Hi James, It makes sense to me to have ground-up development of guidelines, as is happening in at least 3 venues that I know about. However, this also means policy/guideline fragmentation. Also, AFAIK we don't have clear mechanisms for deploying lightweight or limited-scope policies; anything with the word "policy" in its title requires a lot of work to create or change. That's good to a certain extent because consensus and widespread input hopefully will improve the outcome of the policy development. On the other hand, policy development takes time and patience. Can I ask if there is any particular hurry to deploy a friendly space policy specifically for technical spaces? My personal sense is that the vast majority of technical discussions in most venues are civil, so I'm not sensing a need for an exception for technical spaces that results in a limited-scope policy being applied in advance of developing a global friendly space policy. Pine On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 10:13 PM, James Alexander <jalexander(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:

On 08/06/2015 08:50 PM, Pine W wrote: Yes, final enforcement mechanisms may vary depending on location. But I want the initial reporting location to be the same regardless, for simplicity. Matt Flaschen

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 7:32 AM MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: What kind of standards for behavior we want and think are acceptable is a core concern of everyone in the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical communities. This kind of personally-directed and demeaning feedback ("This seems to be a pet issue of yours") is, perhaps ironically, precisely an example of why it would improve interaction in technical spaces to have some clearer ground rules.

Steven Walling wrote: Clearer ground rules for what? Is this proposed code of conduct intended to reiterate that stalking and harassment are bad or is the policy intended to be a tool of people intent on policing civility? seems I wasn't the only person who found the "we" language a bit strange. When discussing a feature request or a bug fix of almost any kind, I generally focus on the problems and use-cases that are relevant to the task. A code of conduct page on mediawiki.org is a particular implementation, but there has not been sufficient discussion of what problem(s) this proposed solution is intended to solve. Isarra asks on the talk page "What generally comes up now as problems, how do existing channels fail, and how will this resolve that?" Bawolff writes "I guess, the biggest question I have along the why is it needed lines, is why (concretely) is the friendly space policy not enough, and what is the intended relationship between this policy and that one." The responses to these posts has been incredibly unsatisfactory so far. Some of the comments on the talk page such as "Why? Why wait for something bad to happen to call it out instead of saying 'these kinds of things are bad, don't do them here'." seem to support the notion that what we're currently in a classic case of a solution searching for a problem. MZMcBride

+1. At some point we seem to have got the idea that civility enforcement was a Bad Thing - that we lost out when it was enforced. That we were no longer allowed to say whatever the heck we want and this was Bad. The problem is that even absent civility enforcement, there have always been repercussions - the difference is that they fall on the audience rather than the actor. That's pretty unfair, and it doesn't create a good working environment (and yes, this is a working environment, in the sense that it is an environment dedicated to producing things from work). It drives people away. A community that drives people away is not a good community. A community where the base standard for admission is not technical skills, or enthusiasm, but the ability to tolerate anything that could plausibly be thrown, is not a good community. It is a place that will inevitably drive people away and we will /all/ be lesser for that, because fewer people means more work for each individual person. Civility enforcement means a wider community which means /less work/. Even if you see absolutely no point in these policies for you; even if you see absolutely no direct benefit to you - surely you can accept that there are some people who find it beneficial, who are more likely to participate with it present and enforced, and that more smart people inherently benefits you by reducing the workload? I don't see any conflict between having this policy and having the friendly spaces policy. The friendly spaces policy is a generalised, broad-strokes policy for real-world events; the code of conduct is a policy specific to the nature of technical environments. Is it a perfect code of conduct? No! Does it need changes? Absolutely! But it has the potential to be much improved on the default, which is /no/ consistent policy for anything that happens outside meatspace. On 9 August 2015 at 22:49, Brion Vibber <bvibber(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: -- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation

On 10 August 2015 at 03:40, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote: What? The policy does nothing about explicitly assigning a global ban role to the WMF; it mentions the pre-existing global ban rule, something that exists regardless of how people feel about superprotect. Why? What would be necessary to change it? Policies are a massive part of the solution. When we describe 'social change' or 'social standards' what we're talking about is social expectations that everyone implicitly recognises. Because they implicitly recognise those standards, and follow them, wahey! No need for big rules. How do you get to the stage where those standards percolate through and everyone knows about them? That's more complicated. That, actually, often does take rules - because while the end outcome is everyone just doing something because That's How We Do Things, you actually have to /start doing things/ for that to become the gestalt. But, to be perfectly honest: Pine, this email that I am replying to here disappoints me tremendously. The Wikimedia community is not a special snowflake; it is not unique. The same is true of the technical community. The platform is different, the people are different, but the overarching social environment and goals are the same as any other technical community. And guess what? Other technical communities, almost all of them, have problems with harassment or microaggressions that they are confronting. And in many cases they have been working on those problems for a really long time, and have either dealt with them or are in the process of dealing with them. And they've learned a ton of useful things that they've upstreamed into places like the Geek Feminism wiki or the Contributor Covenant or various other standardised codes of conduct. Many, many smart minds working on these problems for a really long time, have decided that explicit codes of conduct are the way to go. But we /can't/ have one for Wikimedia, you see, because we need to discuss it more. Yes, it's nice that you've come up with a policy, based on those other policies that have helped in those similar areas - but we need to discuss it more and justify why it should exist. And discuss it and discuss it and discuss it until all hope of getting anything done is lost and tough luck to the people who were marginalised or disenfranchised while we were chatting because the process is far more important than their feelings, even if it's a process consisting entirely of 'debating how much we care about feelings', but the /important/ thing is that rather than adopt a policy that almost every modern community has in some way, shape or form, we discussed whether it was necessary for us. Discussions about the content of the policy is useful; Fae, for example, has provided some really helpful feedback (imo) about some ambiguities in the wording, and I have Strong Opinions about how we need to make the enforcement mechanism and its processes more explicit so everyone goes into a situation knowing what the path forward looks like. People have been submitting links to other implementations of the same principles that can be incorporated into our draft to make a better document. All of these are useful ways to contribute. But we are BEYOND "ooh, I don't know whether this is useful ~even in theory~ or not" and the fact that such a discussion is going on is proof positive that we have a problem. Because there are marginalised voices speaking out within our community, and marginalised voices within the wider tech ecosystem, and pretty much all of them agree that yes, this is useful, in theory and in practice. And when we feel the need to debate, yet again, whether it has value, we are dismissing those lived experiences and demonstrating precisely the attitude that makes these environments unpleasant. This policy is not for you. This policy is not for me. This policy is for the people who are marginalised and shoved aside and lack franchise in our existing processes and ways of interacting. So how about, for a change, we actually defer to those people. We accept that our perspectives are not as valuable in evaluating the health of a community as the perspectives of those people the community is shoving aside. And when those people say "a code of conduct helps" - as Ashe Dryden does, as Skud does, as Sumana does, as many, many others actually impacted by the unconscious biases our style of dialogue and working reinforces, we actually listen to them and start building a better policy and stop debating whether a policy has value. -- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation

On 10 August 2015 at 14:18, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: In practice, EVERYONE ELSE WHO'S ADOPTED ONE hasn't found this. In 2015, any tech organisation *without* a good, solid code of conduct of this sort is seriously backward and questionable. It's something you have to seriously justify not having, and so far there haven't been serious justifications offered as to why Wikimedia is a special snowflake in this regard. - d.

On 11 August 2015 at 00:10, MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com> wrote: Pretty much any open source project with an organisation. You've already been referred to e.g. the Geek Feminism wiki on this point, so if you haven't read up there already then it comes across as sealioning to ask yet another person the same question. it's been pointed out by multiple people in this thread already that we're after a change in behaviour rather than more text, so you bringing this up again this late comes across as "I didn't hear that". - d.

On 08/10/2015 07:10 PM, MZMcBride wrote: As you know, none of those are binding policies that apply to all Wikimedia technical spaces. This only applies to in-person events. This is more or less reasonable, but it's not even a guideline. It's just an essay, This does not apply to the vast majority of Wikimedia technical spaces, and does not have the same (or particularly similar) content. This is only binding on staff and board members, not the whole community. It's also not specific enough about both what is problematic behavior and how we solve it. Matt Flaschen

On 08/12/2015 05:13 AM, Brian Wolff wrote: We do have some social conventions, and sometimes these work, but they don't always. There have been instances (on both Wikimedia projects and other projects) where people have explicitly used the lack of a binding policy to justify their behavior. The experience of other projects suggests that making the policy binding and specific helps. I agree. This has been addressed. Commons, Wikipedia, etc. are now clearly excluded. I've added such a citation. I would summarize as three reasons: * We have had concrete violations in the past which this would have provided a tool to address. * It provides clear guidance (the preference is that people behave respectfully to begin with). * It sends a message to potential participants: "We welcome you", and backs that with more than empty words. Enforcement is still to-be-determined. Matt Flaschen

David's example is, unfortunately, probably a good one to keep in mind. Regarding enforcement, WMF's traditional approach is that staff discipline is handled on a track that's independent of community enforcement actions, and the WMF in-house actions are almost entirely opaque which is in contrast to the more transparent process of community enforcement. Because staff and community are comingling in these technical spaces, it may be best to have more harmonious and more transparent linkage between community and staff investigations and enforcement procedures. This might require the involvement of WMF Legal and/or HR to sort out how this system will work. For the purpose of developing enforcement procedures that will apply to staff and to community members in similar if not identical ways, I would like to suggest setting up a working group that includes WMF HR, WMF Legal, WMF technical staff (broadly construed), community technical contributors (broadly construed), and community admins and IRC ops who may be involved in investigations and enforcement of this proposed code of conduct. Enforcement in these circumstances is complicated, and I think that a working group would be best positioned to propose a legally sound solution for consideration by staff and community alike. Pine On Aug 12, 2015 3:42 PM, "David Gerard" <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 14 August 2015 at 22:45, Matthew Flaschen <mflaschen(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: +1 - this looks a good start. Having *something* that can deal with the cases you can hardly believe and yet not fall apart at the social-mechanism gaming that wikicranks are so good at is an excellent start. - d.

that is an impressive list, amir. WMF hast its terms of use: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use (TOU) . admitted, an illegible monster compared to the simple statements below, like contributor covenant. i honestly do not think that an open movement like the wikimedia movement should invent any new terms, licenses, codes, but influence existing ones. by putting your stuff on the mediawiki.org site you and all contributors are bound to the TOU. and we already see that the many rules contradict each other in little areas, they cannot be updated fast enough without an army of persons. the terms of use e.g. suggest to use CC-BY-SA 3.0, which lead to a collection of law suites in germany, while CC-BY-SA 4.0 would have prevented at least some of them, see here: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078685.html . rupert On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 10:57 AM, Amir Ladsgroup <ladsgroup(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: guidelines, policies, terms, codes, in different languages. this inflation of texts is very special to the wikimedia movement. my personal expectation would be that movement paid persons do have as main task to reduce the complexity for volunteers, readers, writers, photographers, coders, etc. and as second task, they support innovative techniques. we should not forget it takes time to write stuff, and it takes exponentially more time to read it. if we make a wikimedia policy, it has the potential to be read by 1 billion people. reading policies and writing policies can be considered as waste because it is not the mission of wikipedia, not the mission of WMF :) coming back to the example terms of use, they state: *Civility* – You support a civil environment and do not harass other users. paragraph 4 vastly elaborates on it. a 90% duplicate of the code of conduct. brion, civility _is_ enforced already today by the terms of use, nothing new necessary. how does this relate to copyright license? directly not really, but i tried to hint that i would expect a technical solution from a technical person. as example where our written rules go wrong i cited the thread about licenses and reuse in commons, in two aspects. ONE, updating a lot of policies is a sisyphus task, and the WMF fails already today. the terms of use include still the old CC license, using the new one would prevent law suits in germany. TWO, you oliver, matt, quim and other technicians, would have the responsibility to come up with technical solutions to exactly this community problem, not paper. can we add metadata to images: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-July/078782.html. problem would be solved by a technical implementation and maybe adapting the license. which, in my biased opinion, has a huge impact and solves the problem at source for 120 million german speaking persons, and probably in many other countries as well. best, rupert

On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 2:40 PM, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote: MediaWiki is not intentionally GPLv2. It merely is v2 now and the community cannot come to a consensus on whether to change it, thus it remains in its current stagnant state. And this is exactly what rupert is talking about: policies and other important documents and decisions like this very rarely are brought into the modern age, either because the WMF does not have resources to update them or because the community cannot come to a decision on what updates to make or not make. *-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science

Le 23/08/2015 01:09, Brian Wolff a écrit : To be fair, the license is GPLv2 or later. I am myself opposed to switch to GPLv3. Given the amount of code I own in MediaWiki core, I think I am in a position to veto such a switch. But I am not a lawyer. -- Antoine "hashar" Musso

On 21 August 2015 at 21:11, rupert THURNER <rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com> wrote: We shouldn't be adopting a technical code of conduct because it's irrelevant because it already exists and ANYWAYS it's far more important that a C++ and R programmer who does data vis for our Search team work out how to insert metadata into images. Okay. -- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation

David, thanks for this find. THIS is why the Code of Conduct is needed. I recognized myself in this blog. I remembered avoiding any aspect of socialization at conferences I had to attend for work, and simply didn't even consider attending conferences for any other purpose. I remembered how readily "the guys" assumed that any woman there was there for more than just networking and learning. I remembered having my butt pinched, my breasts "accidentally touched", my questions ignored or laughed at. I remember how the buzz of background conversation is always much louder when the speaker is a woman than when the speaker is a man. It's changed for me. Not because there's any less of all of this going on. No, it's because my hair is grey and I'm now old enough to be the mom of half the people in the room at any male-dominated conferences I attend; and outside of Wikimedia events, the conferences I go to are usually full of conservative businesswomen, and alcohol is rarely involved. So yeah...you need a code of conduct. Because if I was even 15 years younger, I'd never go to a Wikimedia conference. Risker/Anne On 22 August 2015 at 20:03, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 22 August 2015 at 22:36, Tim Landscheidt <tim(a)tim-landscheidt.de> wrote: That's very recent - December 2014 for the "general" one - and it certainly wasn't considered to apply at Wikimania 2014 (this is from direct knowledge of an incident). Who was the local "code of conduct" person at Wikimania 2015? Was their information published? Was it advertised in the handouts for the session? (Hint - it's on the Wikimania2015 website, but not on written materials that I received.) Perhaps more importantly....who were the local contacts at Hackathon 2015? I can't even dig that one up in the event documentation. A policy that exists but has no clear or visible support isn't worth the bytes it's written with. Risker/Anne

On 08/22/2015 10:52 PM, Risker wrote: This is a good point. The Friendly space policy needs to be enforced (in addition to the code of conduct being drafted now). I'll be on the look out, to ensure our in-person events properly cite the Friendly space policy and list these contacts. I hope other people do the same. Thanks, Matt Flaschen

On 28 August 2015 at 06:05, Quim Gil <qgil(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: It should be in the email sent to all participants in advance (which it isn't), and the identities of those who will be available to support the policy must be clear. Simply pointing to the list of organizers is not sufficient - it's not uncommon for some hackathon organizers to not actually be in attendance, and it is rare that there is always an organizer available for all of the hours the hackathon runs, particularly since most hackathons include at least one overnight session. In short, organizers != those skilled to handle friendly space policy violations. "May be asked to leave" is a good option, but there's no suggestion that other options exist. Risker/Anne

Why we need a committee? I think admins can enforce if necessary.

On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 2:24 PM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: Ironically, I tried to be devil's advocate by searching "why isn't a code of conduct a good idea", and pretty much every result was an article on how code of conducts *are *a good idea. That aside, I think most of the people in this thread are already well-aware that "admins" is a very generic term, and that even so, most definitions of the word "admins" would probably not be a good enforcing body for a code of conduct. *-- * *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016 Major in Computer Science

No, because that would be gratuitous and unnecessary language that contributes nothing to the discussion. But if you meant: "really, you're going to suggest, optionally, that people do research before hitting send and consider the possibility that this is not their area of expertise, where it is other peoples'", absolutely. To be clear; this is not /my/ area of expertise either. This is precisely why I try to make "search for it before commenting on it" a rule I adhere to. But I have seen people I respect and care about end up absurdly worn out by having to explain, again and again, what are (to them) basic things to people who have been fortunate enough to not be in a situation where they have to think about process, or the consequences of power imbalances, or similar subjects, and that is not an outcome I like to contribute to. I imagine it isn't an outcome other people particularly want either. And it is, in and of itself, something that is chilling; if the onus is on the marginalised to explain basic elements of this over and over then it swiftly becomes a game in which winning is too costly on time and energy to play. So I try to google and search and, when I see a proposal that seems like there's a really obvious solution the speaker missed, step back and go: "wait. Maybe it's more complicated than that. I should find out before saying anything". On 23 August 2015 at 15:23, Brian Wolff <bawolff(a)gmail.com> wrote: -- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation

Brian Wolff wrote: I agree that we should have a better and more thorough evaluation of enforcement options. A committee of three to five people is a specific potential solution, but from what I've read on the draft talk page and elsewhere, there hasn't been much discussion about alternate options. Defining various options for enforcing a code of conduct besides having a committee and providing reasons for why these options are or are not feasible/available/best would be helpful, in my opinion. This might include surveying how other codes of conduct are enforced (or not), which some discussion participants have already made efforts to do. MZMcBride

Just to clarify a few points: I support the concept of having a global friendly spaces policy. I'm ambivalent and reluctant when it comes to the particular proposal that we're discussing here. And I think that we should keep in mind that any policy's usefulness for social change will be much higher if it has community consensus. Two emails that I'm revisiting in my thought process are from Frances. I agree that personal attacks can be demoralizing and uncivil, and they do happen in our communities on occasion. I'm unclear about how to word a policy that spells out how to AGF and prohibit the kind of incivility in Oliver's example. Would it make sense, I wonder, to copy some of English Wikipedia's highly developed policies into technical spaces like WP:NPA? This gets us back into the rules creep and policy fragmentation problems. Maybe that's an acceptible opportunity cost. I think there might be greater support for a specific NPA proposal than for a broader proposal. I could see myself voting in favor of appling English Wikipedia's WP:NPA to technical spaces. I think that this would address a specific issue, and could be a net positive. If there are other specific kinds of problems that are ongoing in technical spaces and which would be improved by legislating policy, I would like to hear about them. In my personal travels in technical spaces, my experience is that the vast majority of people are civil most of the time. I think a general statement of principles about civility could be fine. I'm curious to hear if more legislation for technical spaces is needed than that. Personally, I think that a global policy might work better. Pine

For the record: I'm very happy to know that we're drafting an explicit code of conduct. Yes, Matt may not have expressed himself completely clearly in his initial email. Yes, an ironclad, fully developed, pan-Wikimedia code would be even better. Yes, developing and enforcing any new policy imposes some extra coordination costs on the community. But I don't think any of that blocks the project or outweighs its benefits. ————— Neil P. Quinn <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Neil_P._Quinn-WMF>, product analyst Wikimedia Foundation +1 (202) 656 3457 On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 9:13 AM, Oliver Keyes &lt;okeyes(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote:

Cool; drop it on the talkpage. The fact that enwiki's policy is consensus-based, of course, does not mean it's a good policy; it can just mean that it's mealy-mouthed enough to not annoy the majority enough to fight for a change. And that's very different. The issues we've seen on that project around enforcing that policy suggest comprehensiveness is not the issue, more community will, and that's not a problem that would hit this proposal given the enforcement structure. On 10 August 2015 at 15:34, Pine W &lt;wiki.pine(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation

On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 2:03 PM, Brandon Black &lt;bblack(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: Majority/consensus opinion are generally not the best way to ensure that a minority is protected either. [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority Bryan -- Bryan Davis Wikimedia Foundation &lt;bd808(a)wikimedia.org&gt; [[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]] Sr Software Engineer Boise, ID USA irc: bd808 v:415.839.6885 x6855

On 08/10/2015 12:09 PM, Pine W wrote: Forbidding personal attacks is certainly an important part of this (and I can also cite personal attacks that have unfortunately happened in our technical spaces). However, that is not the whole solution. There are other forms of harassment, etc. besides personal attacks. I don't have any objection to people working on a global policy. But I don't think we should drop the current concrete work due to a hypothetical. Matt Flaschen

On Aug 13, 2015 10:16 PM, "Oliver Keyes" &lt;okeyes(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Draft . https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dr… Oliver, I must be a little blind but I do not see examples of unfriendly behaviour in this thread. In general, Matt, I do experience that the wikimedia movement is criticized having too many rules and policies. Add another one does not help. At the end of the day your target group is code contributors, not policy readers. If somebody does not behave and not contribute, the person is easily shut up. If somebody contributes a lot, some diplomacy is required. What you do here is, imho, an example of an organization busy with itself. I won't be angry if you stop this thread and delete the wiki page. Let me add, I really appreciate and find very valuable all the other technical contributions and discussions. And Matt, of course I appreciate that you know what you are talking about beeing software and Wikipedia content contributor. Best, Rupert

But as a collaborative project a decent amount of netiquette is definitely needed. Vito 2015-08-13 23:30 GMT+02:00 rupert THURNER &lt;rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com&gt;om>:

On 13 August 2015 at 17:37, Pine W &lt;wiki.pine(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, let's see. "informal social pressure" is the most we have, and we're here having a discussion about something stronger that has involved, so far, multiple anecdotes about the technical community treating people poorly. So to answer your question: no, it is not enough Let me reiterate that demanding people who have been hurt by our existing system justify a need to change it, not once, not twice, but over and over with duplicated questions of exactly this form ("I mean, maybe things will work if we don't bother writing it down"), sometimes not just multiple times in a thread but multiple times /from the same person/, is itself a toxic behavioural pattern. -- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation

On 08/13/2015 06:09 PM, David Gerard wrote: I think he meant unfriendly comments in the thread itself, not the thread linking to unfriendly behavior elsewhere. Matt Flaschen

On 08/13/2015 05:30 PM, rupert THURNER wrote: Without commenting too much on Wikipedia's policies (some of them are necessary, some not so much), I disagree that the technical space has too many policies. We also don't have any existing policy about this. In my experience, this is not true in our community. Being a contributor does not give someone a get-out-of-jail-free card for bad behavior. Matt Flaschen

Hi, On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 11:30 PM, rupert THURNER &lt;rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Years ago I was among the ones that would strongly oppose to a Code of Conduct for some of the reasons mentioned in this thread (there is proof somewhere in the GNOME project archives). Basically, that a written policy cannot help as much as common sense and community pressure. Since then, I have learned several things: * Turns out that statistically speaking my thoughts at the time fit very well with my profile in terms of gender, age, geographical location, ethnic/social/economic/academic background, fluency in written English, individualism, extrovertism... This was/is the mainstream profile in free software projects but is just one of the many profiles possible in a free software project on a more diverse and global scale. The more we care about growth and diversity, the more we need to care about feeling welcomed and safe in terms different than what makes some of us feel welcomed and safe. When discussing a CoC, we are also discussing for those that are not here but might one day. * I have seen very competent, productive and admirable volunteers, professionals, and contributors combining both roles, taking a break or leaving completely after saying to whoever wanted to listen something along the lines of "I don't need to go through this; there are many other interesting venues out there." If you don't know anyone perhaps it's because you haven't been long or deep enough. When discussing a CoC, we don't get the opinions of those that left already, but we can still exercise our memory and reflect. * I have learned about first time contributors and also about experienced contributors talking about their first experiences lurking in our channels or remembering their first impressions during their first steps in our community. Some events that for me passed unnoticed or were normal/ok had impressed these newcomers and had been found not normal and not ok by them. Sometimes I would not even be sure whether a specific exchange had been fair, understandable or not, again because communication styles and offended feelings are very subjective, and there was no clear guideline to check. I still think that no piece of paper or wiki page will solve anything as good as a solid social convention, but now I do think that in a context like ours a wiki page can help solidifying a social convention. I also believe that a percentage of harassment and abuse happens because of personal bias or lack of awareness, sensitivity, or after-thought by those creating such situations, and having such wiki page can help preventing that percentage just by having a text written and approved by the community. Finally, I'm also convinced that a number of offenses go unreported and are swallowed by those suffering them just because we have no clear guideline of how to recognize inappropriate behavior, what to do when you see it or suffer it, and which guarantees does anyone have that a complaint will be addressed by someone without causing more pain to the people suffering. So yes, even before starting to talk about the "bureaucracy" of how to define, enforce, appeal, etc, I think a wiki page titled Code of Conduct and approved by the Wikimedia tech community will be very useful to acknowledge a real problem and to deal with it. It is also good to discuss it now that it is quite peaceful, rather than in one of those stormy phases that we allow to ourselves from time to time. -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil

On Mon, Aug 17, 2015 at 5:22 PM, Alex Monk &lt;krenair(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Correct. I removed the first per the discussion here[1] and brought in some of the Grants Friendly Space Expectations[2], since those seem to have been working well. -Frances [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Code_of_conduct_for_technical_spaces/Dr… [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Friendly_space_expectations