Code of Conduct Proposal
Our current Code of Conduct is well intentioned but attempts to cover too many different aspects of managing member behavior. This means that the process of handling an issue is the same for someone who unintentionally broke an organizational rule (e.g. not cleaning up) and for someone who sexually harasses another member. This proposal is to reorganize the Rules and Polices, splitting out the existing Code of Conduct into 3 general categories.
These new sections would be:
- Community Standards: A list of positive examples on how we expect members to contribute to the community and organization. An official declaration of the general behavior we expect from members of the community.
- Code of Conduct: The purpose of the Code of Conduct is to quickly and effectively protect members from harm and requires a process capable of rapidly responding to reports of harassment and abuse.
- Organizational Rules: The purpose of Organizational Rules is to lay out the specific rules/policies for how various aspects of the organization are managed (e.g. unsafe tool usage, leaving a mess, etc). Handling of violations of these rules is designed around reformative justice, giving the member the opportunity to correct their actions.
Draft
In order to avoid confusion this proposal will be to replace the existing rules and policies page in full, rather than list a bunch of add/delete/changes. The full draft of the revised Rules and Polices can be found at: Code of Conduct Proposal/Draft.
Please do not modify the draft without first discussing with Andrew LeCody, who is heading up this proposal.
A diff of the original vs proposed Rules page can be found at: https://diffy.org/diff/74e281ac3ab4e (Note that this link may expire sometime in the future)
Rationale
Effective codes of conduct
- Specific descriptions of common but unacceptable behavior
- Reporting instructions with contact information
- Information about how it may be enforced
- A clear demarcation between unacceptable behavior (which may be reported per the reporting instructions and may have severe consequences for the perpetrator) and community guidelines such as general disagreement resolution (which should be handled via a different process).
Resources
- How “Good Intent” Undermines Diversity and Inclusion | The Bias
- Code of Conduct book – Frame Shift Consulting
- Code of conduct evaluations | Geek Feminism Wiki | Fandom
- Python Community Code of Conduct | Python Software Foundation
- Staff Procedure for Handling Harassment | PyCon 2016 in Portland, OR
- https://opensourceconduct.com
- https://adainitiative.org
