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Subject: Re: Specific incident in relationship to the proposed Code of Conduct
From: ajf@ajf.me (Andrea Faulds)

Hi,

Brandon Savage wrote:
> This morning, Gary Hockin posted a pull request to the Doctrine project,
> proposing a rename from "Doctrine" to "Shitty". The full pull request is
> here: https://github.com/doctrine/doctrine2/pull/5626 He then tagged one of
> the maintainers personally. It was a master stroke of humor and trolling
> between two friends. The PR was closed as "Cant Fix" due to "licensing
> issues" and "namespace conflicts."
>
> There are several things at issue here:
>
> 1. This was an obvious attempt at trolling the Doctrine maintainers, a
> masterful stroke by a master (and well-known) troll who had no ill-intent.
> But it was still trolling, violating the CoC.

Trolling is, by definition, ill-inteded. It is deliberately acting in 
bad faith. It might be a "joke" in some circumstances, but it is 
nonetheless not conducted in good faith.

> 2. The vulgarity used to rename the project would generally be considered
> in most circles to be "unprofessional behavior."

Trolling, in itself, is unprofessional.

> 3. Tagging the maintainer could be construed as a "personal attack" on that
> person's work.

This is really stretching things. How could it be construed that way, 
and what would make you think that, say, a hypothetical body which 
enforces a code of conduct would construe it that way?

A personal attack is an attack on a person. In this case the attack, if 
it is to be called that, is clearly on the project. The request was to 
rename Doctrine, not to rename its maintainer. That the maintainer was 
tagged in it is of no consequence in this specific regard.

> GeeH is well-known and well-respected in the community. There's no doubt
> that in some capacity, he represents the community, especially since he
> speaks regularly at conferences and events. In addition, by reading the
> comments, it's clear that not everyone got the joke at first (see comments
> by "nuxwin" on the thread).

Joke or not, it's nonetheless trolling.

> If someone came to the mediation team with a complaint that this pull
> request made them feel "unsafe", how would we as a community respond?

Without additional information to the contrary, we would assume that 
safety was not an issue here, surely? Unless this was part of some 
obvious harassment campaign or such, this would not be construed as a 
safety issue.

> The Code of Conduct, as written, makes no exception for the intent of the
> person involved. This is an important problem, because intent ("mens rea"
> in Latin, for "guilty mind") is typically required to convict people of
> criminal acts in much of the world.

Yes, but a code of conduct isn't a criminal code, and the consequences 
are not the same as breaking the law.

> For example, you cannot be convicted of
> murder unless you had intent to kill the person (or should have known that
> your actions created the grave risk of death). Our current code makes no
> exception for intent. Instead, "if you broke it, you're guilty".

I think you might be misunderstanding how mens rea actually works. If we 
lived in a strange world where "trolling" were a criminal offence, then 
you would have to meet the standard of intent to troll. I doubt any 
court would find our subject here to not have had it. The fact that it 
was a "joke" does not except them from it, nor would it from anything 
serious.

> The second problem here is the fact that all of us probably know that GeeH
> was kidding, and would make that point to anyone who complained.

Their behaviour was nonetheless unacceptable.

> This is
> actually a HUGE problem. Being known to the community actually becomes a
> benefit for people, because their past history is known, and thus they
> might receive more favorable treatment than those we don't know.

Sure, that is a risk. Time and again, you see groups being kinder on 
those with higher status in disputes.

> Finally, the current Code of Conduct permits any person to complain, even
> if they weren't a party to the original incident. It permits this by not
> explicitly restricting it. Even though it should be (and is to the
> reasonable person) clear that this was a joke, any person in the community
> could complain and have an argument.
 >
> I think these are fixable problems. I propose the following:
>
> * The Code of Conduct should specifically state that a person who is not a
> direct party to the alleged incident is not permitted to make a complaint.

Sure. If someone breaks the rules, someone else can report it. What's 
wrong with that? You can waste the time of who you report it to? You can 
do that anyway.

Consider that the situation is worse if you *can't* report such things. 
What if all the parties to a conversation in a project-run space are 
complicit in blatantly violating the rules? None of them will report it, 
they're complicit.

> * The Code of Conduct should be modified so that abiding or not abiding by
> it is demonstrable with evidence, taking "feelings" out of it entirely. For
> example, a person shouldn't be in violation of the code because someone
> "feels harassed/trolled/etc", it should be because they're ACTUALLY
> harassed/trolled/etc.

The code of conduct doesn't say anything about feelings.

> * The Code of Conduct should bar filing a claim of harassment if harassment
> from both parties towards one another can be demonstrated.

Harassment isn't cancelled out by reverse harassment. If two people 
violate the code, then they violate the code. Whatever usual procedures 
there are do not change.

Anyway, I don't think we really need to worry about people joking to be 
breaking the rules. The proposed code doesn't say "you will be banned 
forever if you break these rules". It says that whoever enforces it 
*may* choose to do so. Unless this was persistent, I doubt that the 
person you were complaining about would have had much happen. At worst, 
they would be warned.

Now, this is assuming reasonable people enforcing the code. If you worry 
about unreasonable people, consider that all the stipulations in the 
code about how they must act reasonably are surely not going to stop them.

Thanks.
-- 
Andrea Faulds
https://ajf.me/