Code of Conduct

[Volker Braun]

Can we create an environment... where character matters, hard work is respected, humility is valued, and support for one another is unconditional? 

I admittedly stole that quote, but only because I wholeheartedly agree it is good to always aspire to better ourselves. Some of the Sage developers who are better with words than me went ahead and stole a lot more, mostly from Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct) and Django (https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct), to formulate a "Code of Conduct" for the Sage project. I'm happy to present it here, and welcome everyone to vote on it.

Code of Conduct

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

The Sage community is comprised of an international mixture of mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers,

researchers, teachers, amateurs, and others with varied backgrounds. This diversity is one of our strengths, but it can also lead to communication problems and unhappiness. People who love working on

Sage can more effectively collaborate with others if they follow this code.

If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct, we ask that you report it by emailing sage-...@googlegroups.com. The group administrators will consider the issue and explore resolutions. It

is also possible to move heated discussions to the mailing list sage-...@googlegroups.com.

1)   Be friendly and patient.

2)   Be welcoming. We strive to be a community that welcomes and supports people of all backgrounds and identities.

3)   Be considerate. Your work will be used by other people and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you take will affect users and developers so you should take those

consequences into account when making decisions. Conversely, Sage is constantly evolving, and earlier decisions that were made in good faith may sometimes need to be reconsidered. Nonetheless, we

should still appreciate the hard work done in the past.

4)   Be respectful and polite. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we

cannot allow that frustration to morph into personal attacks. It is important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. Members of the Sage

community should be respectful when dealing with other developers and users.

When we disagree, we should try to understand why. Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time. It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively.

Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint does not mean that they are wrong. Do not forget that it is human to err. Blame alone gets us nowhere, it is better to help resolve issues so

we can all learn from our mistakes.

[William Stein]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Volker Braun <vbrau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Can we create an environment... where character matters, hard work is
> respected, humility is valued, and support for one another is unconditional?
>
> I admittedly stole that quote, but only because I wholeheartedly agree it is
> good to always aspire to better ourselves. Some of the Sage developers who
> are better with words than me went ahead and stole a lot more, mostly from
> Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct) and Django
> (https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct), to formulate a "Code of Conduct"
> for the Sage project. I'm happy to present it here, and welcome everyone to
> vote on it.

For concreteness:

[ ] Yes, this is a great idea. About time!

[ ] This looks good, but it would be better if... (insert suggestions).

[ ] No, I greatly value the freedom to spout offensive profanity, and
will fork Sage in frustration if there is such a code. (We really do
want to know if there are any developers who would quit working on
Sage if we have this Code of Conduct; by definition such a person
should have no hesitation publicly saying so in response to this
email. I'm imagining what someone like Linus Torvalds might say if
this were proposed on the Linux kernel mailing list. I just want
people to think -- having a code of conduct isn't _obviously_ the
right thing to do.)

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "sage-devel" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sage-...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[Jan Groenewald]

Hi

Great to have in place to refer to as an educational guideline (not to be abused as strict rules).

It could also mention core values of Libre Software, with additional emphasis on scientific transparency.

Regards,
Jan

  .~.
  /V\     Jan Groenewald
 /( )\    www.aims.ac.za
 ^^-^^ 

[kcrisman]

> good to always aspire to better ourselves. Some of the Sage developers who
> are better with words than me went ahead and stole a lot more, mostly from
> Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct) and Django
> (https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct), to formulate a "Code of Conduct"
> for the Sage project. I'm happy to present it here, and welcome everyone to
> vote on it.

This also seems to channel an inner Larry Wall :)

 

For concreteness:

[X] This looks good, but it would be better if... (insert suggestions).

I'd suggest that the language of "reporting" a violation could be softened, since naturally there will even be disagreements about what constitutes a 'violation'... as we know, this has been debated over the years on various threads that may or may not have turned personal, including by very valuable members of the community.  I'd hate to have some "kicking out" policy for that, referring to sage-flame seems like a very good idea.  Indeed, eventually (already? I don't think so, but who knows) we will have people coming from very different cultural contexts as to what constitutes respect or considerateness - e.g. directness versus face-saving versus something yet again?

What I do think this brings is a tool to remind all of us (!) that everything here reflects on Sage, whether or not you care about your own personal reputation.  So more or less in support, and certainly in support very much of the values themselves.

- kcrisman

PS that includes trying to keep things PG and SFW!  I fully expect our first elementary-schooler to contribute something within a year... am I kidding?  I don't know!  I wouldn't be surprised.

[Robert Dodier]

On 2014-11-13, Volker Braun <vbrau...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Can we create an environment... where character matters, hard work is
> respected, humility is valued, and support for one another is
> unconditional?

Yes, I think you can, although I think formulating a code of conduct
is mostly a distraction. People take their cues from others who are
perceived to be socially superior, so the key is to get anybody who
has a lot of visibility / brownie points / respect / whatever to
get on the bandwagon. Whatever those people practice, is going to
become the conventional way, so we had better hope they have good
habits. About good habits, I think it's really pretty simple:

* talk about ideas instead of people
* don't feed the trolls
* get to the point

But if someone like, oh, I don't know, Linus Torvalds for instance,
consistently treats others like shit, everybody else joins the fun,
and everything goes downhill from there.

As I get older, I've become fascinated by the way that people pick
up culture (i.e., shared assumptions about how things work) from
each other, in all kinds of situations. I'm pretty sure that
informal cues vastly outweigh the formal ones, for better or worse.

For what it's worth,

Robert Dodier

[Simon King]

Hi!

On 2014-11-13, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For concreteness:
>
> [ ] Yes, this is a great idea. About time!
>
> [ ] This looks good, but it would be better if... (insert suggestions).
>
> [ ] No, I greatly value the freedom to spout offensive profanity, and
> will fork Sage in frustration if there is such a code. (We really do
> want to know if there are any developers who would quit working on
> Sage if we have this Code of Conduct; by definition such a person
> should have no hesitation publicly saying so in response to this
> email. I'm imagining what someone like Linus Torvalds might say if
> this were proposed on the Linux kernel mailing list. I just want
> people to think -- having a code of conduct isn't _obviously_ the
> right thing to do.)

I certainly see the possibility that a contributor quits if s/he is
mistreated by other contributors. I actually have first-hand experience:
A couple of years ago, I was involved in the German translation of some
parts of the Sage documentation. Another contributor personally insulted
me here on the list, and even by comments that he tried to put into the
Sage code. As a result, the German translation became a very low priority
for me, and I am not even sure if it is completed now.

However: If there was even the vague possibility of instrumenting a code of
conduct to kick valuable contributors out, then by Murphy's law it would
eventually happen. But I think it must not happen, which is why I am
strongly against a code of conduct that has the status of enforceable law
within our community.

I don't think that publishing a code of conduct is the right thing to do.
What really matters (also in the case of bullying at school) is: If people
see that contributor A mistreats contributor B, then they should first of
all be solidaric with B and openly express that they do not agree with how
A acts--- *without* starting to mistreat A in turn. This, I think, is by far
more important and helpful for B and for the community as a whole than to
kick A out.

Instead of publishing a code of conduct, I think it would be more
helpful to explain by (constructed) examples how and why people get
offended by certain ways of expressing concerns, and suggest better
ways of expressing the concern.

Best regards,
Simon

[Simon King]

Hi Robert,

On 2014-11-13, Robert Dodier <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Can we create an environment... where character matters, hard work is
>> respected, humility is valued, and support for one another is
>> unconditional?
>
> Yes, I think you can, although I think formulating a code of conduct
> is mostly a distraction.

+1

> People take their cues from others who are
> perceived to be socially superior, so the key is to get anybody who
> has a lot of visibility / brownie points / respect / whatever to
> get on the bandwagon. Whatever those people practice, is going to
> become the conventional way, so we had better hope they have good
> habits. About good habits, I think it's really pretty simple:
>
> * talk about ideas instead of people
> * don't feed the trolls
> * get to the point

Very good comment, I think!
Cheers,
Simon

[Travis Scrimshaw]

   I believe we need to have such a code-of-conduct posted stating the manner in which we should act. Like Jan and Simon, this should not be some strict set of rules that gets referenced every time someone feels another developer is out of line. By publishing such a code, we give explicit guideline which we want our contributors to try to adhere to. It should not be a zero tolerance policy, but it needs to be enforceable when necessary for clear repetitive violations.

   To give a counterpoint to Simon's analogy, we agree that bullying is bad, but by the rules, we can tell bullies explicitly what their doing is wrong, why we can't push the bullies down, and explain what will happen if the behavior escalates. Bullying can get so bad that the teachers need to step in and enact the correct punishment.

Best,
Travis

[Anne Schilling]

I agree with Travis that it is good to have guidelines that one can point people to if discussions escalate. I agree that it is best to try to work things out mutually, but this does not always seem possible. So ...

[X ] Yes, this is a great idea.  About time!

Best,

Anne

[Simon King]

Hi Travis,

On 2014-11-14, Travis Scrimshaw <tsc...@ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> To give a counterpoint to Simon's analogy, we agree that bullying is
> bad, but by the rules, we can tell bullies explicitly what their doing is
> wrong, why we can't push the bullies down, and explain what will happen if
> the behavior escalates. Bullying can get so bad that the teachers need to
> step in and enact the correct punishment.

In my experience, it is often the *teachers* who are bullying, in the
sense that bullying pupils are just the teacher's tools to destroy
pupils they don't like. But school aside.

If person A verbally attacks person B, I still think it does not help to
show a *disapproving* reaction towards person A, because then A may feel
attacked, which may make his/her behaviour even worse, and which
wouldn't help B at all. Instead, I suggest to show a *supporting* reaction
towards person B, in order to make B stronger and prevent damage.

As it has been said by (IIRC) Jan, it is important that authorities set
a good example. It may not always help with any individual, but is the
best way to keep a communicative environment healthy. And concerning those
individuals for which a good example isn't good enough, I'd prefer to
see a "don't feed the troll" policy. If person A realises that his/her
stampede ended in a vacuum, then s/he will usually stop. And if there
was harm done to B on the way towards the vacuum, then helping B has
priority over banning A.

Best regards,
Simon

[john_perry_usm]

On Friday, November 14, 2014 3:55:34 AM UTC+1, Travis Scrimshaw wrote:

Bullying can get so bad that the teachers need to step in and enact the correct punishment.

...yet, in my experience, they usually don't, and often because the bullies are likable, or socially influential (e.g., son of the superintendent/major donor, comes from "a good family"), etc. Sometimes a teacher can unintentionally make a student feel like s/he is bullying her or him. "Speech codes" are sometimes used simply to shut down debate on topics that become culturally unfashionable, and are often applied unevenly. I personally prefer civilized discourse, but I've also noticed that Western society seems to have adopted an undercurrent of thin-skinned outrage.

If someone wanted to add a patch that verifiably improved the performance of Sage on [insert your favorite subsystem here], what would you do if her or his comments were frequently abusive toward other contributors, or previous contributions? i.e., profanity-laced, derogatory, etc. Not the code itself, mind, just the comments in the trac ticket and/or discussion in sage-devel. Presumably, someone would take her/ him aside & talk to him, but what if (as often happens) that person ignored the intervention & continued to heap abuse on you? Would you reject the patch?

If not, what's the point of the proposed code? Again, I like civilized discourse, but a code without consequences strikes me as worse than no code at all.

[rjf]

To the extent that a code of conduct looks like an attempt to limit

freedom of speech, it may be counterproductive.  It is possible to

legislate "politeness" by moderating newsgroups.  I suppose it is

possible to resolve disagreements about the course of open software

development by

(a) achieving consensus

(b) force (imposition of some authority to make decisions)

  or 

(c) forking a project.

Is this a well-known  negative of open source development (resolving

disputes?)  Has it been explored in journals? (I'm not well-read on whatever

literature there is on open source pro/con  recently.)

RJF

[Simon King]

Hi William,

Am Donnerstag, 13. November 2014 20:00:58 UTC+1 schrieb William:

[ ] No, I greatly value the freedom to spout offensive profanity, and
will fork Sage in frustration if there is such a code.

I think you misunderstand the motivation for not wanting any published code of conduct. I do *not* want to have an official code of conduct, because I *do* want to have civilised manners in our community.

To my understanding, what Volker suggests is as follows: Some people formulate and establish a law for the community. The same people claim that an offence to the law occurs. The same people investigate on it. The same people judge on it. And the same people eventually enforce the law. Needless to say that these people have no training whatsoever that would qualify them for any of these tasks, and moreover they have a personal interest. You may observe that the situation at schools is quite similar.

Note that in civilised countries there must(!) be a clear distinction between legislative, judiciary, and executive, a special training is required in each of these branches, and their actions must not be driven by personal interest. Having such a separation would, from my perspective, be the only acceptable way of having an official code of conduct. But I suppose most developers wouldn't like to quit writing code and studying law instead.

 (We really do
want to know if there are any developers who would quit working on
Sage if we have this Code of Conduct; 

I would not *immediately* quit working on Sage if we had any official code of conduct. However, I do think that establishing an official enforceable code of conduct is presumptuous, and I would expect that it can be instrumented to do harm. And by Murphy's law it *will* eventually be instrumented to do harm. And then I *would* quit.

I just want
people to think -- having a code of conduct isn't _obviously_ the
right thing to do.)

 I think that an official code of conduct is rather obviously *not* the right thing to have. A code of conduct has a high likelihood of doing nothing more than "stating the obvious", and this might actually encourage some people (including myself) to start misbehaving, just in order to break the chains. It would all do more harm than good.

As I stated in a previous post: A couple of years ago I was attacked, some person even posted a patch on trac that would have added a personally insulting comment into the Sage code. The reaction of the community, and especially of you, William, has been excellent: You encouraged me, on and off list, and nobody has fed the troll. When he did not get an exciting reaction, he tried to rampage a bit more, but his stampede ended in a vacuum, and thus he eventually disappeared.

In other words, I can confirm that it does work when an authority (based on merits, I mean) sets a good example.

So, I encourage all of us: If an offence happens, then please please take care of the person who is offended, but greatly ignore the offender. If ignoring the offender has no effect, then we are likely in a situation where "real" law applies. But then it's the department of public prosecution.

Best regards,
Simon

[Simon King]

Am Freitag, 14. November 2014 07:38:27 UTC+1 schrieb Simon King:

As it has been said by (IIRC) Jan, it is important that authorities set
a good example.

Sorry, it was Robert's post.

[Volker Braun]

On Thursday, November 13, 2014 10:37:40 PM UTC, Simon King wrote:

[...] which is why I am

strongly against a code of conduct that has the status of enforceable law
within our community. 

Its a bit of a German peculiarity that we don't have a concept of rules that aren't enforced by law until everyone is forced to adhere to them to the letter. The (garden) allotment constitution allows only two lawn ornaments, so if you don't remove your third garden gnome immediately then we'll call the police and have it destroyed...

Code of conduct should be understood akin to code of honor or code of ethics.

 

[Simon King]

Am Freitag, 14. November 2014 11:52:03 UTC+1 schrieb Volker Braun:

Code of conduct should be understood akin to code of honor or code of ethics.

 John Perry stated: "Again, I like civilized discourse, but a code without consequences strikes me as worse than no code at all." And a code *with* consequences strikes me as worse than no code at all, too.

[Volker Braun]

On Friday, November 14, 2014 10:57:49 AM UTC, Simon King wrote:

Am Freitag, 14. November 2014 11:52:03 UTC+1 schrieb Volker Braun:

Code of conduct should be understood akin to code of honor or code of ethics.

 "a code without consequences strikes me as worse than no code at all."

I disagree, having a code of ethics is definitely valuable in my book. Everything has consequences (Newton's third law), but a code of ethics is not a law book with attached penalties.

[mmarco]

Precisely last weekend i gave a talk about Sage in PyCon Spain, and one of the topics i discussed is how the project has been quite succesful in attracting users to become developpers. One of the key aspects there is the fact that usually we have a good atmosphere to discuss.  Having a place like sage-flame where the discussions that may become a distraction can be moved to is a great idea.

So, about the code of conduct, it sounds like a nice set of guidelines. But, do we really need it? I mean, has it been some hard conflict that i have not been aware of? I know that we have some trolling and flaming going on every once in a while, but it doesn't seem to have been harmful so far. In general, the discussion here is very respectfull (I haven't seen any RTFM answer to people asling for help, for instance). My impression is that the Sage community is nice for newcommers. We have done quite well so far without a code of conduct.

[Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd)]

On 13 November 2014 18:48, Volker Braun <vbrau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> and welcome everyone to
> vote on it.
>
>
> Code of Conduct
> ---------------

> If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct, we ask that you
> report it by emailing sage-...@googlegroups.com. The group administrators
> will consider the issue and explore resolutions.

What will be the background of the "group administrators", and the
people who receive posts from sage-...@googlegroups.com?

Are these people going to have a background in human resources and/or
be trained in this area?

Dave

[Mike Zabrocki]

I am in the

[X ] Yes, this is a great idea.  About time!

camp...

Some people are more intimidated by non-polite postings than others.  I am aware of people who were quite turned off by aggressive language (and have been turned off of sage development because of it...think of Simon's example, and he is probably more thick skinned than most) and asking that everyone play nice is hardly a radical approach.

While I agree with the sentiment that the right approach is to "not feed the troll," this works only in (say) 90% of the cases.  What do you do with the other 10%?  I hope that the community will speak up and say "hey, play nice" but often this doesn't happen when it should and even that might not be enough if the damage is already done.

[kcrisman]

If person A verbally attacks person B, I still think it does not help to
show a *disapproving* reaction towards person A, because then A may feel
attacked, which may make his/her behaviour even worse, and which
wouldn't help B at all. Instead, I suggest to show a *supporting* reaction
towards person B, in order to make B stronger and prevent damage.

Yes, that is correct.  Especially in the highly fragmented and open-to-misinterpretation text-only domain we live in.

> Is this a well-known  negative of open source development (resolving

> disputes?)  Has it been explored in journals? (I'm not well-read on whatever

> literature there is on open source pro/con  recently.)

> RJF

rjf, I (once again) *highly* recommend Steven Weber's http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018587 "The Success of Open Source", in particular the chapters on self-governance in open source, as a place to start reading about this.  There are also numerous articles in various collections on this issue, but somewhat surprisingly there is a lot of repetition - the researchers on this seem to focus on motivation and economic success, or other socio-economic issues, and less on the socio-political aspect which is just as important.  There are also several mildly scholarly histories of e.g. Linux that go in far too much detail about the damage (and the good) that Torvald's personality does there.  But there is certainly an abundance of anecdotal stuff regarding this out there, just not often well-organized - it comes in the midst of other discussions.

And someone asked about RTM style comments - yes, we do get those, more's the pity, though Sage is pretty good about such things, largely thanks to the tone William set very early on.  But there is still some of it, which is why at least having a non-penalty-based 'honor code' sort of "out there" could be useful as a place to gently remind people that we're not just working for the 20-odd people replying to this thread, but for hundreds or thousands watching.

- kcrisman

[Andrew]

In an ideal world I think that a code of conduct would not be necessary. Sadly, the world is not ideal.

I think that SImon's example of what happened with the German translation project is a great example of why it would be good to have a code of conduct: some one's comments turned him off working on the project. Simon said that he thinks that the current system worked perfectly in this example. I think it failed dismally because Simon stopped working on the project and, what's worse, he suggests that the project may have been abandoned.

I think you misunderstand the motivation for not wanting any published code of conduct. I do *not* want to have an official code of conduct, because I *do* want to have civilised manners in our community.

Note that in civilised countries there must(!) be a clear distinction between legislative, judiciary, and executive, a special training is required in each of these branches, and their actions must not be driven by personal interest. Having such a separation would, from my perspective, be the only acceptable way of having an official code of conduct. But I suppose most developers wouldn't like to quit writing code and studying law instead.

I would be against having a code of conduct that s used to police now people post. Rather it should be just a guide. As the whole group is being asked to vote on, and suggest changes to, the code I don't see this as being driven by personal interest.

I disagree with the issue of people not being "trained" to decide what is acceptable as, first, I think this is part of the current "management speak": reasonable people can make reasonable decisions and choices. Secondly, you applaud some of these unqualified people for the support they gave with the German translation incident.

So, I encourage all of us: If an offence happens, then please please take care of the person who is offended, but greatly ignore the offender. [my emphasis] If ignoring the offender has no effect, then we are likely in a situation where "real" law applies. But then it's the department of public prosecution.

+1

Btw, as Ropbert said, people take their cues from members of the group who are perceived to be "socially superior" and I certainly consider Simon to be in this category. I have replied to Simon's post because I think that a code of conduct is potentially useful and he is the only person who is giving reasons for not having one. If people like Simon are against having a code of conduct I think this is significant. On the other hand, I fully endorse Simon's statement above and I think that it would be quite reasonable to have it as the official code of conduct. I am being quite serious. After all, the code of conduct should be an aspiratal statement about how we, as a group, go about achieving our aims.

Andrew

[John Cremona]

It had never occurred to me that such a thing would ever be necessary.
Any exclusions should be collective decisions not by some oligarchy,
and should allow for reinstatement if the perpetrators are contrite.

John

[rjf]

On Friday, November 14, 2014 7:06:56 AM UTC-8, kcrisman wrote:

If person A verbally attacks person B, I still think it does not help to
show a *disapproving* reaction towards person A, because then A may feel
attacked, which may make his/her behaviour even worse, and which
wouldn't help B at all. Instead, I suggest to show a *supporting* reaction
towards person B, in order to make B stronger and prevent damage.

Yes, that is correct.  Especially in the highly fragmented and open-to-misinterpretation text-only domain we live in.

> Is this a well-known  negative of open source development (resolving

> disputes?)  Has it been explored in journals? (I'm not well-read on whatever

> literature there is on open source pro/con  recently.)

> RJF

rjf, I (once again) *highly* recommend Steven Weber's http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018587 "The Success of Open Source", in particular the chapters on self-governance in open source, as a place to start reading about this.  

Ironically, Weber's book is itself not free, but is sold for $24.50.   Maybe his belief in open whatever does not

extend to the intellectual property that he himself produces..

Can you provide a link to an open discussion of this matter?

(while I could perhaps borrow a copy from a library, there are people who might not

have access to a library copy.  etc.)

 

There are also numerous articles in various collections on this issue, but somewhat surprisingly there is a lot of repetition - the researchers on this seem to focus on motivation and economic success, or other socio-economic issues, and less on the socio-political aspect which is just as important.  There are also several mildly scholarly histories of e.g. Linux that go in far too much detail about the damage (and the good) that Torvald's personality does there.  But there is certainly an abundance of anecdotal stuff regarding this out there, just not often well-organized - it comes in the midst of other discussions.

I question the claim made by some people that Linux (the base operating system) is an example of sophisticated programming.  The collection of

everything that runs on Linux is impossible to assess.

And someone asked about RTM style comments - yes, we do get those, more's the pity, though Sage is pretty good about such things, largely thanks to the tone William set very early on.  But there is still some of it, which is why at least having a non-penalty-based 'honor code' sort of "out there" could be useful as a place to gently remind people that we're not just working for the 20-odd people replying to this thread, but for hundreds or thousands watching.

If they come in via Google Groups, are they not counted?

 

- kcrisman

[P Purkayastha]

You can just follow some guidelines. I am a member of the Gentoo Linux forums and they have very clear statements saying what is considered inappropriate in the forums. In gist,

1. No personal attacks,

2. No offensive language

The guidelines are quite comprehensive and I think it helps keep the forum in general very civil and helpful. 

Reference:

I) Guidelines for the forums: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-525.html

II) Guidelines for a less moderated subforum: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-120351.html

[Simon King]

Hi!

On 2014-11-15, P Purkayastha <ppu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You can just follow some guidelines. I am a member of the Gentoo Linux
> forums and they have very clear statements saying what is considered
> inappropriate in the forums. In gist,
>
> 1. No personal attacks,
> 2. No offensive language

That's where we would see disagreement already. For example, person A
claims something, and person B answers that what A claims is
"inconsistent".
I can speak from experience that some people (e.g., far too many teachers)
would believe that B was offensive, whereas I would say that B was just
stating a fact (that may be true or false, but in any case is not
offensive).

And when you have a code of conduct stating that one shouldn't launch
personal attacks or use offensive language, then it just states the
obvious. Hence, such code would be useless. Worse, some people (including
myself) tend to feel offended if they are told obvious things, and may
react accordingly. Damage would result.

Please don't forget: No code of conduct (and no criminal law, for that
matter) can prevent people from commiting erratic behaviour. What really
matters is: How to minimize the negative consequences of individual
erratic behaviour to our community?

Rather than having a list of "thou shalt not"s, telling people what not
to do on our mailing lists, I think it would be better to suggest what
to do when people on the list are hurt by other people on the list. How
to increase the likelyhood that the offender will return to actual
contribution? How to prevent the offended from quitting?

Best regards,
Simon

[Anne Schilling]

On 11/15/14 7:32 AM, P Purkayastha wrote:
>
>
> On Friday, November 14, 2014 8:50:14 PM UTC+8, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd) wrote:
>

> On 13 November 2014 18:48, Volker Braun <vbrau...@gmail.com <javascript:>> wrote:
> > and welcome everyone to
> > vote on it.
> >
> >
> > Code of Conduct
> > ---------------
>
> > If you believe someone is violating the code of conduct, we ask that you

> > report it by emailing sage-...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. The group administrators

> > will consider the issue and explore resolutions.
>
> What will be the background of the "group administrators", and the

> people who receive posts from sage-...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>?

>
> Are these people going to have a background in human resources and/or
> be trained in this area?
>
> Dave
>
>
> You can just follow some guidelines. I am a member of the Gentoo Linux forums and they have very clear statements saying what is considered inappropriate in the forums. In gist,
>
> 1. No personal attacks,
> 2. No offensive language
>
> The guidelines are quite comprehensive and I think it helps keep the forum in general very civil and helpful.
>
> Reference:
> I) Guidelines for the forums: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-525.html
> II) Guidelines for a less moderated subforum: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-120351.html

Thanks for the links to the guidelines. It is interesting to see how other communities handle this.
Dave's question was how situations will be handled when a violation occurs or that are reported.
Does your community have experience with this?

Best,

Anne

[Nathann Cohen]

-1 to a code of conduct, and +1 to considering that sage-devel is just yet another human community with no specfic rules needed.

I was reading a law book on contracts recently, and it just feels wrong to have yet another example of a contract which is *not* designed with all sides equal. If you want to contribute to Sage then you must agree with every single detail of Sage's laws ? That's unfair.

Plus as John Perry said this will probably just be used to close discussions.

Plus it feels weird to have another "rule" without a clearly defined sanction. The only such example I know in the french law is the rule that "All state employees (e.g. researcher/professors) MUST report any corruption/offense they get to learn during their work". What if they do not ? Well, there is no explicit sanction, so in practice the rule is useless. And God knows that it would be useful to enforce it !

Plus, well. Sage may boast of hundreds of contributors but in the end how many do you think that we are here ? Some persons join all threads, some others just a few. What is the point of inventing a legal system when the conversations we have here involve 5 persons, max 10 ?...

Nathann

[Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd)]

On 15 November 2014 16:44, Anne Schilling <an...@math.ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>> > Code of Conduct

>
> Thanks for the links to the guidelines. It is interesting to see how other communities handle this.
> Dave's question was how situations will be handled when a violation occurs or that are reported.
> Does your community have experience with this?
>
> Best,
>
> Anne

Unless there is another Dave, my question is not what you describe Anne.

We were asked to vote whether this code of conduct should be
introduced, yet it seems illogical to vote when the makeup of the
administrators and those reading sage-abuse are not stated. Things
that come to mind are:

1) Are the administrators and readers of sage-abuse going to be
professionally trained to handle such situations?
2) Is it going to be a sub-set of sage developers, and if so who chooses them?

I think there is probably a closer relationship between the members of
sage-devel than on many open-source projects. Many on sage-devel are
students of others of sage-devel. Many have junior roles in
universities where others have more senior roles in the same
department. I doubt that situation is as common on other projects, so
I believe care would be needed in making comparisons with the
usefulness of similar "codes of conduct" on other open-source
communities.

Without knowing the makeup of those lists, and how they are chosen, in
*my* opinion it is not possible to make an informed judgement about
the proposal.

Since opinions on this proposal are quite split, and those that have
them quite vocal on it, I do wonder if the introduction of such a code
of conduct might actually cause a bigger split. It may be a case of
the medicine is worse than the symptoms.

Dave

[Volker Braun]

On Saturday, November 15, 2014 5:37:16 PM UTC, Nathann Cohen wrote:

Plus it feels weird to have another "rule" without a clearly defined sanction.

Aaah you would have been a perfect German had you been born on the other side of the border ;-)

Where is the threat of punishment in Kant's categorical imperative?

 

[William Stein]

Understand, there are also consequences to not having some sort of
successful code of conduct. These include:

1. Continuing to lose talented Sage developers specifically because
they do not feel comfortable with the tone of the lists, and

2. Miss out on Sage development discussions that would be on public
lists, but will instead be moved to private mailing lists that can
more easily enforce a "code of conduct".

These are two very significant real outcomes that are happening that
you may not be aware of. That doesn't make them any less real. The
sort of people that will quit working on a project because they do not
feel comfortable in discussions are in most cases *precisely* the
people who will not publicly explain why they are leaving. Also, the
development discussions that happen privately are private, so you
don't know they are happening, unless you're specifically told about
them.

Because of my unique position in this project, I've been regularly
made aware of the above happening since the beginning of the project.

In my experience many professional mathematicians are unusually
considerate sensitive people, who choose mathematics as a career
partly because they greatly appreciate the extent to which discourse
about mathematics and among mathematicians is very civil and about the
mathematics itself, rather than politics and personal attacks. Such
people have little patience for being involved in a community that is
not exceptionally civil. Many of these people can contribute
enormously to Sage, implementing code that only they can implement,
which takes thousands of hours of careful thought, benchmarking,
design, and coding. They are extremely valuable to our project and
community.

-- William

[Nathann Cohen]

Yo !

> Aaah you would have been a perfect German had you been born on the other
> side of the border ;-)
>
> Where is the threat of punishment in Kant's categorical imperative?

Ahahahah. I had never heard of that thing ! And love this way of
looking at things.

+1 to making Kant's categorical imperative the unique rule of Sage's
code of conduct, with no explicit sanction. It looks smart, it is in
practice totally open to (mis)interpretation, and nobody will ever be
sure that this is something we actually have to follow.

If we do, I promise to write a post about how Sage's implementation of
categories violate Kant's categorical imperative. It will be long and
uninteresting.

Nathann

[Nathann Cohen]

Yo !

> Understand, there are also consequences to not having some sort of
> successful code of conduct.   These include:

Hmmm.... It is a bit incorrect to pretend that none of it would ever happen if we had a code of conduct. A code is just a tool to say that those who wrote the code are a priori right.

>    2. Miss out on Sage development discussions that would be on public

> lists, but will instead be moved to private mailing lists that can
> more easily enforce a "code of conduct".

Yeah, I also hate that. Sometimes you see ticket where many important design decisions are made and absolutely no comment on the trac ticket except "Looks good -> positive review" because all discussions happened offline. Might as well be proprietary.

> These are two very significant real outcomes that are happening that

> you may not be aware of.  That doesn't make them any less real.  The
> sort of people that will quit working on a project because they do not
> feel comfortable in discussions are in most cases *precisely* the
> people who will not publicly explain why they are leaving.  Also, the
> development discussions that happen privately are private, so you
> don't know they are happening, unless you're specifically told about
> them.

Hmmm... It is a bit hard to answer somebody who says that "everybody agrees with me but as they tell me in private you cannot know it". This being said, I do not think that a code of conduct would change anything to that. We just cannot order everybody to be happy, smile at all times and live in harmony.

> Because of my unique position in this project, I've been regularly
> made aware of the above happening since the beginning of the project.

Hmmmm... Since the beginning ? Actually, I never knew why Michael Abshoff left. The only mail I ever got from him was when he created my trac account and he seemed like a nice guy.

> In my experience many professional mathematicians are unusually
> considerate sensitive people, who choose mathematics as a career
> partly because they greatly appreciate the extent to which discourse
> about mathematics and among mathematicians is very civil and about the
> mathematics itself, rather than politics and personal attacks.

Depends where you look. The amount of anarchists in the math world is alarmingly high. Those are not exactly the guys who are shy about political ideas, or anything in general. Just met a guy on a plane who told me how everybody in Universities kept wasting public money. I may even have convinced him to use Sage instead of Mathematica :-)

> Such
> people have little patience for being involved in a community that is
> not exceptionally civil.

Really, it depends where you look. Take some random names of people on this mailing list, see how they react ! All guys who post on this thread actually give the proof that they are not afraid to participate to political discussions. And we all do so in a very civil way. In how many places do you think that we can so easily talk so freely about such issues ? In Universities everything is done behind doors, here it is public !

> Many of these people can contribute
> enormously to Sage, implementing code that only they can implement,
> which takes thousands of hours of careful thought, benchmarking,
> design, and coding.   They are extremely valuable to our project and
> community.

Well. You will understand that I find it hard to have any specific opinion about people who you tell me only shared their concerns with you in private. Hard also to evaluate the thousands of work that we may have potentially lost :-P

Nathann

[mmarco]

I am afraid i would need more information to make a decission about this. I wasn't aware of the existence of the problems you mention. Without knowing what happened in those cases, i cannot say if the proposed code of conduct would have been a good idea to prevent them or not.

[William Stein]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Nathann Cohen <nathan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yo !
>
>> Understand, there are also consequences to not having some sort of
>> successful code of conduct. These include:
>
> Hmmm.... It is a bit incorrect to pretend that none of it would ever happen
> if we had a code of conduct. A code is just a tool to say that those who
> wrote the code are a priori right.

I think mmarco said it well "i cannot say if the proposed code of
conduct would have been a good idea to prevent them or not." I
personally also don't know. This whole discussion is difficult for
me, since I tend to have thick skin and am the third most popular
poster of all time to the sage-flame list [1] (guess who is their
number one poster by far?)

[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/sage-flame

And to be honest when I look at something like the "hoodie code of
conduct" [2] which says "If a participant engages in any behaviour
violating this code of conduct, the core members of this community may
take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender
or expulsion from the community, exclusion from any interaction and
loss of all rights in this community."... I immediately think to
myself "screw that, I'm not going to put my blood, sweat and tears
into something that can just be taken away from me like that."

[2] http://hood.ie/code-of-conduct/index.html

>
>> 2. Miss out on Sage development discussions that would be on public
>> lists, but will instead be moved to private mailing lists that can
>> more easily enforce a "code of conduct".
>
> Yeah, I also hate that. Sometimes you see ticket where many important design
> decisions are made and absolutely no comment on the trac ticket except
> "Looks good -> positive review" because all discussions happened offline.
> Might as well be proprietary.

I wouldn't go quite as far as "Might as well be proprietary." I
comfort myself by realizing that many excellent mathematics papers are
written this way as well, and they are still very valuable to the
community. Sometimes privacy is necessary in order to focus and think
clearly. The final code is still 100% public after all.

> This being said,
> I do not think that a code of conduct would change anything to that. We just
> cannot order everybody to be happy, smile at all times and live in harmony.

That is a fair point of view, and I'm really glad you're giving your
perspective on the proposal, even keeping in mind the non-public
situations I just pointed out. I really appreciate it.

>> Because of my unique position in this project, I've been regularly
>> made aware of the above happening since the beginning of the project.
>
> Hmmmm... Since the beginning ? Actually, I never knew why Michael Abshoff
> left. The only mail I ever got from him was when he created my trac account
> and he seemed like a nice guy.

That was a different situation. There was some friction, but overall
the main problem was that I couldn't pay him very much (and what I did
pay him was really complicated, due to him not being a US person -- I
even got audited as a result, though everything was of course 100%
legal). He was one of the only actual
paid-specifically-to-work-on-Sage people ever. He's very talented and
easily had other options. He was not an academic, so his work wasn't
being subsidized by a university/government system (like you and me).

>> Many of these people can contribute
>> enormously to Sage, implementing code that only they can implement,
>> which takes thousands of hours of careful thought, benchmarking,
>> design, and coding. They are extremely valuable to our project and
>> community.
>
> Well. You will understand that I find it hard to have any specific opinion
> about people who you tell me only shared their concerns with you in private.
> Hard also to evaluate the thousands of work that we may have potentially
> lost :-P

I am only asking you what you think of having a code of conduct under
the hypothesis that those concern are real and the consequences will
definitely be losing developers and public discussions. I think you
did precisely that above, and still came to the conclusion that you
believe such guidelines would still not be better for productivity and
the project overall. I appreciate your remarks,

[john_perry_usm]

William

Understand, there are also consequences to not having some sort of
successful code of conduct.   These include:

   1. Continuing to lose talented Sage developers specifically because
they do not feel comfortable with the tone of the lists, and

Can you give an example of this, even if vaguely? I don't read every conversation on the lists, but in my personal experience, the community has been very supportive, even when I'm an idiot. (Sometimes you have been supportive *especially* when I'm an idiot.) I do see a lot of rough-and-tumble when there are disagreements on some things, but I thought they were expressed civilly, for the most part.

I concede that I know of two reasons why some people grow discouraged developing with Sage, but neither seems a consequence of the tone of the lists.

(1) When switching development to Git, it became harder for the less talented to contribute. I'm not the only one who encountered a complete recompilation of Sage when reviewing a new ticket -- even one that didn't touch Cython. See, e.g., some of my comments on ticket #17298, where at one point I wrote, "I can't afford to tie up my installation for 2 hours of compilation every time a few lines of Python code change."

This used not to occur in Mercurial. That certainly discourages me, in part because I'm not talented. Admittedly, I wasn't contributing much to start with ;-) though I did have a pretty good series of tickets w/Nathann last year. (Thanks, Nathann!)

(2) A speaker at one conference mentioned the pickiness (IIRC) of a *major* Sage developer as discouraging development, and a particular subsystem of great interest to that speaker was languishing as a result.

I might have misunderstood #2; perhaps the speaker meant in fact the tone that developer took, but I don't think so. Even if it was the tone, that returns to the question I raised before: if a major developer is a problem, would the powers that be exclude the person's patches? Especially as the tone people take in some conversations can be very culturally based.

john perry

[William Stein]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2014 at 12:18 PM, john_perry_usm <john....@usm.edu> wrote:
> William
>
>> Understand, there are also consequences to not having some sort of
>> successful code of conduct. These include:
>>
>> 1. Continuing to lose talented Sage developers specifically because
>> they do not feel comfortable with the tone of the lists, and
>
>
> Can you give an example of this, even if vaguely? I don't read every
> conversation on the lists, but in my personal experience, the community has
> been very supportive, even when I'm an idiot. (Sometimes you have been
> supportive *especially* when I'm an idiot.) I do see a lot of
> rough-and-tumble when there are disagreements on some things, but I thought
> they were expressed civilly, for the most part.

I don't think I should, though if anybody reading this wants to give
an example, I encourage them.

>
> I concede that I know of two reasons why some people grow discouraged
> developing with Sage, but neither seems a consequence of the tone of the
> lists.
>
> (1) When switching development to Git, it became harder for the less
> talented to contribute. I'm not the only one who encountered a complete
> recompilation of Sage when reviewing a new ticket -- even one that didn't
> touch Cython. See, e.g., some of my comments on ticket #17298, where at one
> point I wrote, "I can't afford to tie up my installation for 2 hours of
> compilation every time a few lines of Python code change."
>
> This used not to occur in Mercurial. That certainly discourages me, in part
> because I'm not talented. Admittedly, I wasn't contributing much to start
> with ;-) though I did have a pretty good series of tickets w/Nathann last
> year. (Thanks, Nathann!)

+1 This is a HUGE problem and you're definitely not the first to
complain to me about it. Back in the old days I spent a huge amount
of time ensuring this didn't happen, because once at an Arizona Winter
School I remember seeing this frustrated Russian grad student trying
to do "sage -br" and suffering very badly -- it really left an
impression on me. There's genuine negative fallout from the git
transition, which negatively impacts developer productivity,
unfortunately...

> (2) A speaker at one conference mentioned the pickiness (IIRC) of a *major*
> Sage developer as discouraging development, and a particular subsystem of
> great interest to that speaker was languishing as a result.

Was this mentioned when the speaker was publicly speaking?

>
> I might have misunderstood #2; perhaps the speaker meant in fact the tone
> that developer took, but I don't think so. Even if it was the tone, that
> returns to the question I raised before: if a major developer is a problem,
> would the powers that be exclude the person's patches? Especially as the
> tone people take in some conversations can be very culturally based.
>
> john perry
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "sage-devel" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sage-...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[john_perry_usm]

 

+1  This is a HUGE problem and you're definitely not the first to complain to me about it.

Sorry, I'm not trying to complain about it, and I've read the motivation for the change, and I understand it. I wouldn't want the people who advocated it to infer some of us are ungrateful; this is a huge system, and having worked on both Sage & some other systems, I've come to appreciate some of the hard work & good decisions that have gone into Sage. Plus, I've seen how some have been making changes to improve it.

That said, I'm relieved for the +1. I was actually worried that it would be highlighted as an example of the tone we don't want. :-)

 

Was this mentioned when the speaker was publicly speaking?

I'd say semi-public; i.e., it was after a talk, but there was still a small crowd. From the entire context, I'd also say the speaker thinks well of Sage; this particular comment seemed off-the-cuff, and not at all meant in a negative way; it was just a data point to help the listener understand, so to speak.

john perry

[P Purkayastha]

Yes. Typically, they ban the user for a period of time. The violations are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. It seems quite a few requests (code of conduct violations, and otherwise) have piled up in http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-28820.html !

[Anne Schilling]

On 11/15/14 11:47 AM, mmarco wrote:
> I am afraid i would need more information to make a decission about this. I wasn't aware of the existence of the problems you mention. Without knowing what happened in those cases, i cannot say if the
> proposed code of conduct would have been a good idea to prevent them or not.

Here are some links to discussions that look to me have gone astray. Also, as you might notice
that some of the participants in these discussions have since ceased to post on the public
mailing lists, even though they were active contributors/developers before:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-devel/SnPfidRM9j8
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-combinat-devel/YRc1GWa3XBg
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-devel/IxzCVWYsg60

If we want to avoid that discussions drift off to private mailing lists or to loose
contributors, as we all seem to agree is not desirable, then I think guidelines
for discussions would be helpful.

Also, Sage already has rules in place. For example, patches can only be merged
after a review process and the author cannot be the reviewer. We all strive to adhere
to these rules. So why not guidelines for how we should conduct discussion since
in my view, some of them do go out of hand. And whoever shouts loudest is not always the
one who is right.

Best,

Anne

[Nathann Cohen]

Hello !

> Here are some links to discussions that look to me have gone astray. Also, as you might notice
> that some of the participants in these discussions have since ceased to post on the public
> mailing lists, even though they were active contributors/developers before:

Ahahaha. Such a long thread, advocating that criticism should never get personnal, and all of a sudden I learn that it is only there to decide what Sage should dispose of my humble self ? :-PPP

> If we want to avoid that discussions drift off to private mailing lists or to loose

> contributors, as we all seem to agree is not desirable, then I think guidelines
> for discussions would be helpful.

You see, in this case the effect of guidelines would only be to close discussions. Or, to be more direct, to throw me out of it.

And I do not think that this is a good way out. If I make no mistake, in two of those threads I was mostly complaining against lack of actions. The thing with a code of conduct is that a winning strategy is just to stop answering/posting as it only condems insults and verbal violence, while I believe that in some cases that would be escaping one's responsibilities.

Responsibility is hard to define in a code of conduct.

Nathann

[rjf]

It seems to me that there is newgroup etiquette that for this group should

include anyone requesting anyone else to move a discussion to private

mail,  or to sage-flame.  At least for a while.

 Common courtesy would be to agree, even if

it might not be entirely to your liking.

Changing code is more troublesome.  Group A  says 0^0 should be

simplified to1 because it is consistent with x^0=1. Group B says

0^0 should be 0 because 0^x=0.  Group C says it is undefined, UND or NaN.

Group D says signal an error...

or someone fresh from a calculus course says the answer is log(abs(x))

not log(x).  (Remember that?)

How to mediate?  Not obvious, but sometimes a consensus can be

reached through an educational process.  Or as is sometimes done

in Maxima, by introducing a "flag" that allows you to implement both

choices.   Or having a library that, when read in, makes a bunch of

changes to suit some context of mathematics.  (This is extremely

easy in Maxima, loading a Lisp file.  I assume there is a way from

Sage to cause routines to be overwritten,  and even to instruct Maxima

to overwrite some of its routines.

If a group of people conspire to write, review, and approve a bunch of

changes that another group of people think is wrong, then consider

the US Congress.

Do you want votes, vetoes, filibusters?

I think the "nuclear option"  is to make a project fork, as was done

for example in the CAS Axiom <--> FriCAS.

RJF

[john_perry_usm]

On Saturday, November 15, 2014 11:37:50 PM UTC+1, Anne Schilling wrote:

On 11/15/14 11:47 AM, mmarco wrote: 
> I am afraid i would need more information to make a decission about this. I wasn't aware of the existence of the problems you mention. Without knowing what happened in those cases, i cannot say if the 
> proposed code of conduct would have been a good idea to prevent them or not. 

Here are some links to discussions that look to me have gone astray. Also, as you might notice 
that some of the participants in these discussions have since ceased to post on the public 
mailing lists, even though they were active contributors/developers before: 

While that definitely illustrates the point, I find it curious that the one of the advocates of a code of conduct is the same one to write, ... no, I won't go there. I think I'd better just check out of the conversation at this point.

john perry

[Ursula Whitcher]

On Friday, November 14, 2014 6:05:02 AM UTC-6, mmarco wrote:

So, about the code of conduct, it sounds like a nice set of guidelines. But, do we really need it? I mean, has it been some hard conflict that i have not been aware of? I know that we have some trolling and flaming going on every once in a while, but it doesn't seem to have been harmful so far. In general, the discussion here is very respectfull (I haven't seen any RTFM answer to people asling for help, for instance). My impression is that the Sage community is nice for newcommers. We have done quite well so far without a code of conduct.

Frames of reference vary.  When I am interacting with Sage developers, I routinely edit my draft posts to make them more assertive and less nice.

--Ursula.

[Ben Salisbury]

[X ] Yes, this is a great idea.  About time!

To a newcomer, some of the posts may make the Sage community look aggressive and end up steering them in another direction.   

[kcrisman]

>>    1. Continuing to lose talented Sage developers specifically because
>> they do not feel comfortable with the tone of the lists, and
>
>
> Can you give an example of this, even if vaguely? I don't read every
> conversation on the lists, but in my personal experience, the community has
> been very supportive, even when I'm an idiot. (Sometimes you have been
> supportive *especially* when I'm an idiot.) I do see a lot of

I think the community is quite welcoming to true newcomers who clearly do not know the ropes.  I think the problem comes in when people have tried and achieved a certain amount of comfort with the tools but then encounter either a philosophical problem between two different visions for some area of Sage or around some other non-mathematical thing.  Then people can vote with their feet, and are very unlikely to bother spending time on a list - or, for that matter, replying to this thread (which is what I meant when I said a couple dozen or whatever).

And as much as some mathematicians are political figures, probably most of them first and foremost just want to get some math done.  It's also frustrating to hear that there are private development discussions, though I do understand why, and I have to admit that sometimes I am embarrassed at how much I talk to myself on tickets with my own debugging log that no one wants to hear, maybe that *should* be private.

What if instead of a "code of conduct" there was a "community expectations" SHORT document that just say what we expect?  (perhaps based on this thread as well as the original document Volker et al. (who were the et al?) suggested)  Expecting doesn't mean it always happens, just like a budget ;-)  But I agree 100% with William about supporting the person who feels attacked, when that may happen, rather than playing the blame game.

[Dima Pasechnik]

On 2014-11-14, Simon King <simon...@uni-jena.de> wrote:
> Hi Travis,
>
> On 2014-11-14, Travis Scrimshaw <tsc...@ucdavis.edu> wrote:
>> To give a counterpoint to Simon's analogy, we agree that bullying is
>> bad, but by the rules, we can tell bullies explicitly what their doing is
>> wrong, why we can't push the bullies down, and explain what will happen if
>> the behavior escalates. Bullying can get so bad that the teachers need to
>> step in and enact the correct punishment.
>
> In my experience, it is often the *teachers* who are bullying, in the
> sense that bullying pupils are just the teacher's tools to destroy
> pupils they don't like. But school aside.
sometimes a teacher just doesn't know any better. One famous example is
I.M.Gelfand, who sometimes called his pupils fools in the open...

>
> If person A verbally attacks person B, I still think it does not help to
> show a *disapproving* reaction towards person A, because then A may feel
> attacked, which may make his/her behaviour even worse, and which
> wouldn't help B at all. Instead, I suggest to show a *supporting* reaction
> towards person B, in order to make B stronger and prevent damage.
>

> As it has been said by (IIRC) Jan, it is important that authorities set
> a good example. It may not always help with any individual, but is the
> best way to keep a communicative environment healthy. And concerning those
> individuals for which a good example isn't good enough, I'd prefer to
> see a "don't feed the troll" policy. If person A realises that his/her
> stampede ended in a vacuum, then s/he will usually stop. And if there
> was harm done to B on the way towards the vacuum, then helping B has
> priority over banning A.
>
> Best regards,
> Simon
>
>

[Dima Pasechnik]

On 2014-11-15, rjf <fat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ------=_Part_62_455616071.1416063379935
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

>
>
>
> On Friday, November 14, 2014 7:06:56 AM UTC-8, kcrisman wrote:
>>
>>
>>> If person A verbally attacks person B, I still think it does not help to
>>> show a *disapproving* reaction towards person A, because then A may feel
>>> attacked, which may make his/her behaviour even worse, and which
>>> wouldn't help B at all. Instead, I suggest to show a *supporting*
>>> reaction
>>> towards person B, in order to make B stronger and prevent damage.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, that is correct. Especially in the highly fragmented and
>> open-to-misinterpretation text-only domain we live in.
>>
>> > Is this a well-known negative of open source development (resolving
>> > disputes?) Has it been explored in journals? (I'm not well-read on
>> whatever
>> > literature there is on open source pro/con recently.)
>> > RJF
>>
>> rjf, I (once again) *highly* recommend Steven Weber's
>> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018587 "The Success of
>> Open Source", in particular the chapters on self-governance in open source,
>> as a place to start reading about this.
>>
>
> Ironically, Weber's book is itself not free, but is sold for $24.50.
> Maybe his belief in open whatever does not
> extend to the intellectual property that he himself produces..

Maybe you are confusing scientific literature (published by a
traditional publisher) with religious one?

[kcrisman]

>> rjf, I (once again) *highly* recommend Steven Weber's
>> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018587 "The Success of
>> Open Source", in particular the chapters on self-governance in open source,
>> as a place to start reading about this.  
>>
>
> Ironically, Weber's book is itself not free, but is sold for $24.50.  
> Maybe his belief in open whatever does not
> extend to the intellectual property that he himself produces..
Maybe you are confusing scientific literature (published by a
traditional publisher) with religious one?

Not to mention that tenure committees probably aren't too hot on things release with a CC-BY license, more's the pity ;-)   This is not a dogmatic work, though it does take a side, like most social science literature.

 

> Can you provide a link to an open discussion of this matter?
> (while I could perhaps borrow a copy from a library, there are people who
> might not
> have access to a library copy.  etc.)
>  

True, but if I recall correctly, at one time rms also charged for certain GNU documentation - not the code!  In fact, O'Reilly seems to have made an entire business model of this - and perhaps not unfair, if one believes that the moral issue is access to the *code*/program, not how to use it.  This is one of many reasons that improving Sage's documentation (or Maxima's, or anything) is so crucial to making the promise of open source be useful to those outside the cognoscenti. 

- kcrisman

[Harald Schilly]

On Monday, November 17, 2014 3:26:18 PM UTC+1, kcrisman wrote:

What if instead of a "code of conduct" there was a "community expectations" SHORT document that just say what we expect?

I'm a little bit late to this thread, but I've read all the mails. This "expectations" document sounds interesting to me, whereas I'm a bit hesitant to this "code of conduct" thing. In my eyes, it is stating a lot of obvious things, and doesn't solve immediate problems. I agree that it could be abused in some way, just because it exists and hence it is a leverage point. e.g. phrases like "poor behavior" are a bit hollow for me. (*)

We should not forget, that most of us here (as mathematicians & researchers in general) are trained to be (a) very picky and (b) long-term persistent. Those ingredients do not help if a discussion derails into lengthy substitution-arguments to just make a point in a time-consuming thread. What would actually help in such situations is to step back and look at the bigger picture. Maybe there should be an intervention team of "senior" community people to sort this out: e.g. just posting "DRAMA MODE" as a signal for everyone to stop it? But who are those and how do they gain authority?

Apart from that, I think there should also be a clarification if such rules are exercised on a case-by-case or person-per-person basis. I'm pretty sure, that if someone starts to break the rules in one thread, doesn't mean that we should exclude that person forever. That could very well be a temporary phase, some short slightness, or only happening when interacting with one certain person.

-- Harald

(*) even my email could be regarded as poor behavior, because I wasn't thankful to all of those who did work on drafting those 4 rules.

[Anne Schilling]

On Saturday, November 15, 2014 2:10:04 PM UTC-8, P Purkayastha wrote:

Yes. Typically, they ban the user for a period of time. The violations are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. It seems quite a few requests (code of conduct violations, and otherwise) have piled up in http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-28820.html !

Since this seems to be one of the main questions that people have about the proposal, who in your community handles the code of conduct violations? How were they chosen?

Best,

Anne

[Anne Schilling]

On 11/18/14 7:55 AM, Harald Schilly wrote:
>
> On Monday, November 17, 2014 3:26:18 PM UTC+1, kcrisman wrote:
>
> What if instead of a "code of conduct" there was a "community expectations" SHORT document that just say what we expect?
>
>
> I'm a little bit late to this thread, but I've read all the mails. This "expectations" document sounds interesting to me, whereas I'm a bit hesitant to this "code of conduct" thing. In my eyes, it is
> stating a lot of obvious things, and doesn't solve immediate problems. I agree that it could be abused in some way, just because it exists and hence it is a leverage point. e.g. phrases like "poor
> behavior" are a bit hollow for me. (*)

Saying that discussions that get out of hand can be relegated to sage-flame is, I think, important.
For example, I did not know that we could do that until very recently. Stating explicitly how this can
be done might be good.

> We should not forget, that most of us here (as mathematicians & researchers in general) are trained to be (a) very picky and (b) long-term persistent. Those ingredients do not help if a discussion
> derails into lengthy substitution-arguments to just make a point in a time-consuming thread. What would actually help in such situations is to step back and look at the bigger picture. Maybe there
> should be an intervention team of "senior" community people to sort this out: e.g. just posting "DRAMA MODE" as a signal for everyone to stop it? But who are those and how do they gain authority?

One problem with this is that the intervention team might not be reading all threads.
So having a way to say where there is a problem might still be useful.
I agree deciding who the intervention team is is an important question. Probably William
would be a good choice.

Best,

Anne

[William Stein]

Here is I think a concrete, apolitical proposal.

Given the potentially political nature of such a choice, one
possibility is to do something apolitical, and select based on
ownership. In particular, based on lines of code contributed to Sage,
which is an (imperfect!) but non-politicial measure of how much
ownership people have in Sage (with legal value, since people do not
contribute their copyright). By this definition:

https://github.com/sagemath/sage/graphs/contributors?from=2006-02-05&to=2014-11-18&type=a

the top 12 all time list of contributors to Sage, in order, are:

- William Stein
- Mike Hansen
- Volker Braun
- Jereon Demeyer
- Nathann Cohen
- Robert Bradshaw
- Robert Miller
- Simon King
- John Palmieri
- Jason Grout
- Nicholas Thiery
- David Kirkby


We could:

1. Create a private mailing list called sage-abuse with these people
as members.

2. Make a clear statement on the sagemath.org website, etc., that if
people think a thread should be on sage-flame, send a message to the
sage-abuse list.

3. The sage-abuse list members will have a quick discussion and if
what to do isn't clear, they will vote (which means a quick on-list
vote that must be completed within one day). If a majority votes to
move the discussion should move to sage-flame, they ensure it moves.

For now, the sage-abuse group would have exactly one duty, which is to
ensure that discussions get moved to sage-flame when requested.
That's it. We would give this a try for 6 months, and only then
revisit whether the group should expand its duties or be dissolved.


-- William

[Vincent Delecroix]

2014-11-18 11:36 UTC−07:00, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com>:

> [SNIP]

>
> We could:
>
> 1. Create a private mailing list called sage-abuse with these people
> as members.
>
> 2. Make a clear statement on the sagemath.org website, etc., that if
> people think a thread should be on sage-flame, send a message to the
> sage-abuse list.
>
> 3. The sage-abuse list members will have a quick discussion and if
> what to do isn't clear, they will vote (which means a quick on-list
> vote that must be completed within one day). If a majority votes to
> move the discussion should move to sage-flame, they ensure it moves.
>
> For now, the sage-abuse group would have exactly one duty, which is to
> ensure that discussions get moved to sage-flame when requested.
> That's it. We would give this a try for 6 months, and only then
> revisit whether the group should expand its duties or be dissolved.

Having a committee in charge of the repression looks more than
suspicious to me. Why would you exclude people from those important
decision ? Why do not make the discussion public ? Isn't sage-devel
good enough for that ? Moreover, it would be nice to point precisely
the thread/tickets where problems occurred.

On the other hand, for what William called a "non-political choice" of
the committee, if you look at the period 2012-2014 which reflects more
who is *involved* in Sage, the top list is not at all the same. I hope
that you agree that Sage "belongs" to who use it and not to who create
it.

Vincent

[Anne Schilling]

This looks in principle like a good idea. However, how did you obtain this
data? Is this code contributed to Sage? On the link that you post above, there are
definitely contributors missing that have contributed lots of code. So how
precisely is this data obtained?

Best,

Anne

[William Stein]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 10:55 AM, Vincent Delecroix
<20100.d...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2014-11-18 11:36 UTC-07:00, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com>:

Maybe sage-devel would be good enough. We could use our existing
process, which is that you start a new thread with a title like

VOTE: to move thread <link to thread> to sage-flame

[ ] Yes
[ ] No

Anybody on sage-devel can vote (or argue) for 24 hours, we count the
votes, and if there is a simple majority for moving the thread to
sage-flame, it moves. That's it.

> Moreover, it would be nice to point precisely
> the thread/tickets where problems occurred.
> On the other hand, for what William called a "non-political choice" of
> the committee, if you look at the period 2012-2014 which reflects more
> who is *involved* in Sage, the top list is not at all the same. I hope
> that you agree that Sage "belongs" to who use it and not to who create
> it.

<ianal>
Legally the copyright of Sage belongs to those who created Sage, since
we've never done copyright assignments to a foundation (or something
similar). The GPLv3 copyright grants a specific list of rights to
those who use and redistribute Sage.
</ianal>

[William Stein]

I just mindlessly clicked a few times on links on github. I believe
they are computing the total number of lines of code contributed to
the Sage git repo. So this is mostly code included in the core Sage
library, via the trac review process.

William

>
> Best,
>
> Anne

>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sage-...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Anne Schilling]

Not everybody who contributes through trac seems to have an account on github.
So there are lots of contributors missing!

Best,

Anne

[Harald Schilly]

On Tuesday, November 18, 2014 7:37:21 PM UTC+1, William wrote:

Here is I think a concrete, apolitical proposal.

Calculating stakeholders by core contribution is certainly possible. My only contribution would be, that this sage-abuse mailing list is read-only for all others, not hidden and private.
I have played around with a tool called "gitstats", installed via "sudo apt-get install gitstats".
It generates statistics, and you can also specify some parameters.

This is the result for the last year, obtained via
$ gitstats -c commit_begin=1c1ee9f0 . stats

http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/schilly/gitstats/1year/authors.html

and this for the full sage git repo
$ gitstats . stats

http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/schilly/gitstats/full/authors.html

This could be part of the website, btw... ?!

-- Harald

[William Stein]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 11:33 AM, Anne Schilling <an...@math.ucdavis.edu> wrote:

> Not everybody who contributes through trac seems to have an account on github.
> So there are lots of contributors missing!

It would be fun to have somebody produce a proper list directly from
the git commit history.
However, I think Volker raised some valid objections to this proposal,
so for the purposes of
this thread, my concrete proposal probably shouldn't move forward.

- William

[Harald Schilly]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 8:36 PM, Harald Schilly
<harald....@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is the result for the last year

looking at the result again, I think it sorts by number of commits,
not lines. one could tweak the number of top authors (default is 20)
to get all of them in … so don't take this output seriously.

-- harald

[Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd)]

On 18 Nov 2014 18:36, "William Stein" <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:

> the top 12  all time list of contributors to Sage, in order, are:
>
>   - William Stein
>   - Mike Hansen
>   - Volker Braun
>   - Jereon Demeyer
>   - Nathann Cohen
>   - Robert Bradshaw
>   - Robert Miller
>   - Simon King
>   - John Palmieri
>   - Jason Grout
>   - Nicholas Thiery
>   - David Kirkby

> We could:
>
>   1. Create a private mailing list called sage-abuse with these people
> as members.

I don't know if I am the only one of the top 12 contributors who doesn't want to be in the sage-abuse list, but count me out.

I don't feel qualified to do such a task. In fact,  I think I have been accused of being abusive before. Without naming any names, I can think of at least two others in that list which would be inappropriate people.

I think the who idea is quite flawed to be honest. Maybe the whole thread should go to sage-flame, which I don't subscribe to.

David Kirkby.

[Harald Schilly]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 10:29 PM, Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave
Ltd) <drki...@kirkbymicrowave.co.uk> wrote:
> but count me out.

As far as I can see, this idea is already abandoned anyway. Still, we
could do this list of by self nomination and see if this leads to
anything. We could call this the "community management team" and
initially it consists of at least 5 self-nominated individuals, who
didn't face some strong objections. Of course, it is a problem to
communicate objections against someone in such a role directly. Maybe
there should be some kind of voting, where each of those 5 need at
least 5 who aren't nominated but "vouch" for them to get support in
the community.

Ok, I've finished my thought while writing, so I repeat:

1. new thread
2. call this "community management team"
3. self-nomination, at least 5 initially, who are somehow part of the
Sage community
4. each of them need at least 5 supporters, who aren't part of this
team, in order to receive support from the community.

What they do is then up to their responsibility, and they should start
with small steps (directing threads to sage-flame, receive complaints
"in private", etc...)

A "phase 2" could be to establish something similar for a "steering
committee" for the whole Sage project. No idea if there is any need
for this, but just an idea.

-- Harald

[Tom Boothby]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 10:36 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Given the potentially political nature of such a choice, one
> possibility is to do something apolitical, and select based on
> ownership. In particular, based on lines of code contributed to Sage,
> which is an (imperfect!) but non-politicial measure of how much
> ownership people have in Sage (with legal value, since people do not
> contribute their copyright). By this definition:
>
> https://github.com/sagemath/sage/graphs/contributors?from=2006-02-05&to=2014-11-18&type=a
>
> the top 12 all time list of contributors to Sage, in order, are:
>

> [a list of 12 dudes]
>

In the event of a gender-polarizing conflict, this committee will not
be seen as unbiased. In order to increase minority representation, I
would suggest that a maximum of 2/3 of the committee should be
comprised of a particular gender. Perhaps the top 8 contributors,
followed by the top 4 who do not identify as male.

[William Stein]

Since I attempted to retract this proposal in light of Volker's
sensible criticism, and people keep responding as if I didn't, let me
officially retract this proposal.

Instead I support what I think Volker suggested, which is using our
existing completely open voting process on sage-devel, as we have been
doing for years, for sage-abuse issues. But to make it clear that we
care about sage-abuse issues and make clear the existence of
sage-flame.

[kcrisman]

Commenting on a good point even though this is abandoned:

 

> the top 12  all time list of contributors to Sage, in order, are:
>
> [a list of 12 dudes]
>

In the event of a gender-polarizing conflict, this committee will not
be seen as unbiased.  In order to increase minority representation, I

True, but currently unavoidable by that presumably-flawed metric.  The only way to *really* fix this is for everyone to encourage their female colleagues/students/friends/enemies/frenemies to start using, and eventually contributing to Sage.  This is a lot easier from my more pedagogically-focused context, but of course such people also are markedly less likely to become developers.  This is part of a larger societal picture in math and CS that Sage cannot (by itself, that is) fix.

[William Stein]

Just a big shout out here to the hard work of All Deines and Jen Balakrishnan and others for organizing at least five women encouraging sage days workshops, and to Microsoft Research and Beatrice York fund for fully funding all of them.  And there will be many more to come!

[mmarco]

I really like the idea of moving threads to sage-flame when they start to go out of hand. What was the criterion to do so until now?

Also, from an ownership point of view, the right to move discussions between google groups belongs to google, and google's rules state that they would do so when the person that opened the group decides (correct me if i am wrong). That would mean that it is William's decission (again, correct me if i am wrong). 

I have no complain with the criterion followed until now to move flames to sage-flame.

[Harald Schilly]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 5:30 PM, mmarco <mma...@unizar.es> wrote:
> Also, from an ownership point of view, the right to move discussions between
> google groups belongs to google, and google's rules state that they would do
> so when the person that opened the group decides (correct me if i am wrong).
> That would mean that it is William's decission (again, correct me if i am
> wrong).

Well, no, not really. This is now a question of how to do this in
practice. There are several administrators, including me, and it is
not really possible to "move" a discussion. You can only post a
continuation link in the thread, e.g., by first forwarding the
offending message to sage-flame and then linking to it from the
originating thread. This did happen before and worked.

Another option admins have is to lock a thread, but I don't know what
happens to emails still sent to the thread and I don't think we should
do this.

Rather than locking a thread, admins could also remove and ban
someone. This is the analog to what were those in the Gentoo forum
(mentioned earlier) were discussing. I don't see a need for this
either, because spammers are easy to spot and blocking someone only
increases the problem.

-- Harald

[John Cremona]

I had always assumed that sage-flame was a fictional entity! Please
don't post a link here, I do not want to be tempted to read it....

John

[William Stein]

On Nov 19, 2014 8:30 AM, "mmarco" <mma...@unizar.es> wrote:
>
> I really like the idea of moving threads to sage-flame when they start to go out of hand. What was the criterion to do so until now?
>
> Also, from an ownership point of view, the right to move discussions between google groups belongs to google, and google's rules state that they would do so when the person that opened the group decides (correct me if i am wrong). That would mean that it is William's decission (again, correct me if i am wrong). 
>
> I have no complain with the criterion followed until now to move flames to sage-flame.
>

There was a recent discussion that I strongly felt should be on sage-flame at the time (as I felt attacked).  I posted regularly in the thread "I think this thread should be moved to sage-flame" but people ignored my pleas or disagreed with me (perhaps rightly so, in retrospect). 
Based on that experience, I do think moving threads to sage-flame should involve a (quick) but formalized process.

By moving them I do not me anything technical.  I just mean opening a new thread there with the same subject.

William

[Nathann Cohen]

Just a random thought after coming back from a very nice evening out:

A bunch of 10~20 guys who can talk together for days about having or
not a "code of conduct", each expressing his own voice and mixing it
with the others'... really have no communication problem :-P

Good night to all ! One review and I go to sleep.

Nathann

[Mike Zabrocki]

A bunch of 10~20 guys who can talk together for days about having or 

not a "code of conduct", each expressing his own voice and mixing it
with the others'... really have no communication problem :-P

Am I misreading this or does this belong on sage-sexist-comments ?

-Mike 

[William Stein]

I wondered the same, but I would definitely given Nathann the benefit
of the doubt, because:

- There were several women who commented on this thread

- In colloquial English, "guys" doesn't necessarily imply males only
(the expression "You Guys" is often used to refer to several people of
either gender),

- I think Nathann is not a native speaker of English (instead, I think
his native tongue is French?)

-- William

>
> -Mike

[Mike Zabrocki]

>> with the others'... really have no communication problem :-P 

In that case, may I request a moment of silence to be held in honor of the irony of this comment?

-Mike

[Viviane Pons]

I honestly don't think it was...

 

-Mike 

[Viviane Pons]

Hi everyone,

I have been following this for a while even if I didn't post. I am actually in favor of a code of conduct even so I understand its limitations.

Anyway, what I think we really need is "something to do" when you feel insulted or offended in a thread. Something to take into account is that this usually takes place in tiresome, time consuming conversations and the "offended" person has usually very limited energy left. A bad scenario is if this person just stops talking for a while and a worst one is when this person just stops getting involved in sage-devel (or sage) altogether. This is what we want to avoid.

Is moving to sage-flame enough? It seems ok but the fact that we're not actually "moving" the conversation might be a problem. Also the vote process that William proposed seemed quite heavy to me because it might lead to more debates and, as I said, the offended persons could already be on the edge of stopping the talking altogether.

Some other questions: is posting on sage-flame a good enough reason to be allowed to insult people? (I don't feel it should be) What do we do if it's not a thread that's going out of line but comments on sage-tracks?

I feel a code of conduct could just be a good shared base of "good attitude" to follow... Something to help you say to someone "this is a personal attack, you're being out of line" with a feeling that you're supported by the community doing so. I don't mind if we don't call it "code", "common sense recommendations" would be enough for me.  

Cheers

Viviane

[Tom Boothby]

In my mind, "moving a conversation to sage-flame" is a constructive,
if imperfect way to handle conversations that are going off the deep
end. It's a way that we can flag a conversation as being
inappropriate for the tone of sage-devel without pointing fingers. If
somebody doesn't want to continue, they can just stop participating at
that point. Badgering such a person, either through repeated posts to
sage-flame or through personal email, would be inappropriate.

For example: I'm happy to lob personal attacks at Richard Fateman on
sage-flame and have him respond in kind. This is an established
tradition that we both enjoy, and as far as I can tell, neither of us
has ever had our feelings hurt there. The origin of sage-flame was a
recognition that certain thick-skinned developers enjoy this peculiar
conversation style, and the fact that other developers are entertained
by the conversations.

Those of us who do participate in the flames recognize one another.
Looking back in time, I see that I (privately) requested that Richard
not be so brutal with another developer whose thread had been moved to
sage-flame, and he obliged (and as far as I know, that developer
didn't get their feelings hurt). Generally, one should expect
responses in kind on sage-flame, so for the most part, it doesn't get
nasty except between people who are having a good time of it.

So, the above is good for 'no-fault' offenses where all parties are
simply being bullheaded about something and mutually pissing each
other off. But I do see a distinct need for finger-pointing in some
cases. If William goes Torvalds on some brand new developer, I don't
care where the communication occurs, that's simply inappropriate and
must be addressed. If he found a bug in FLINT and gave Bill Hart the
same treatment, I'd go make popcorn.

In situations where it looks like real abuse has occurred, a committee
of arbiters should exist to rule on it. Otherwise, we're left with
mob rule and the onlooker effect (where nobody speaks up to stop
abuse, assuming somebody else will take care of it).

[kcrisman]

In my mind, "moving a conversation to sage-flame" is a constructive,
if imperfect way to handle conversations that are going off the deep
end.  It's a way that we can flag a conversation as being
inappropriate for the tone of sage-devel without pointing fingers.  If
somebody doesn't want to continue, they can just stop participating at
that point.  Badgering such a person, either through repeated posts to
sage-flame or through personal email, would be inappropriate.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is suggesting, "If you want to insult someone, go to sage-flame", but rather, "If two people are insulting each other, do it on sage-flame".  I avoid sage-flame precisely because I have zero interest in what goes on there, but others flock like a moth to ...  Anyway, perhaps this is at least part of a solution, and Viviane's point is very good as well.  Tricky part is making sure any possible insulter doesn't become insultee, or doesn't feel that to be the case.  And here having "community standards" and such is reasonable.  

Here is another idea that might be better and is related to Tom's comments; maybe a suggestion (again, not a voted rule) that if Y makes a comment about X a couple times, if a few people try to point out that some people might find it offensive, and if X responds without flaming in a way that makes it clear "agree to disagree", OR just doesn't respond, then Y is best served by giving up, even if Y thinks Y is in the right.  If X starts flaming, or responding ad nauseam, on the other hand, then the suggestion for sage-flame is in order.

That is a long way of saying that it would be nice to have no mean no when it comes to perception of personal attacks.  I agree that this community, made of people who really like intricate and comprehensive lines of reasoning (professional hazard), probably will find that unsatisfying.

[Nathann Cohen]

Hello !

>> Am I misreading this or does this belong on sage-sexist-comments ?
>
> I wondered the same, but I would definitely given Nathann the benefit
> of the doubt, because:

Thank you for the benefit of the doubt. I can use some of that !

The truth is that I have no idea how to say gender-neutral sentences
in english without making my sentences non-deterministic, i.e. "a
bunch of 20 [guys|girls] .* each expressing [his|her] own voice". And
I hate non-determinism.

> - I think Nathann is not a native speaker of English (instead, I think
> his native tongue is French?)

I am more illiterate than ill-willing.

Nathann

[Simon King]

Hi Tom,

On 2014-11-19, Tom Boothby <tomas....@gmail.com> wrote:
> In situations where it looks like real abuse has occurred, a committee
> of arbiters should exist to rule on it. Otherwise, we're left with
> mob rule and the onlooker effect (where nobody speaks up to stop
> abuse, assuming somebody else will take care of it).

My experience with sage lists is that what you describe in
"Otherwise,..." does not happen.

Best regards,
Simon

[Nathann Cohen]

>> In situations where it looks like real abuse has occurred, a committee
>> of arbiters should exist to rule on it. Otherwise, we're left with
>> mob rule and the onlooker effect (where nobody speaks up to stop
>> abuse, assuming somebody else will take care of it).
>
> My experience with sage lists is that what you describe in
> "Otherwise,..." does not happen.

+1.

Similarly, it has been said that a code of conduct would prevent
people from insulting each other and I don't think I ever saw that
happen here.
I mean..... Except somebody insulting himself publicly.

Nathann

[Viviane Pons]

Well, except that a few people here said that they felt insulted in the past and didn't know what to do about it. And some expressed the need of some kind of code of conduct... William even said he knew some people had left because of some bad behavior. So just saying "everthing is fine because we are all nice people" is not solving the problem. It's true that we're mostly good and everything goes fine most of time. As Nathann said, this very conversation proves we're note that bad. But we shouldn't just ignore the fact that we're not perfect. Everyone of us can be offensive to somebody at some point.

I'm not saying the code of conduct would prevent people from insulting each other. I'm just saying that it could give a common base to tell someone "you're being out of line". I'm pretty sure, this would be enough most of the time.

Cheers

Viviane

[john_perry_usm]

On Thursday, November 20, 2014 5:06:43 AM UTC+1, Nathann Cohen wrote:

The truth is that I have no idea how to say gender-neutral sentences
in english without making my sentences non-deterministic, i.e. "a
bunch of 20 [guys|girls] .* each expressing [his|her] own voice". And
I hate non-determinism.

Don't worry, native English speakers have no idea, either. I read the sage-sexist remark as a joke, but after Mike's followup, maybe not. In my experience, >95% of the English-speakers address each other informally as "guys", including females addressing mixed groups. (I personally hate the term, but that's beside the point.)

About the larger question: suppose (as William points out) someone(s) ignore(s) a request to move something(s) to sage-flame. An alternate approach to banning might be a policy of, "si salvi chi può": simply start a new thread. In my limited experience, those engaged in verbal combat stick it out in the particular thread where lies the matter they can't let lie.

john perry

[Nathann Cohen]

Hello !

To Viviane:

> Well, except that a few people here said that they felt insulted in the past
> and didn't know what to do about it. And some expressed the need of some
> kind of code of conduct...

Indeed, but I do not know if they will be more protected by a code of conduct. Actual insults is something you can write laws about, while feeling insulted is harder to formalize.

> William even said he knew some people had left
> because of some bad behavior. So just saying "everthing is fine because we
> are all nice people" is not solving the problem.

Still, I believe that we are fine because we are all nice people. And I also believe that invoking the authority of a code of conduct is not a very good argument when you want to calm a conversation down. This is only my belief, and my belief is only worth one vote :-)

To John:

> Don't worry, native English speakers have no idea, either.

Excellent. When unable to solve a problem, knowing that nobody else can is the next best thing :-)

> In my limited experience, those engaged in verbal combat stick it out in the particular thread where lies the matter they can't let lie.

Well, it does feel like trying to stop an argument by making a guy talk alone in a closed room.

Nathann

[Mike Zabrocki]

Don't worry, native English speakers have no idea, either. I read the sage-sexist remark as a joke, but after Mike's followup, maybe not. In my experience, >95% of the 

I was somewhat serious. The irony was that I really thought it was a communication problem (either intentional or unintentional) until William cleared it up and I think it was better that he did.

 

English-speakers address each other informally as "guys", including females addressing mixed groups. (I personally hate the term, but that's beside the point.)

I'm with you on this one, and I try not to use it myself and this is probably why I misunderstood.

 

About the larger question: suppose (as William points out) someone(s) ignore(s) a request to move something(s) to sage-flame. An alternate approach to banning might be a policy of, "si salvi chi può": simply start a new thread. In my limited experience, those engaged in verbal combat stick it out in the particular thread where lies the matter they can't let lie.

I think that this is a good technique that might work in cases when a conversation has over-heated to the point where requests for a move to sage-flame are in order.  I think this is where I think a code of conduct is in order because its hard for a conversation to rise to this temperature if posters follow a "be respectful" mantra.  If posters ignore the idea that they need to be polite or people don't speak up when the tone gets heated, there will be the occasional offended party who will probably be more reluctant to post the next time.

-Mike

 

[Dima Pasechnik]

On 2014-11-19, Mike Zabrocki <mike.z...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ------=_Part_540_2024061462.1416427012442
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

This IS a purely linguistic issue.
Would you also complain if someone greets you "Ay up me duck"?
(which is kosher and non-offensive English English - google it if you
don't believe me).

Dima

>
> -Mike
>

[Robert Dodier]

On 2014-11-19, Tom Boothby <tomas....@gmail.com> wrote:

> In situations where it looks like real abuse has occurred, a committee
> of arbiters should exist to rule on it.

Instituting a committee of authorities seems misdirected -- unless one
takes an inclusive approach and declares that all participants are
hereby authorities. That is, that all participants are equally
empowered to complain about bad behavior -- anyone can say to anyone,
"cut that shit out", perhaps worded more tactfully, but the same
in content at least.

About the fabled rudeness of the inhabitants of NYC, I speculate that
it's misunderstood by outsiders. What is actually going on is that all
citizens feel empowered to complain when anyone breaks a rule. Instead
of suffering in silence as someone cuts in line or stands in a doorway,
someone just goes ahead and says, "hey, stop it". I'm told (never spent
much time there myself) that it makes people more polite, because one
knows that one cannot get away with petty misbehavior. I'd like to
think the same applies to any informal gathering of humanity.

best,

Robert Dodier

[William Stein]

Can somebody help me count the votes? I made pass through this long
and complicated thread, and here's what I seem to have got:

FOR a code of conduct, possibly suitably word-smithed (7):

Jan Groenewald
Travis Scrimshaw
Anne Schilling
Mike Zabrocki
Andrew Mathas
Ben Salisbury
Viviane Pons

AGAINST having code of conductor (5)

Robert Dodier
Simon King
mmarco
Nathann Cohen
Harald Schilley (qualified)

Other proposal or comments, but didn't vote and proposal gained no
significant traction (5):

william stein
karl dieter
John Perry
rjf
cremona

Also, important question. Is there anybody who is *seriously*
considering quitting working on Sage if they don't like the way this
vote goes? If you don't want to respond on list, feel free to email
me offlist at wst...@uw.edu.

Thanks,

-- William

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sage-...@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.



--

[Bruno Grenet]

Dear all,

I've read the whole thread, and I have the impress that there are two
distinct issues that are addressed. That's part of the reason people
don't agree I think on the proposals. The first issue is to make sure
that there are no public insults on sage-devel, trac, etc. by organizing
a procedure to deal with such events. The second issue is to make this
"place" (sage-devel, trac, etc.) a friendly place where people,
especially newcomers, feel good so that they want to contribute.

The two issues are quite different, and we should as a first step make
sure we know which one we want to address right now. I feel like the
second one is more important since public insults are not real problem
here. Any proposal with formal rules that people have to obey to if they
do not want to be punished won't solve the second issue. In some sense,
as soon as somebody feels insulted, it is too late.

To me, the only thing that can be done is to have somewhere some advice
to be as polite as possible, to make constructive comments and be kind
with people, especially newcomers. Right, this sounds like common sense!
But if people feel the need that it is written somewhere, why not?
Personally, I'd rather call this "Advices" than "Code of Conduct" that
sounds too formal to my taste...

Cheers,
Bruno

[Vincent Delecroix]

In the form it was presented at the very beginning I am strongly
against. This is completely infantilizing. That is a good idea to make
a vote, but please make it clear what the vote is about...

Vincent

2014-11-20 14:14 UTC−07:00, Bruno Grenet <bruno....@gmail.com>:

[Nathann Cohen]

Hello !!

> I've read the whole thread, and I have the impress that there are two
> distinct issues that are addressed. That's part of the reason people don't
> agree I think on the proposals. The first issue is to make sure that there
> are no public insults on sage-devel, trac, etc. by organizing a procedure to
> deal with such events. The second issue is to make this "place" (sage-devel,
> trac, etc.) a friendly place where people, especially newcomers, feel good
> so that they want to contribute.

Hmmm... Well really I would be surprised if anybody can dig through sage-devel and find people insulting each other there. So let us stop claiming that a "code" or a "behaviour advice" in the developper's manual would put an end to that...

Newcomers do not often come here to insult us either, and even if one did: who cares ? He will leave soon, and a rule he never read will not stop him [1]. I believe that we are nice with newcomers (never heard differently).

If some persons here want a code of conduct they are long-term contributors, and it is to defend themseves against other long-term contributors. And, permit me to say, very probably against myself though I may not be the only one (I've got no idea).

Thus the "pro" rethoric is a bit uneasy, for unless you actually give names you have to pretend that the problem is much more general: I believe that it is on the contrary focused on a handful of guys.

So. The point of this code is to try to stop those bad guys from misbehaving (and whoever wants such a code must have a clear idea of what this misbehaviour can be). I simply doubt that it will have any effect. "Feeling hurt" is not something you ban/exclude (even temporarily) people for, you need something more objective than that. Actual insults or something, broken arms, blood.... And I never saw that happen here.

> The two issues are quite different, and we should as a first step make sure
> we know which one we want to address right now. I feel like the second one
> is more important since public insults are not real problem here. Any
> proposal with formal rules that people have to obey to if they do not want
> to be punished won't solve the second issue. In some sense, as soon as
> somebody feels insulted, it is too late.

Yes, and hard to formalize. Actually, people hurt each other's feelings because some say things without expecting others to react personally about them, e.g. discuss an implementation, the doc or something. Sometimes you react matter-of-factly, sometimes you can feel a bit insulted... And I do not see how a code could sort that out.

> To me, the only thing that can be done is to have somewhere some advice to
> be as polite as possible, to make constructive comments and be kind with
> people, especially newcomers. Right, this sounds like common sense! But if
> people feel the need that it is written somewhere, why not? Personally, I'd
> rather call this "Advices" than "Code of Conduct" that sounds too formal to
> my taste...

Well, if somebody sleeps better with an "Advice" section in the developper's manual why not ? We should help those guys if we can. My own sleep is being interrupted by mosquitoes these days, I sure can relate.

Nathann

[1] Please don't accuse me of sexism again. Girls can come and insult us too if they like, and we will hate them for it, like anybody else.

[Francois Bissey]

I have abstained from the thread but read quite a bit of it and I think
that the idea there are really two issues is correct.

I have been thinking for a while but abstained because there is a lot of
stuff already on the thread and we are at a stage where the signal/noise
is quite low. So anyway since now I started:

We should have a statement of intent on the kind of community we want to
be. This is not a code of conduct this is the aspirations we have as a community.

François

[William Stein]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 9:51 PM, Francois Bissey
<francoi...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> I have abstained from the thread but read quite a bit of it and I think
> that the idea there are really two issues is correct.
>
> I have been thinking for a while but abstained because there is a lot of
> stuff already on the thread and we are at a stage where the signal/noise
> is quite low. So anyway since now I started:
>
> We should have a statement of intent on the kind of community we want to
> be. This is not a code of conduct this is the aspirations we have as a community.

We wrote something like this in 2006 [1]:

"Both the Sage development model and the technology in Sage itself are
distinguished by an extremely strong emphasis on openness, community,
cooperation, and collaboration: we are building the car, not
reinventing the wheel."

[1] http://www.sagemath.org/doc/tutorial/

[Francois Bissey]

> On 21/11/2014, at 18:54, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 9:51 PM, Francois Bissey
> <francoi...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
>> I have abstained from the thread but read quite a bit of it and I think
>> that the idea there are really two issues is correct.
>>
>> I have been thinking for a while but abstained because there is a lot of
>> stuff already on the thread and we are at a stage where the signal/noise
>> is quite low. So anyway since now I started:
>>
>> We should have a statement of intent on the kind of community we want to
>> be. This is not a code of conduct this is the aspirations we have as a community.
>
> We wrote something like this in 2006 [1]:
>
> "Both the Sage development model and the technology in Sage itself are
> distinguished by an extremely strong emphasis on openness, community,
> cooperation, and collaboration: we are building the car, not

> reinventing the wheel.”
>

Hum yes I remember that statement now. I haven’t seen it in some time.
I remember it as dressing more technical aspect but yes there is
a community feel about it.

I wouldn’t want to alter it because it has the merit of being short.

François

[Franco Saliola]

On Thursday, November 20, 2014 9:06:53 PM UTC-5, William wrote:

Can somebody help me count the votes?   I made pass through this long
and complicated thread, and here's what I seem to have got:

FOR a code of conduct, possibly suitably word-smithed (7):

Jan Groenewald
Travis Scrimshaw
Anne Schilling
Mike Zabrocki
Andrew Mathas
Ben Salisbury
Viviane Pons

I vote for a code of conduct.

Franco

--

[Anne Schilling]

> Hmmm... Well really I would be surprised if anybody can dig through sage-devel and find people insulting each other there.

"> Furthermore, I hate with all my heart that the same persons who come tell
> me that "they do not have sufficient time" suddenly find all the time they
> need to write Grant proposals to the US or Europe, and get solid real tens
> of thousands of euros of public money or more "because of what they will do
> in Sage". To pay for their planes, for their hotels, for their food.

I don't think you are fair here. This is basically a punch below the belt from
someone who has great job security to do whatever one wants with their time
aimed, perhaps inderectly, at Sage developers who depend on grant money
for the very possibility to work on Sage, or in science in general. "

"> Now, all I have to do is write somebody else's code.

I will not.

I spent many hours on this yesterday, went back home just to sleep,
and continued today.

it is too much work, and it is not my job. I cannot do that. I do not
know the code.

I am stuck here just cause somebody put some badly designed code in
Sage, and now all I can do is rewrite it all from scratch just to
solve a bug, while rebasing all her work above. Hours and hours of
work which is totally pointless to me. It would not be fair. It would
not be fair if by writing bad code she gets me to rewrite it all, only
because it is now "sage code".

It is too much work.

I can't do that. "

[Nathann Cohen]

Precisely.

Which kind of rule would you see in a code of conduct that would make messages like those you cited (not all were pointing at you, by the way) illegal ? 

Additionally, I really do not believe that it qualifies as "people insulting each other".

Nathann

P.S.: for those who never read those messages: the one about "a punch below the belt" was Dima's answer to my message above.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "sage-devel" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/sage-devel/iGxa2F01rFc/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com.

[Andrew]

On Friday, 21 November 2014 17:50:19 UTC+11, Nathann Cohen wrote:

Which kind of rule would you see in a code of conduct that would make messages like those you cited (not all were pointing at you, by the way) illegal ?

 
Sorry Nathan, but since you asked, these comments clearly violate item (4) of the proposed code of conduct, and arguably items (1) and (2) as well.

[1] Please don't accuse me of sexism again. Girls can come and insult us too if they like, and we will hate them for it, like anybody else.

Also, I can accept that using "he" as a general pronoun is not intended to be sexist, especially from a non-nature speaker, but I am really struggling to find a reasonable interpretation this last sentence. The best I can come up with is that you are trying to be funny and it's lost in translation. Is this what you intended?

Andrew

 

[Nathann Cohen]

> Sorry Nathan, but since you asked, these comments clearly violate item (4)
> of the proposed code of conduct, and arguably items (1) and (2) as well.

Well, then I believe that my only defense is that I was feeling very
alone trying to get item 3 observed. Indeed, a bug had been returning
wrong answers for 20 months and nothing had been done against it by
those who knew the code, despite frequent reminders. I had tried a lot
but in vain, I did not understand the code sufficiently.

> Also, I can accept that using "he" as a general pronoun is not intended to
> be sexist, especially from a non-nature speaker, but I am really struggling
> to find a reasonable interpretation this last sentence. The best I can come
> up with is that you are trying to be funny and it's lost in translation. Is
> this what you intended?

It was a joke, indeed. It is getting dangerous to joke, guys....

Nathann