limited pool is a result of
systematic oppression within the Mozilla community, by Mozillians?

[Robert Kaiser]

Siddharth Agarwal schrieb:

> Besides, not discriminating on language is untrue anyway -- you need to
> know English (or French, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese, I
> think -- correct me if I'm wrong) to communicate effectively to be hired
> at MoCo. Our job requirements (e.g. [1], picked arbitrarily) state
> "excellent written and verbal communication skills", but we're not going
> to hire someone fluent in Afghan but with no knowledge of English.

Let's be careful to not mix the Mozilla community and MoCo too much
here. The CoC talked about here is for the community. Employment rules
and rules for people payed by Mozilla are subject to a number of special
laws as well as up to MoCo managers. While people payed by Mozilla are
not only parts of the community but also should be enablers of the
community, they need to abide by *additional* rules set by by laws and
MoCo internally - and of course be able to communicate well at least
with their own manager, which limits language choices, for example.

Robert Kaiser

[Justin Dolske]

On 4/6/12 9:35 PM, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> On 4/6/2012 12:53 PM, Justin Dolske wrote:
> > I'm curious, does anyone feel the Ubuntu list [1] is substantially
>> incomplete (ie, missing something obvious/important)? It seems
>> reasonable to me.
>
> It seems to miss quite a few, IMO. I think at least half a dozen of
> these two dozen are critical if we want to do a good job letting the
> under-represented and discriminated against know that we welcome them.
>

> [...]

Hold on, let me just put this foot in my mouth. Mmmf mff mfff mmm.

You're right. I started down that path by thinking about the importance
of covering the categories foremost on people's minds. For example, I
probably see more about issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation
in the media than everything else combined. Thus, a final list that
omitted one of those would seem quite curious to me (even with an "and
other things" clause)... But there are all kinds of (hopefully obvious)
problems with a list that _only_ had those few areas listed, so my
question was moot before I even asked it. :/

I do wonder how to strike some balance, though. Not listing anything
seems like a problem, and now so does trying to list everything. Maybe
we shift the intent away from completeness, and instead towards areas
that have been (and/or seem likely to become) problem areas within the
Mozilla community? Ideally that would be a practical balance, although
realistically determining what "has / will be a problem area" could be
an equally impossible question to solve.

Hmm.

Justin

[Gervase Markham]

On 09/04/12 21:12, Robert Kaiser wrote:
> I didn't want to do a separate message for this, but I find it
> interesting that Debian just issued a diversity statement that doesn't
> include such a list, see http://lwn.net/Articles/491241/rss

I think this is awesome. Quoted here for reference:

"The Debian Project welcomes and encourages participation by everyone.

It doesn't matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you:
we welcome you. We welcome contributions from everyone as long as they
interact constructively with our community.

While much of the work for our project is technical in nature, we value
and encourage contributions from those with expertise in other areas,
and welcome them into our community."

Gerv