On 11/17/2016 04:57 PM, C. Scott Ananian wrote:
I would love to have a broader discussion about communication in the projects more generally. As you know, we currently have a few mechanisms (and please correct any mischaracterizations in the below):
As people may know, we are working on a Code of conduct for technical spaces.
It will cover on-wiki communication in the technical spaces (including talk pages), technical mailing lists, technical IRC channels, and Phabricator (including Conpherence).
There are some existing guidelines in place. It's a very fragmented picture (most guidelines only apply to one form of communication (e.g. IRC), and sometimes only a single IRC channel), which is part of what the tech CoC will improve. I also don't necessarily endorse these older guidelines.
- Conversation in the Talk: namespace (either in raw wikitext or Flow)
- This is archived, and presumably subject to same code of conduct
guidelines as parent wiki. It is public. Anonymous/IP editors are allowed.
Worth remembering that many important projects don't *have* a code of conduct or equivalent, and on those that do, it's often not enforced.
- Echo
- Unarchived transient notifications, very restricted by design. Could
be made more general (but see below).
Right, this not a user-user communication system (though it will notify you *of* user-user communications, sometimes with snippets included).
- Phabricator
- Archived task-oriented discussions, leaving to a desired outcome.
Anonymous participation disallowed. Search possible in theory; in practice the implementation is quite limited. Some (security-sensitive) conversations can be private, but (AFAIK) an ordinary user does not have a means to create a private conversation. I'm not aware of an explicit code of conduct.
Conpherence allows either public or private conversations.
There are currently guidelines (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bug_management/Phabricator_etiquette). The Code of Conduct for technical spaces will cover Phabricator as well.
We have no comprehensive code of conduct/mechanisms to combat harassment, vandalism, and abuse. Harassment or vandalism which is stopped in one communication mechanism can be transferred to another with impunity. IRC in particular is seen as a space where (a) private discussions can happen (good), but (b) there are no cops or consequences.
Yeah, I agree this is an issue, and is why the technical code of conduct will have one central reporting place (so you always know where to report, and they can consider multi-space harassment).
This is important stuff. Thank you for talking and thinking about it.
Matt Flaschen