Specific incident in relationship to the proposed Code of Conduct

8 years ago by Brandon Savage — view source

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All,

It's encouraging to see people working hard to improve and expand on the
proposed Code of Conduct for PHP. The strenuous and passionate debates
aside, I'm pleased to see so many people working on this together.

I want to propose a scenario that I came across this morning, that might
work well as a thought exercise for us as a group in considering how we
would APPLY the Code of Conduct to specific members.

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:

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.
The vulgarity used to rename the project would generally be considered
in most circles to be "unprofessional behavior."
Tagging the maintainer could be construed as a "personal attack" on that
person's work.

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).

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?

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. 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".

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. 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.

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.
We should require that any person who is accused of violating the Code of
Conduct clearly have intent to do so. This is a harder standard to prove,
but one that should help us from having to deal with edge cases. A death
threat is a clear-cut case of intent, for example.
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 should bar filing a claim of harassment if harassment
from both parties towards one another can be demonstrated. This avoids a
race to the courthouse by one side to punish the other in an argument.

Open to suggestions/comments on this. I'll work on pull requests to
Derrick's repo over the next couple of days to let folks share their
thoughts.

Brandon

8 years ago by eli@eliw.com — view source

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Hey Brandon, definitely some thoughts for consideration. I did want to
respond to one piece of this:

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. 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).

I think this is somewhat incorrect. For example, yes, you cannot be
convicted of murder, however you will be convicted still of
Manslaughter. Even 'Involuntary Manslaughter' is still a crime. In
those cases, even if you didn't mean to kill someone, but your
actions/choices lead to that happening, is a crime.

But that's very far afield of CoC violations anyway. Perhaps the best
analogy would be in the legal definitions of harassment. Harassment
does not require a 'guilty mind' to be convinced of such. IE: You
don't get to say: "Oh, I didn't mean anything bad when I grabbed
<person>'s <body part>. It was a compliment!". The issue in that case,
is that perhaps, truly to the person who commited that act, they had no
guilty mind, that they truly felt that they were doing something
right. Which 'average person' would respond 'oh heck no' towards. Of
course, most laws (in the US at least) about harassment happen to only
apply in a 'work context'. And not in 'general life'. Hence why one
could argue that a project like PHP might want to enact something similar.

What could be determined to be harassment to one person, might be
'perfectly normal' to someone else. That's why the US Supreme Court
came up with a method for determining this. Which was the 'Reasonable
Person' standard. Basically per the courts definition, if a
"reasonable person" / 3rd party would feel that action was harassment,
then it was. Regardless of intent.

And typically that reasonable person aspect is decided by a jury / peers
/ etc.

Which, is very similar to what the purpose of having a Mediation/CoC
team within a project would fulfill.

Anyway, just more food for thought / another POV.

Eli

--
| Eli White | http://eliw.com/ | Twitter: EliW |

8 years ago by Michael Cullum — view source

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Whoops, I accidentally hit reply instead of reply to all on this earlier,
thanks Brandon for pointing that out.

On 23 January 2016 at 17:43, Brandon Savage brandon@brandonsavage.net
wrote:

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. 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".

Not quite. Mens rea as you rightfully point out is one of the two core
elements required to be proved for conviction of the majority of crimes
(The exception being those with strict liability), this does not mean
intent is required as mens rea can be formed of direct intent, indirect
intent, recklessness and negligence. Direct intent would be 'I murdered him
by stabbing him because I wanted to murder him', indirect intent would be
'I stabbed him (and he died) because I wanted to stab someone in the chest'
(Note the lack of wanting to kill, essentially you knew that it would have
that effect for sure, but that wasn't your primary intention) and
recklessness of which is best described by 'Realising there was a risk of
injuring someone by drinking whilst drunk, but carrying on and driving down
my road regardless' (I've only studied UK law but I've tried to abstract
the principles to clarify but I understand other countries may have
differences).

In most modern legal systems different crimes require different levels of
mens rea to be proved. For example murder requires intent (direct or
indirect intent) whereas battery or assault (lesser crimes) can be proved
by recklessness, direct intent or indirect intent.

Therefore it might make sense to have a non-black and white answer to this.
Someone messaging someone else who they don't know with rude and
insensitive comments that cause great insult to that person could be
grounds for me getting in trouble. Applying the reasonable man test (Which
has been described many times in this discussion) you would ask if most
people would realise that sending rude and insulting personal attacks to an
individual they've never met or spoken with before could have the potential
risk to make them feel... unsafe. But then, if they didn't have the direct
intent, they probably shouldn't get the harshest possible punishment if
those same actions had been done with malice.

It's all about finding balance and applying reasonable actions considering
the circumstances. Having a blanket rule on direct intent (which it sounds
like you are suggesting) could be damaging as direct intention is very
difficult to prove and most would just claim they didn't realise it could
be offensive.

--
Michael C

On 23 January 2016 at 17:43, Brandon Savage brandon@brandonsavage.net
wrote:

All,

It's encouraging to see people working hard to improve and expand on the
proposed Code of Conduct for PHP. The strenuous and passionate debates
aside, I'm pleased to see so many people working on this together.

I want to propose a scenario that I came across this morning, that might
work well as a thought exercise for us as a group in considering how we
would APPLY the Code of Conduct to specific members.

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:

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.

The vulgarity used to rename the project would generally be considered
in most circles to be "unprofessional behavior."

Tagging the maintainer could be construed as a "personal attack" on that
person's work.

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).

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?

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. 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".

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. 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.

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.

We should require that any person who is accused of violating the Code of
Conduct clearly have intent to do so. This is a harder standard to prove,
but one that should help us from having to deal with edge cases. A death
threat is a clear-cut case of intent, for example.

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 should bar filing a claim of harassment if harassment
from both parties towards one another can be demonstrated. This avoids a
race to the courthouse by one side to punish the other in an argument.

Open to suggestions/comments on this. I'll work on pull requests to
Derrick's repo over the next couple of days to let folks share their
thoughts.

Brandon

8 years ago by padraic.brady@gmail.com — view source

unread

Hi,

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.

Maybe. My main concern is closing doors on actual cases from being
reported where they occur very publicly for anyone for see and where
the identities of those involved are already public knowledge. It
would be a bit hard to just ignore such a case. On what basis would
we?

For example, non-targeted actions - like sexual images on a public forum.

The point I do take, separately, is that "unprofessional conduct" can
be permitted where it falls on the low end of the spectrum. Does the
COC get employed if someone is continually 10mins late to meetings? In
the workplace, that would get one kicked out the door very quickly,
but an open source project may be much more forgiving with respect to
everyone being a volunteer.

So basically:
a) remove the phrase; or
b) add a better phrase in the context of the project

We should require that any person who is accused of violating the Code of
Conduct clearly have intent to do so. This is a harder standard to prove,
but one that should help us from having to deal with edge cases. A death
threat is a clear-cut case of intent, for example.

No. Harrasment can be conducted without intent. The reality is that
edge cases may exist, and just have to be dealt with.

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.

Yes. I would have thought that obvious, so it's completely reasonable
to clarify it as clearly as possible should there be any doubt.
However, as I stress above, intent is not necessarily relevant in this
evaluation. I also note that the outcome of harassment may include
"feelings" of a severe negative nature so let's avoid that word for
clarity. I would go with the more clear term "beliefs". Believing
something is happening, does not make it true in the absence of
evidence.

The Code of Conduct should bar filing a claim of harassment if harassment
from both parties towards one another can be demonstrated. This avoids a
race to the courthouse by one side to punish the other in an argument.

On the basis of equal treatment, I disagree. They would then both have
allegations of unknown value which should be evaluated. This would
also open the door to baseless allegations being used to thwart the
process as a defensive tactic. As a basic level, the "demonstrated"
test still needs investigation, evidence gathering, etc.

Paddy

P.S. I like thought experiments - more the merrier in fact to actually
test ideas.

--
Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com

8 years ago by Mark Baker — view source

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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.
While I'd agree with this in general, there might be circumstances where
a "direct party" doesn't feel comfortable making a complaint in person
(newcomers in particular might feel too overawed or too embarrassed to
make a complaint themself), but might be willing to allow somebody else
to make a complaint on their behalf... as long as they have given
permission (that can be proven, such as an email) for a 3rd party to do
so, I don't see why that shouldn't be permitted.

Of course, there's nothing to stop a 3rd part from calling somebody out
if the original alleged offence is public, and I'd hope that other
members of the community would do so if the situation warranted.

--
Mark Baker

|. \ -3
|J/ PHP |
|| | __ |
|| |m| |m|

I LOVE PHP

8 years ago by Zeev Suraski — view source

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-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon Savage [mailto:brandon@brandonsavage.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2016 7:44 PM
To: PHP internals internals@lists.php.net
Subject: [PHP-DEV] Specific incident in relationship to the proposed Code of
Conduct

Open to suggestions/comments on this. I'll work on pull requests to Derrick's
repo over the next couple of days to let folks share their thoughts.

I've been reading the mini-thread that followed this message, and I'm wondering, almost out loud:
Isn't it obvious we're trying to create an amateur drive-by judicial system, borrowing ideas from the law (some mostly universal, some not), oversimplifying them (amateurishly, as we would as amateurs) and intending to put amateur investigators and judges in charge? A system that will definitely not have the countless checks and balances real world judicial systems have (which still fail frequently enough, so they're far from being perfect).

To me, that's DOA.

I think that the case you brought up could be very easily solved in a penalty-free CoC:

One of the mediation team members contacts Gary (privately) - either proactively or as a response to a complaint, pointing out to him that a PR like this, even as a joke, reflects badly on the project and may be considered by some as in violation of the CoC.
Gary, who obviously meant no harm to anybody, says 'Sure, didn't think that'll offend anybody, but I'll refrain from doing it in the future'.
Case closed.

We seem over-focused on the situation where the person's response in #2 would be ignoring the request from the mediation team, or worse, where the likelihood of that is slim to non-existent.

Zeev

8 years ago by padraic.brady@gmail.com — view source

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Hi,

-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon Savage [mailto:brandon@brandonsavage.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2016 7:44 PM
To: PHP internals internals@lists.php.net
Subject: [PHP-DEV] Specific incident in relationship to the proposed Code of
Conduct

Open to suggestions/comments on this. I'll work on pull requests to Derrick's
repo over the next couple of days to let folks share their thoughts.

I've been reading the mini-thread that followed this message, and I'm wondering, almost out loud:
Isn't it obvious we're trying to create an amateur drive-by judicial system, borrowing ideas from the law (some mostly universal, some not), oversimplifying them (amateurishly, as we would as amateurs) and intending to put amateur investigators and judges in charge? A system that will definitely not have the countless checks and balances real world judicial systems have (which still fail frequently enough, so they're far from being perfect).

To me, that's DOA.

We are overly focused on steps beyond mediation, because that's where
most of the objections and arguments are focused - on the assumption
that mediation does not solve all problems.

I have to agree with the earlier part of your statements also though
from a different direction.

What is being proposed is not in any way a court of law, nor does it
claim to be. Communities have been dealing with complaints, moderation
issues, bans, telling offs, and a whole host of steps since forever.
This is no different. I literally cannot fathom why the COC not being
a court is a problem. It's one of the most bizarre and, frankly,
concerning line of objections to arise in the debate from my
perspective. The absolute best we can do is just that - the absolute
best. And it's entirely responsible to ensure that it IS the absolute
best that can be achieved.

However, the argument that since our absolute best does not match a
specific model of a legal court where the participants have decades of
training and experience (and precedence/laws) does not mean that the
PHP project should automatically do nothing whatsoever and call it a
day. To state an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo
in comparison to a COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML?
No action ever? Does anyone actually know what it is?

Do people object to Twitter's policies? Reddit's? Facebook's? That
forum over there? Some mailing list where one will get perma-banned
for trolling? Your employer's disciplinary process which ends in a
cardbox box and a security escort to the exit? What about the rules at
the local pub on behaviour?

All of the above? Not courts. All of the above? Implemented by people
who are not professional judges and just do the best they can because
they value their communities.

By this odd logic, nobody operating any public forum, event or public
space should ever ban anyone for anything or even caution them. Ever.

And yet...they clearly do.

In the extreme cases which should be very rare where mediation
completely fails :P.

Paddy

8 years ago by Stanislav Malyshev — view source

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Hi!

perspective. The absolute best we can do is just that - the absolute
best. And it's entirely responsible to ensure that it IS the absolute
best that can be achieved.

I think this is an incorrect approach - both in making software and
other places. You don't release software when it's absolute best it
could ever be - otherwise PHP would never exist and neither would
99.9999% of other software. You do it when it is good to solve practical
problem you have. This is why there's a request on identifying the
problem we're trying to solve and result we are trying to achieve.
Because that's the way to know when we're good enough.
Another reason is a dangerous illusion we could predict what people
would do with it years from now. We can't. Thus it is important not
over-specify things - because we don't have enough information now to
know what we'd like to do in specific case in the future.

day. To state an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo
in comparison to a COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML?

Yes, status quo is pretty much that. IIRC we needed it one, two times
over 20 years? And it worked fine then. Now, maybe it's time to improve
on it, but the data so far does not show we're in failure mode. So I
find a hard focus on bans be a bit strange - for something that we'd use
maybe once per 10 years, it gets a lot of time spent on it.

Do people object to Twitter's policies? Reddit's? Facebook's? That

Of course, all the time in fact. I'm reading allegations of Facebook
both not doing enough and over-doing it, for various dark reasons,
almost daily, and same for other social platforms. Every site with
petitions (except maybe White House one, but even that I'm not sure) has
petitions for Facebook to change their policies for this or that.

cardbox box and a security escort to the exit? What about the rules at
the local pub on behaviour?

I have never seen a pub with a formal CoC so far, but maybe they have
them now, I never asked. But pubs have owners, so it's not the same as
here.

And yet...they clearly do.

Of course. And most social platforms you mentioned also both horrible
for cooperation and teeming with harassment. So I wouldn't take them as
a positive example just yet.

In the extreme cases which should be very rare where mediation
completely fails :P.

Almost none of them though ever practiced mediation and such - it's not
scalable and they are all about scale. Thankfully, this is not our case.

--
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

8 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

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Hello,

Hi!
.

day. To state an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo
in comparison to a COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML?

Yes, status quo is pretty much that. IIRC we needed it one, two times
over 20 years? And it worked fine then. Now, maybe it's time to improve
on it, but the data so far does not show we're in failure mode.

I think it reasonable to think we don'g have data, at all. Yes we have two
cases which were so obvious that we had to handle them.

For anything we have nothing. This proposal will give us more data about
how we are, how we feel, etc. If anything this is good.

So I
find a hard focus on bans be a bit strange - for something that we'd use
maybe once per 10 years, it gets a lot of time spent on it.

I think we should have used temporary bans a bit more to cool down things.
Including to myself along other.

8 years ago by Scott Arciszewski — view source

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Hello,

Hi!
.

day. To state an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo
in comparison to a COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML?

Yes, status quo is pretty much that.

IIRC we needed it one, two times
over 20 years? And it worked fine then. Now, maybe it's time to improve
on it, but the data so far does not show we're in failure mode.

I think it reasonable to think we don'g have data, at all. Yes we have two
cases which were so obvious that we had to handle them.

For anything we have nothing. This proposal will give us more data about
how we are, how we feel, etc. If anything this is good.

So I
find a hard focus on bans be a bit strange - for something that we'd use
maybe once per 10 years, it gets a lot of time spent on it.

I think we should have used temporary bans a bit more to cool down things.
Including to myself along other.

Hi all,

I've been mostly staying out of these discussions because I'm focusing my
time and energy on things that will hopefully be more valuable than just
weighing in with another opinion on this issue. However, I do feel the need
to state this because I haven't seen it stated by anyone else yet (maybe I
missed it?) and everyone in this thread seems calm, collected, and
reasonable:

I think focusing on the extreme behaviors is harmful towards a mature and
progressive discussion on these matters. My opinion is based on two
premises:

Good opsec, which career criminals and dedicated harassers would be
incentivized to adopt, can completely thwart any CoC we could come up with.
A good example would be DOXBIN, which hosted peoples' personal information
(their "dox") on a Tor hidden service and thumbed its nose to law
enforcement for years. The operator, Nachash, is still free. At no point in
time has an arrest been made.
If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you create a
tool meant for dealing with the most extreme harassers, and you will never
CATCH them, all that happens is you create a system for potentially
inflicting damage on less extreme transgressors.

Focusing on the existence/nonexistence/frequency of extreme harassment is a
non-starter. Yes, you might think you only need it once every 10 years now.
Maybe it turns out we need it once per week and we were blind to the abuses
that were occurring. Or maybe it turns out we don't ever need it at all,
but we've created a process for harassment by proxy.

Extreme harassment needs to be dealt with by specialized professionals,
i.e. law enforcement, clinical therapists, and mental health professionals.
We shouldn't even consider them in scope.

So I disagree that notions such as, "IIRC we needed it one, two times over
20 years?" are worth any future consideration.

Let's start with a solution that is appropriate for 50% or more of
situations, and take it one step at a time. There are no 100% or even 99%
solutions from day one.

That's all I have to say at the moment. I'm going to go back to addressing
technical problems; human problems are beyond me to solve adequately.

Scott Arciszewski
Chief Development Officer
Paragon Initiative Enterprises https://paragonie.com/

8 years ago by padraic.brady@gmail.com — view source

unread

Hi Scott,

I think focusing on the extreme behaviors is harmful towards a mature and
progressive discussion on these matters. My opinion is based on two
premises:

Good opsec, which career criminals and dedicated harassers would be
incentivized to adopt, can completely thwart any CoC we could come up with.
A good example would be DOXBIN, which hosted peoples' personal information
(their "dox") on a Tor hidden service and thumbed its nose to law
enforcement for years. The operator, Nachash, is still free. At no point in
time has an arrest been made.

All true, however other forms of harassment do occur in public by
identifiable people.

If you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you create a
tool meant for dealing with the most extreme harassers, and you will never
CATCH them, all that happens is you create a system for potentially
inflicting damage on less extreme transgressors.

But we can address those instances that are visible and identifiable
and actionable. Should we dispense with 99% coverage just because we
can't cover the last 1%?

Focusing on the existence/nonexistence/frequency of extreme harassment is a
non-starter. Yes, you might think you only need it once every 10 years now.
Maybe it turns out we need it once per week and we were blind to the abuses
that were occurring. Or maybe it turns out we don't ever need it at all, but
we've created a process for harassment by proxy.

I think it's a misrepresentation to claim that a Code of Conduct is a
(new) process for harassment. That the PHP project can act as a
potential vehicle for harassment is a pre-existing state that a Code
of Conduct does not alter (except to message that it's bad and will be
handled). Rather than reporting false information (if that's what you
mean) to a limited team, the process right now is essentially report
it to the mailing list publicly or reach out to individuals on the
list to bring it to the project's attention.

Extreme harassment needs to be dealt with by specialized professionals, i.e.
law enforcement, clinical therapists, and mental health professionals. We
shouldn't even consider them in scope.

We absolutely should consider them in scope unless there's a very good
reason not to.

That's all I have to say at the moment. I'm going to go back to addressing
technical problems; human problems are beyond me to solve adequately.

They are beyond most of us, but we can all chip away at those problems
one tiny piece at a time. Who knows, eventually we may one day solve
most of them. I like to think so, at least :).

Paddy

--
Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com

8 years ago by Stanislav Malyshev — view source

unread

Hi!

I think we should have used temporary bans a bit more to cool down
things. Including to myself along other.

Ban is a very dangerous thing, since it excludes people from discussion
thus preventing it from reaching a conclusion, achieving consensus and
closure, and it also hurts people and labels them ("ah, this guy who was
already banned stirs up things again? let's just ignore him, he's
obviously a troll"). Stopping discussion by ban breeds resentment on the
banned side and taints whatever the other side achieved with "if I only
were not banned, I would prove you are wrong". Of course, there might be
cases where behavior turns destructive to the point consensus just can
not be reached, but if the person is still committed to overall goals of
the project, neutral third-party moderation would usually help. Not 100%
of cases, but usually. At least that's my conviction.
So I think using bans more "to cool things down" would not be healthy.
Using neutral third party to advise people to cool down (and maybe take
a break) might be.

Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

8 years ago by Derick Rethans — view source

unread

I think we should have used temporary bans a bit more to cool down
things. Including to myself along other.

Ban is a very dangerous thing, since it excludes people from discussion
thus preventing it from reaching a conclusion, achieving consensus and
closure, and it also hurts people and labels them ("ah, this guy who was
already banned stirs up things again? let's just ignore him, he's
obviously a troll").

But on the flip side, most of us are pretty good sporting trolling
anyway, and I certainly have ignored threads where some people
partipated because I didn't think it would contribute anything to the
discussion. And that means you miss out on reasonable comments and
opinions too.

Stopping discussion by ban breeds resentment on the banned side and
taints whatever the other side achieved with "if I only were not
banned, I would prove you are wrong". Of course, there might be cases
where behavior turns destructive to the point consensus just can not
be reached, but if the person is still committed to overall goals of
the project, neutral third-party moderation would usually help. Not
100% of cases, but usually. At least that's my conviction. So I think
using bans more "to cool things down" would not be healthy. Using
neutral third party to advise people to cool down (and maybe take a
break) might be.

Tthe balance needs to be found as to what's more important: seeing all
good discussions and comments and inconvieniencing a persistent troll,
or drawing out reasonable comments manually because of an issue being
inconvienienced by a troll. I don't know the answer. A balance is
important, and perhaps an option is to do allow for short term (in the
order of days) "timeout periods" — in case the "please cool down"
message is repeatly ignored.

However, in the first phase we ought to be discussing the goals, values
and contributing guidelines. CoC, Mediation and (possible) enforcing is
for later.

cheers,
Derick

8 years ago by Zeev Suraski — view source

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-----Original Message-----
From: Derick Rethans [mailto:derick@php.net]
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2016 1:01 PM
To: Stanislav Malyshev smalyshev@gmail.com
Cc: Pierre Joye pierre.php@gmail.com; PHP internals
internals@lists.php.net
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Specific incident in relationship to the proposed Code
of Conduct

I think we should have used temporary bans a bit more to cool down
things. Including to myself along other.

Ban is a very dangerous thing, since it excludes people from
discussion thus preventing it from reaching a conclusion, achieving
consensus and closure, and it also hurts people and labels them ("ah,
this guy who was already banned stirs up things again? let's just
ignore him, he's obviously a troll").

But on the flip side, most of us are pretty good sporting trolling anyway

I assume you meant 'spotting' trolling and not sporting them, right? :)

, and I
certainly have ignored threads where some people partipated because I
didn't think it would contribute anything to the discussion. And that means
you miss out on reasonable comments and opinions too.

I think there's no way around the fact that the amount of traffic on internals is simply high for practically anybody that doesn't have internals as their full time job. I personally think trolling is a very small part of it, a part that can easily be resolved by 'muting' people that you think are trolling.

As I said in what seems like ages ago, I don't think that internals is toxic - certainly not as a rule. It can certainly become toxic in certain situations, but on average, I think most of our discussions are on topic. My key challenge with them is simply that there's just too many of them, and too much detail in each. So I pick the ones I actively participate in very selectively. I don't expect a Values document or a CoC to change that.

While in our current quest for Project Values there's no real need to define a problem, I think that as the discussion evolves, it would be important to bring up specific discussions people think went wrong - but not only point them out, but also discuss what we envision should have been done differently had Values/CoC/mediation been in place.

Tthe balance needs to be found as to what's more important: seeing all good
discussions and comments and inconvieniencing a persistent troll, or drawing
out reasonable comments manually because of an issue being
inconvienienced by a troll. I don't know the answer. A balance is important,
and perhaps an option is to do allow for short term (in the order of days)
"timeout periods" — in case the "please cool down"
message is repeatly ignored.

I didn't fully understand what you're saying here, but I do think that 'cool down periods' are problematic, unless they would be enforced on a given topic, as opposed to specific individuals.

One unexpected side effect of the RFC process is that time has become an important factor. An RFC author can press ahead with a vote very shortly after introducing a topic, and an imposed 'cool down' period can prevent relevant discussion.

Agreed we can defer that discussion to a later time.

Zeev

8 years ago by padraic.brady@gmail.com — view source

unread

Hi,

Hi!

perspective. The absolute best we can do is just that - the absolute
best. And it's entirely responsible to ensure that it IS the absolute
best that can be achieved.

I think this is an incorrect approach - both in making software and
other places. You don't release software when it's absolute best it
could ever be - otherwise PHP would never exist and neither would
99.9999% of other software. You do it when it is good to solve practical
problem you have. This is why there's a request on identifying the
problem we're trying to solve and result we are trying to achieve.
Because that's the way to know when we're good enough.
Another reason is a dangerous illusion we could predict what people
would do with it years from now. We can't. Thus it is important not
over-specify things - because we don't have enough information now to
know what we'd like to do in specific case in the future.

I don't think we're actually disagreeing here :). It was a reference
to the projects efforts, i.e. doing the best it can to achieve a
desired result.

day. To state an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo
in comparison to a COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML?

Yes, status quo is pretty much that. IIRC we needed it one, two times
over 20 years? And it worked fine then. Now, maybe it's time to improve
on it, but the data so far does not show we're in failure mode. So I
find a hard focus on bans be a bit strange - for something that we'd use
maybe once per 10 years, it gets a lot of time spent on it.

The focus on bans is because it creates a fundamental point of confusion:

Bob is harassing Ben.
Ben reports harassment.
Mediation occurs, but fails.
Bob is still harassing Ben.
The Code of Conduct contains no mention of penalties.
What is the next action of the PHP project?

If the Code of Conduct avoids, cannot, or does not answer that final
question, then it's suggestive that no action would be taken: Bob
could continue harassing Ben for eternity without consequence despite
there being a Code of Conduct.

In other words, the Code of Conduct either has teeth, or has no teeth.
If it has no teeth, then how is it enforceable? If it's not
enforceable, then why should anyone bother making reports?

Worse, if the Code of Conduct doesn't even mention the teeth, can
someone involved in a rare extreme case then claim that the project
lacks the authority to punish them?

Paddy

--
Pádraic Brady

http://blog.astrumfutura.com

8 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

unread

Hi,

Hi!

perspective. The absolute best we can do is just that - the absolute
best. And it's entirely responsible to ensure that it IS the absolute
best that can be achieved.

I think this is an incorrect approach - both in making software and
other places. You don't release software when it's absolute best it
could ever be - otherwise PHP would never exist and neither would
99.9999% of other software. You do it when it is good to solve practical
problem you have. This is why there's a request on identifying the
problem we're trying to solve and result we are trying to achieve.
Because that's the way to know when we're good enough.
Another reason is a dangerous illusion we could predict what people
would do with it years from now. We can't. Thus it is important not
over-specify things - because we don't have enough information now to
know what we'd like to do in specific case in the future.

I don't think we're actually disagreeing here :). It was a reference
to the projects efforts, i.e. doing the best it can to achieve a
desired result.

day. To state an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo
in comparison to a COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML?

Yes, status quo is pretty much that. IIRC we needed it one, two times
over 20 years? And it worked fine then. Now, maybe it's time to improve
on it, but the data so far does not show we're in failure mode. So I
find a hard focus on bans be a bit strange - for something that we'd use
maybe once per 10 years, it gets a lot of time spent on it.

The focus on bans is because it creates a fundamental point of confusion:

Bob is harassing Ben.

Ben reports harassment.

Mediation occurs, but fails.

Bob is still harassing Ben.

The Code of Conduct contains no mention of penalties.

What is the next action of the PHP project?

If the Code of Conduct avoids, cannot, or does not answer that final
question, then it's suggestive that no action would be taken: Bob
could continue harassing Ben for eternity without consequence despite
there being a Code of Conduct.

In other words, the Code of Conduct either has teeth, or has no teeth.
If it has no teeth, then how is it enforceable? If it's not
enforceable, then why should anyone bother making reports?

Worse, if the Code of Conduct doesn't even mention the teeth, can
someone involved in a rare extreme case then claim that the project
lacks the authority to punish them?

I think we do not have to enumerate a list of actions-reactions in the
CoC but clearly state that we reserve us the right to take measures in
required cases when necessary, including temporary or permanent bans.
Each case is very specific, generic rules cannot work. But if we have
no teeth at all, the CoC is indeed only that, a nice CoC but useless
for when we have to enforce it.

--
Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

8 years ago by Zeev Suraski — view source

unread

I've been reading the mini-thread that followed this message, and I'm
wondering, almost out loud:
Isn't it obvious we're trying to create an amateur drive-by judicial system,
borrowing ideas from the law (some mostly universal, some not),
oversimplifying them (amateurishly, as we would as amateurs) and
intending to put amateur investigators and judges in charge? A system that
will definitely not have the countless checks and balances real world judicial
systems have (which still fail frequently enough, so they're far from being
perfect).

To me, that's DOA.

We are overly focused on steps beyond mediation, because that's where
most of the objections and arguments are focused - on the assumption that
mediation does not solve all problems.

I obviously realize that, but I think you agreed as well that mediation does solve the vast majority of issues (alongside a clear statement of values, which is very helpful on its own).
To use the 99/1 breakdown you mentioned in another email - I'd say absolutely yes. Yes, it's better to 'sacrifice' 1% of the cases if it greatly benefits the common 99%.

What is being proposed is not in any way a court of law, nor does it claim to
be. Communities have been dealing with complaints, moderation issues,
bans, telling offs, and a whole host of steps since forever.
This is no different. I literally cannot fathom why the COC not being a court is
a problem. It's one of the most bizarre and, frankly, concerning line of
objections to arise in the debate from my perspective. The absolute best we
can do is just that - the absolute best. And it's entirely responsible to ensure
that it IS the absolute best that can be achieved.

The problem is simple.

Whatever we call it, the current CoC - as well as most other CoCs that were put on the table, do have the equivalent of laws and penal codes that are associated with them. They're simplistic, laconic, lack depth and amateur all around - but they are laws nonetheless. They do have the equivalent of judges. They will be comprised of exclusively (& hopefully) well-intending people, but amateurs by definition. Such a system would be ripe for failure. Note that I'm not saying just 'abuse' - that's just one type of possible failure. They can fail with good intentions on behalf of all parties associated.

However, the argument that since our absolute best does not match a
specific model of a legal court where the participants have decades of
training and experience (and precedence/laws) does not mean that the PHP
project should automatically do nothing whatsoever and call it a day. To state
an obvious question - what precisely is the status quo in comparison to a
COC? Ad-hoc bans by whoever has access to the ML?
No action ever? Does anyone actually know what it is?

I think the status quo right now is de-facto no action ever.
Again, we're in the syndrome of 'are we talking about toxicity or are we talking about safety', but assuming we don't want to start banning people for 'toxicity' and that we're dealing with safety, I think the status quo is working very well for us.

I suspect that if we see someone publicly and clearly harassing or threatening in one of the Open Spaces (a-la golang's CoC) - an ad-hoc petition/RFC to ban that person would follow suit, and with overwhelming results (>90%). If the 'offense' is going to be debatable and open for interpretation - then I suspect it wouldn't win the overwhelming majority, in which case it's a good thing that no ban will follow suit. As per golang's CoC, with the idea NOT being a way to silence others. As much as we all would like to mute certain individuals on this list every once in a while :)

For the record, a couple of days ago I was reminded by Derick that I actually banned a certain individual back in 2002. Those who know me know that I'm senile and I truly didn't remember it. To the best of my knowledge, that was the only mailing list ban ever on php-dev's/internal's history, and it (a) happened 14 years ago, (b) was very poorly executed by me individually - an action I later apologized for to group@, and (c) was reversed within hours. To the best of my recollection, the reason for the ban can be described as 'trolling', and was certainly not a safety issue. I think it was most probably an idiotic/reckless action on my part - not just the way it was executed, but also seeking the ban itself - and a mediation team would have worked much better in this case.

Do people object to Twitter's policies? Reddit's? Facebook's?

As Stas mentioned, all the time. In addition to the fact that the atmosphere in many corners of these websites is downright hellish in many cases - which isn't the case here - I want to point out a few other issues:

As commercial entities, these companies operate from very different motivations compared to our open source project; Whatever CoC's they have isn't in order to make people safe (and as I think we all know, people DON'T feel safe there); It's essentially to give them absolute power over the content on their websites, and minimize their exposure to lawsuits.
It's a known fact that not only do people object to the policies themselves, but also - to the poor and/or biased way they're implemented. I know this first hand. I've reported to Twitter about a terrorist org's account praising a terrorist that slaughtered two civilians in an office building roughly two miles south of where I'm typing right now, and calling upon others to follow suit and do the same - all that in a public tweet that got retweeted hundreds of times. The response I got, after repeated attempts, is that it doesn't violate their community standards (even though it clearly does). I've had similar experiences with Facebook. BTW, things like that are one of the reasons I find it a bit hard to identify with people feeling 'unsafe' on internals. And I was happy to read Andrea's email from a couple of days ago acknowledging that at least the current situation on internals doesn't seem to go beyond 'toxicity'.
With the proliferation of worldwide terrorism, governments are actually walking into these companies and will begin regulating them. This will likely happen much more aggressively going forward. So the CoC's are likely to become much more in sync with laws going forward.

All of the above? Not courts. All of the above? Implemented by people who
are not professional judges and just do the best they can because they value
their communities.

They may not be professional judges, but it's still their full time job to do this. And from my limited personal experience, they still do a very poor job at it. So no, this doesn't instill any confidence in me that it's a good idea to make our amateurs be de-facto judge and jury.

Zeev

8 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

unread

I've been reading the mini-thread that followed this message, and I'm
wondering, almost out loud:
Isn't it obvious we're trying to create an amateur drive-by judicial system,
borrowing ideas from the law (some mostly universal, some not),
oversimplifying them (amateurishly, as we would as amateurs) and
intending to put amateur investigators and judges in charge? A system that
will definitely not have the countless checks and balances real world judicial
systems have (which still fail frequently enough, so they're far from being
perfect).

To me, that's DOA.

We are overly focused on steps beyond mediation, because that's where
most of the objections and arguments are focused - on the assumption that
mediation does not solve all problems.

I obviously realize that, but I think you agreed as well that mediation does solve the vast majority of issues (alongside a clear statement of values, which is very helpful on its own).
To use the 99/1 breakdown you mentioned in another email - I'd say absolutely yes. Yes, it's better to 'sacrifice' 1% of the cases if it greatly benefits the common 99%.

I have to disagree. Nothing should be sacrificed and especially nobody.

For the n % of extreme cases where mediation fails, we have to leave
the door open to something we can escalate. We do not have to define a
one rule for all possible issues but we do have to clearly state that
we will act if we need to, on a case by case basis. Meditations alone
do not always work, we know it already.

I think instead of trying to make the RFC looks like what camp or the
other wants for this specific section, we should propose the two and
put options in the vote. That means I also do not agree to do it in
another later RFC. These are fundamental parts of the RFC that should
be agreed (or not) on from the beginning.

--
Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

8 years ago by Pierre Joye — view source

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-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon Savage [mailto:brandon@brandonsavage.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2016 7:44 PM
To: PHP internals internals@lists.php.net
Subject: [PHP-DEV] Specific incident in relationship to the proposed
Code of
Conduct

Open to suggestions/comments on this. I'll work on pull requests to
Derrick's
repo over the next couple of days to let folks share their thoughts.

I've been reading the mini-thread that followed this message, and I'm
wondering, almost out loud:
Isn't it obvious we're trying to create an amateur drive-by judicial
system, borrowing ideas from the law (some mostly universal, some not),
oversimplifying them (amateurishly, as we would as amateurs) and intending
to put amateur investigators and judges in charge? A system that will
definitely not have the countless checks and balances real world judicial
systems have (which still fail frequently enough, so they're far from being
perfect).

To me, that's DOA.

I think that the case you brought up could be very easily solved in a
penalty-free CoC:

One of the mediation team members contacts Gary (privately) - either
proactively or as a response to a complaint, pointing out to him that a PR
like this, even as a joke, reflects badly on the project and may be
considered by some as in violation of the CoC.

Gary, who obviously meant no harm to anybody, says 'Sure, didn't think
that'll offend anybody, but I'll refrain from doing it in the future'.

Case closed.

We seem over-focused on the situation where the person's response in #2
would be ignoring the request from the mediation team, or worse, where the
likelihood of that is slim to non-existent.

Thanks Zeev.

This is exactly what I meant by common sense and appropriate reaction from
the group.

The only thing I had to add is a public (as in the project channel or in
the PR f.e.) apologize from the author of this PR and that's it.

I also think think it is wrong to try to use legal wording or comparisons
as it is not a public environment governed by laws (well, laws applied but
not in our scopes). It is about rules we define and we wish to follow in
our community. Just like what we can see in many other group of people, in
tech, sports or other.

Cheers,
Pierre

8 years ago by Andrea Faulds — view source

unread

Hi Zeev,

Zeev Suraski wrote:

I think that the case you brought up could be very easily solved in a penalty-free CoC:

One of the mediation team members contacts Gary (privately) - either proactively or as a response to a complaint, pointing out to him that a PR like this, even as a joke, reflects badly on the project and may be considered by some as in violation of the CoC.

Gary, who obviously meant no harm to anybody, says 'Sure, didn't think that'll offend anybody, but I'll refrain from doing it in the future'.

Case closed.

We seem over-focused on the situation where the person's response in #2 would be ignoring the request from the mediation team, or worse, where the likelihood of that is slim to non-existent.

I'd like to point out that you don't need a "penalty-free CoC" for this
anyway. Unless the case was particularly egregious, why would enforcers
immediately apply sanctions here? The steps you outlined are exactly
what I would imagine happening in a CoC which did have penalties/

Penalties are always a last resort. Why do we always seem to assume the
people responsible for administering them would not be reasonable enough
to think that? Is there this much distrust in the PHP community?

Thanks.

Andrea Faulds
https://ajf.me/

8 years ago by Andrea Faulds — view source

unread

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:

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.

The vulgarity used to rename the project would generally be considered
in most circles to be "unprofessional behavior."

Trolling, in itself, is unprofessional.

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/

8 years ago by Andreas Heigl — view source

unread

Hi All.

Am 23.01.16 um 18:43 schrieb Brandon Savage:

All,

It's encouraging to see people working hard to improve and expand on the
proposed Code of Conduct for PHP. The strenuous and passionate debates
aside, I'm pleased to see so many people working on this together.

I want to propose a scenario that I came across this morning, that might
work well as a thought exercise for us as a group in considering how we
would APPLY the Code of Conduct to specific members.

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:

Just to illustrate the Problems that might arise with any CoC-issue:

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.
I couldn't find a CoC or a reference to it on the Doctrine-Homepage or
in the doctrine/doctrine2-Repo. So no, It's not been a violation of a
CoC and therefore not been an attempt in trolling. As the
Doctrine-Project is a separate project from PHP-Internals they are
comletely free to have their own ideas of having (or not having) a CoC
and we can not measure things happening there with a CoC we'd like to
have for PHP-Internals.

The vulgarity used to rename the project would generally be considered
in most circles to be "unprofessional behavior."
"Generaly" and "most" are generalizations I wouldn't want to see
especially when handling CoC-Issues.

Tagging the maintainer could be construed as a "personal attack" on that
person's work.
Reading through the PR, I (Yes, it's my personal view) can not see a
personal attack, as the poerson opening the PR asks the maintainer
whether the PR is considered helpfull for the project. So we could
discuss whether a hint that this is "Work in Progress" would have been
appropriate.

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).
As I know the two persons in question it was clear at first sight what
the intention of the PR was. So those that didn't get the joke at first
sight might not know the two. Which brings me to how to reposnd to
something like that (if it happened on PHP-Internals).

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?
THe person in question (as anyone on the internals and all other
php-mailinglists) should have read these documents as they are the
mailinglist-posting guidelines!

http://php.net/mailing-lists.php
http://git.php.net/?p=php-src.git;a=blob_plain;f=README.MAILINGLIST_RULES;hb=HEAD
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html

And one of the advices I always hear in regard to posting to a
mailing-list is "get to know the mailinglist" - meaning know about the
tone and about the people that are posting there. The same would apply
to the PR in question. Anyone who knows @geeh and @ocramius knows that
they have a very special sense of humour that might sprout such a PR.

So instead of making a call to the CommunityMediationTeam wouldn't it be
easier to make a call to some people that know the two and ask "what's
up there"? (Note that this is entirely focusing on the given example!)

[...]

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.

Yes, and that is good, as one of the paries might not even recognize a
violation of the CoC so for protection of those it is good that that is
possible. (now I'm not talking about the example in question)

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.
I'm against that for the above stated reason.

We should require that any person who is accused of violating the Code of
Conduct clearly have intent to do so. This is a harder standard to prove,
but one that should help us from having to deal with edge cases. A death
threat is a clear-cut case of intent, for example.
Proving that will become very hard and I wouldn't want any pseudo-legal
stuff going on.

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.
But that's entirely what it's all about! Feelings! Or how do you define
ACTUALL harrasment/trolling/etc? We need a safe space for members of
thius community that FEEL unhappy. A place they can come to whenever
they FEEL something is going wrong to talk to someone to see whether the
feeling might be accurat or not! And that's the point that is entirely
missing in the whole CoC-Debate.

[...]

Open to suggestions/comments on this. I'll work on pull requests to
Derrick's repo over the next couple of days to let folks share their
thoughts.

My Suggestions is:

everyone read the three documents stated above and
let's think about how to provide safe spaces where people with bad
feelings can turn to to find open ears that are willing to listen
without prejudice.

Just my 0.02€

Cheers

Andreas

                                                          ,,,
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| Andreas Heigl |
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