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mjg59Free software communities don't exist in a vacuum. They're made up of people who are also members of other communities, people who have other interests and engage in other activities. Sometimes these people engage in behaviour outside the community that may be perceived as negatively impacting communities that they're a part of, but most communities have no guidelines for determining whether behaviour outside the community should have any consequences within the community. This post isn't an attempt to provide those guidelines, but aims to provide some things that community leaders should think about when the issue is raised.
There's also the problem of determining whether a law was actually broken. The criminal justice system is (correctly) biased to an extent in favour of the defendant - removing someone's rights in society should require meeting a high burden of proof. However, this is not the threshold that most communities hold themselves to in determining whether to continue permitting an individual to associate with them. An incident that does not result in a finding of criminal guilt (either through an explicit finding or a failure to prosecute the case in the first place) should not be ignored by communities for that reason.
But you need to consider that if someone consciously contravenes the behavioural standards of a community they've chosen to participate in, they may be willing to do the same in your community. If pushing boundaries is a frequent trait then it may not be too long until you discover that they're also pushing your boundaries.
If your community includes individuals that are known to have engaged in behaviour that would violate your community standards, potential members or contributors may not trust that your CoC will function as adequate protection. A community that contains people known to have engaged in sexual harassment in other settings is unlikely to be seen as hugely welcoming, even if they haven't (as far as you know!) done so within your community. The way your members behave outside your community is going to be seen as saying something about your community, and that needs to be taken into account.
A second (and perhaps less obvious) aspect is that membership of some higher profile communities may be seen as lending general legitimacy to someone, and they may play off that to legitimise behaviour or views that would be seen as abhorrent by the community as a whole. If someone's anti-semitic views (for example) are seen as having more relevance because of their membership of your community, it's reasonable to think about whether keeping them in your community serves the best interests of your community.
As a result, communities struggle to make consistent decisions. It's unreasonable to expect individual communities to solve these problems on their own, but that doesn't mean we can ignore them. It's time to start coming up with a real set of best practices.
Some things to consider
Did the behaviour violate the law?
This seems like an obvious bar, but it turns out to be a pretty bad one. For a start, many things that are common accepted behaviour in various communities may be illegal (eg, reverse engineering work may contravene a strict reading of US copyright law), and taking this to an extreme would result in expelling anyone who's ever broken a speed limit. On the flipside, refusing to act unless someone broke the law is also a bad threshold - much behaviour that communities consider unacceptable may be entirely legal.There's also the problem of determining whether a law was actually broken. The criminal justice system is (correctly) biased to an extent in favour of the defendant - removing someone's rights in society should require meeting a high burden of proof. However, this is not the threshold that most communities hold themselves to in determining whether to continue permitting an individual to associate with them. An incident that does not result in a finding of criminal guilt (either through an explicit finding or a failure to prosecute the case in the first place) should not be ignored by communities for that reason.
Did the behaviour violate your community norms?
There's plenty of behaviour that may be acceptable within other segments of society but unacceptable within your community (eg, lobbying for the use of proprietary software is considered entirely reasonable in most places, but rather less so at an FSF event). If someone can be trusted to segregate their behaviour appropriately then this may not be a problem, but that's probably not sufficient in all cases. For instance, if someone acts entirely reasonably within your community but engages in lengthy anti-semitic screeds on 4chan, it's legitimate to question whether permitting them to continue being part of your community serves your community's best interests.Did the behaviour violate the norms of the community in which it occurred?
Of course, the converse is also true - there's behaviour that may be acceptable within your community but unacceptable in another community. It's easy to write off someone acting in a way that contravenes the standards of another community but wouldn't violate your expected behavioural standards - after all, if it wouldn't breach your standards, what grounds do you have for taking action?But you need to consider that if someone consciously contravenes the behavioural standards of a community they've chosen to participate in, they may be willing to do the same in your community. If pushing boundaries is a frequent trait then it may not be too long until you discover that they're also pushing your boundaries.
Why do you care?
A community's code of conduct can be looked at in two ways - as a list of behaviours that will be punished if they occur, or as a list of behaviours that are unlikely to occur within that community. The former is probably the primary consideration when a community adopts a CoC, but the latter is how many people considering joining a community will think about it.If your community includes individuals that are known to have engaged in behaviour that would violate your community standards, potential members or contributors may not trust that your CoC will function as adequate protection. A community that contains people known to have engaged in sexual harassment in other settings is unlikely to be seen as hugely welcoming, even if they haven't (as far as you know!) done so within your community. The way your members behave outside your community is going to be seen as saying something about your community, and that needs to be taken into account.
A second (and perhaps less obvious) aspect is that membership of some higher profile communities may be seen as lending general legitimacy to someone, and they may play off that to legitimise behaviour or views that would be seen as abhorrent by the community as a whole. If someone's anti-semitic views (for example) are seen as having more relevance because of their membership of your community, it's reasonable to think about whether keeping them in your community serves the best interests of your community.
Conclusion
I've said things like "considered" or "taken into account" a bunch here, and that's for a good reason - I don't know what the thresholds should be for any of these things, and there doesn't seem to be even a rough consensus in the wider community. We've seen cases in which communities have acted based on behaviour outside their community (eg, Debian removing Jacob Appelbaum after it was revealed that he'd sexually assaulted multiple people), but there's been no real effort to build a meaningful decision making framework around that.As a result, communities struggle to make consistent decisions. It's unreasonable to expect individual communities to solve these problems on their own, but that doesn't mean we can ignore them. It's time to start coming up with a real set of best practices.
Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-21 03:30 pm (UTC)There are some people who find it acceptable to silence a necessary community discussion by using the code of conduct as a means to avoid the discussion all together. Any passionate argument that might threaten the public opinion of a community or an individual member could easily be turned into a violation of the CoC and misdirected as a (personal) insult, regardless if it was well intended. Many of these community shepherds argue for stronger CoC when it comes to respectful interaction with each other, while at the same time feeling totally in their right to denigrate and publicly insult others as long as they do it on their personal social media accounts. In their opinion, the community Code of Conduct does not apply on the personal accounts because that would be censorship. Usually it goes something like: the other party obviously is a terrible person or has bad intentions and therefor any interaction with this person should be avoided and publicly ridiculed. If there is anything more toxic to a community it is this immature, hypocritical and polarizing behavior. Sadly very few people seem to want to draw attention to themselves by scrutinizing this kind of behavior, worst case they just become cheerleaders.
When it comes to individuals being able to separate business and community interests and have a sense of integrity, I usually picture the person in my mind with a giant sticker on their forehead that says “Includes paid promotion”. Than I try to figure out based on there actions in reality if that picture makes sense. For example in your case; constantly preaching how some companies are immoral or unethical while remaining mum when it involves your own employer is kinda silly.
Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-22 02:08 am (UTC)Can you give an example of a specific situation when this has happened?
Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-22 11:25 am (UTC)My comment was more about technical communities using the CoC to insulate themselves from anyone and anything that might pierce the bubble or echo-chamber they are living in. I am not going to point out specific incidents, but it is not that hard to recognize the pattern when being involved in these communities. It usually involves people priding themselves being experts or good-doers feeling threatened when someone (usually an outsider) might point out inconsistencies between the story and the reality. Resulting in these community members engaging in behavior ten times worse than what they condemn in others, only now it is justified.
Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-22 06:53 pm (UTC)Harassment is not a hypothetical situation -- it happens all the time -- so I think it's okay to take action to prevent it even if there are bad things that could hypothetically happen as a result.
Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-22 08:27 pm (UTC)Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-23 10:53 am (UTC)> Harassment is not a hypothetical situation -- it happens all the time
You haven't given any specific situations where this has happened, which is what you demanded from the "other side".
> so I think it's okay to take action to prevent it even if there are bad things that could hypothetically happen as a result
Only to the extent that the things we're doing actually help though. It's very easy to fall into the "something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done" fallacy.
Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-23 08:15 pm (UTC)Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-24 12:32 am (UTC)Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-23 09:03 am (UTC)Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-23 08:15 pm (UTC)Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-24 09:15 am (UTC)Project leaders need to take responsibility for conduct in their project. But codes, as I've seen them applied in the Scala world, combine the worst of a formal system with the worst of an informal judgement. If it's not clear what kind of actions do and don't violate your CoC then I'd sooner trust the project leader to use their judgement directly.
Re: Interesting, but incomplete picture…
Date: 2017-12-24 10:35 am (UTC)That is not a very useful contribution to the discussion; particularly for somebody who hasn't been involved in the event(s). Was the thread below the trigger for Tony Morris' banishment?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/scala-user/Hs4wK2zqo0A/RMmKBAvId5AJ
http://www.scala-lang.org/old/node/8894
http://www.scala-lang.org/old/node/8907
> Morris is thoroughly unpleasant
I have a counterexample which clearly invalidates this claim, as long as you are willing to agree that he was far from unpleasant in this sub-thread:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/scala-user/Hs4wK2zqo0A/7p8lDFkUqooJ
I would say that no matter how unpleasant Tony Morris could be *in some circumstances*, "thoroughly" seems to be excessive as a characterization.
You may think that it does not matter, but it is something which will be perceived, with cause, as character assassination by some. (I don't think you did it on purpose; just pointing out the bias.)
I would agree that from a limited glance at his contributions, Tony Morris seems to be a bit "twitchy" and overreactive. How much of that is willful, I don't know.
It also seems that it brings a lot to the table, if not in "conventional" ways. From a limited sample, I find it very hard to classify him as a "troll" or "vandal." "Ill-adjusted" at worst, but that's certainly not a "sin" in itself.
> and any project leader with a spine would've banned him long ago, sure. […] Project leaders need to take responsibility for conduct in their project.
You guys scare me.
You discuss establishing totalitarianism in your little kingdoms as if it was noncontroversial. "Leader," "with a spine," "banned"? "Leaders [have] responsibility for conduct [of others]."
Welcome to the Democratic People's Community of Whatever; a model which will conquer the world!
> I'd sooner trust the project leader to use their judgement directly.
As far as I can tell, this whole post & discussion is about events which are *not* *even* *covered* by the relevant "CoC"s—no matter how illegitimate the latter are.
In my view, you are only making progress if the end goal is a medieval system—and an amateurish one, at that. One of us is missing something important here.
-D
P.-S. — I'm (obviously) the person who keeps asking for the definitions you rely on when elaborating the planned social models of your private utopias.