Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:90008
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 209.85.192.178 as permitted sender)
To: Anthony Ferrara <ircmaxell@gmail.com>,
 "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <CAAyV7nFbngZ42qzbSFyveH+vsyir9QNtMJq8H=u9VqTBVBv5Og@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <568AE803.1080209@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 2016 13:45:39 -0800
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:38.0)
 Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.4.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CAAyV7nFbngZ42qzbSFyveH+vsyir9QNtMJq8H=u9VqTBVBv5Og@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] [Draft] Adopt Code of Conduct
From: smalyshev@gmail.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> I have created a new RFC for the PHP Project to adopt the Contributor
> Covenant as the official Code of Conduct for the project
> 
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/adopt-code-of-conduct
> 
> Let me know what you think or if there are any concerns

Looks to me like solution in search of a problem. I'm with PHP project
since 90s, and maybe it is my biased view, but with all heated and
sometimes very controversial discussions, people rage-quitting and
swearing oaths to never have anything to do with PHP again, etc., that
we have had over these years I can remember maybe a handful of instances
where there were - at least in public spaces of the mailing lists -
comments that may be suspicious within the framework described in
http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/3/0/code_of_conduct.md. Even
in those instances, I'd be hard pressed to remember any instances that
would constitute actual intentional harassment. Maybe I'm biased, but as
it looks to me, we may have a lot of issues with discussions on the list
and in general about how we conduct things, and there was a lot of
critique about that over the years, but this does not seem to be the
problem we have.

Going into the specifics of the RFC, we can already do all things the
CoC committee is proposed to do, and I don't remember any case where it
was needed - i.e., where a commit had to be reverted or commit karma had
to be revoked for harassment, over 20 years history. Was there such a case?
If it happens that this is needed, we have mechanism to police commits &
pulls. We do not have any mechanism for instituting bans (again, I don't
remember us ever needing one - maybe my memory is faulty?) but I think
such thing should not be done by 5 people. It should be an exceptionally
broad consensus. That consensus would be especially hard to reach when,
as RFC states, nobody but those 5 people (and, I assume, the author of
the complaint) would not even know the details of the issue, and as the
accused would be banned from wikis and mailing lists, thus unable to
provide explanations or defend themselves, no semblance of due process
can be preserved.

If we ever need the procedure for such measures - which I highly doubt -
it should be only performed with very broad consensus (minimum 2/3 with
high quorum requirement so 4 people voting on holiday week-end couldn't
pass such decision) and allow for the accused the chance to explain and
provide their point of view.

-- 
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com