Code of Conduct plan

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:

1. The Core Team will appoint an exploration committee which will look
at various proposals (including the one drafted on pgsql-general) for
CoCs and discuss them.

To follow up on this ...

The Core Team are pleased to announce that Stacey Haysler has accepted
our invitation to chair the exploratory committee on a Postgres Code of
Conduct. Stacey is very well qualified to do this, since she is a well
known member of the Postgres community and has had an extended career in
human resources, including creation and implementation of
anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies.

Stacey will be reaching out to potential committee members over the next
few days or weeks. Once the committee is assembled, they will devise
some way (possibly a new mailing list, though I don't want to pre-judge
it) for the wider community to have input into the discussions.
In the meantime, we ask that people continue to refrain from flooding
pgsql-general or other existing PG lists with CoC-related threads.
There will be a time and a place for those discussions, but not yet.

If you have interest or concerns about this process, you can contact
Stacey at shayslerpgx@gmail.com or the Core Team at
pgsql-core@postgresql.org.

regards, tom lane

--
Sent via pgsql-advocacy mailing list (pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org)
To make changes to your subscription:
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Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1]/messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com. That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle. They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team. This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

regards, tom lane

[1]: /messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

Is there some archive of the discussion that brought on this effort and the
considerations of the committee itself? I wish I had seen the earlier
announcements in 2016 as I would have definitely participated.

Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
place? I'm curious about the specific impetus that brought about
Postgresql's efforts to consider one. I've read the other comments in the
general list but I'm more interested in the specifics motivations and
efforts by the CoC committee.

thanks,

-- Ben Scherrey

On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 1:29 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1]. That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle. They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team. This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem.
Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into
disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside
the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled
where they occur not here.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
conduct. "
Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people
these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to
have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed
behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

regards, tom lane

[1] /messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

Is there some archive of the discussion that brought on this effort and the
considerations of the committee itself? I wish I had seen the earlier
announcements in 2016 as I would have definitely participated.

If you poke around in our mailing list archives for early 2016 (Jan/Feb),
you'll find a number of threads about it. Mostly on the -general list,
IIRC.

Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
place?

I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016. It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC. I don't think any useful purpose will be
served by re-litigating that point.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community...

We are now asking for a final round of community comments...

I really like that this was included: "Any allegations that prove not to be substantiated...will be
viewed as a serious community offense and a violation of this Code of Conduct."

Good attempt to prevent the CoC being used as vindictive weaponry.

I also like that you kept is short.

-- B

On 06/03/2018 02:47 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

Is there some archive of the discussion that brought on this effort and the
considerations of the committee itself? I wish I had seen the earlier
announcements in 2016 as I would have definitely participated.

If you poke around in our mailing list archives for early 2016 (Jan/Feb),
you'll find a number of threads about it. Mostly on the -general list,
IIRC.

Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
place?

I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016. It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC. I don't think any useful purpose will be

Since there was never a community vote taken I am not sure how it was
determined there was a majority in favor. From what I remember of the
online discussion the opinion was evenly split on the need for a CoC.

served by re-litigating that point.

regards, tom lane

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On 06/03/2018 04:54 PM, Berend Tober wrote:

Tom Lane wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community...

We are now asking for a final round of community comments...

I really like that this was included: "Any allegations that prove not to
be substantiated...will be viewed as a serious community offense and a
violation of this Code of Conduct."

Good attempt to prevent the CoC being used as vindictive weaponry.

But a futile attempt: "A lie can travel half way around the world while the
truth is putting on its shoes."

--
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

On 04/06/18 07:32, Adrian Klaver wrote:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced
separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a
result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
into disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
handled where they occur not here.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
conduct. "
Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people
these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to
have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed
behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to
someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that
particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their
knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied
-- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist"
could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever
I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that
doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of
the history of slavery.

I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my
first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a
technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they
implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if
I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

There are a lot of words and phrases that are okay in some cultures, but
may be offensive in others -- even within the ame country.

Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government
Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very
Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds
were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene. 
The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the
thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most
Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

You should look at the hoohaa over what Linus Torvalds says.  I've read
several of his posts and seen videos were he has been less than polite. 
But I know when he is coming from.  If Linus was rude to me, I would be
chuffed, because than I'd know I was good enough for him to reply to me,
but that either I could have done better or that Linus was wrong.  For
example see the email exchange with the infamous Sarah Sharp
https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/407.  At the 2015 Australian Linux
Conference, I watched as Sarah harangued Linus for over twenty minutes,
Linus kept calm and polite throughout.

So common words and phrases could be offensive to some people. Sometimes
people just need to let of stream.

You could end up with people being excessively polite to show their
displeasure.  Come across the expression "icely polite" -- it was a way
of showing contempt while denying the victim any excuse for a deadly
duel!  Which would lead to the issue that people wouldn't always know if
the politeness was real, or if it was intended to show disdain.

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!

Cheers,
Gavin

On Jun 3, 2018, at 16:08 , Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!

+1 this is a distraction.

Some people are not paying attention and are sending code-of-conduct comments to
all lists, not just pgsql-general, but -hackers and -advocacy too.

I've seen 3 of these so far today.

This is a reminder to please send the comments to pgsql-general only.

-- Darren Duncan

On Jun 3, 2018, at 7:08 PM, Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:

On 04/06/18 07:32, Adrian Klaver wrote:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1]. That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle. They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team. This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled where they occur not here.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such conduct. "
Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

[truncated]

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!

I believe the main goal of the CoC is the opposite: it’s to ensure that
people do feel welcome to participate in the PostgreSQL community and
that if they are unfortunately subject to an incident that they have a safe
means of reporting it versus codifying what is “correct."

There is also a committee around the CoC and why there will be multiple
individuals on the committee, so that way any complaints can be fairly
researched, discussed, and resolved. There are also several checks and
balances with the enforcement of the CoC that should help ensure that any
complaints are handled as fairly as possible.

Anyway, a big +1 to the effort of everyone who worked on the CoC for
the past several years. From feedback in other forums through the years,
I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident.

Jonathan

On Sun, 03 Jun 2018 17:47:58 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the first
place?

I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

Unfortunately, conduct codes generally aren't worth the paper they are
written on. People who are inclined to behave badly towards others in
the 1st place will do so regardless of any code or any consequences of
violating the code.

The only thing a conduct code really accomplishes is to make some
subset of the signers feel good about themselves. Actions are more
important than words.

YMMV.

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016. It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC. I don't think any useful purpose will be
served by re-litigating that point.

regards, tom lane

I remember that thread, but I don't remember any vote being taken. And
the participants in the thread were self-selected for interest in the
topic, so any consensus there is not necessarily reflective of the
community at large.

I am completely in favor of civil discourse and behavior, but I am not
in favor of unenforcible red tape.

Just my 2 cents.
George

On Sunday, June 3, 2018, George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> wrote:

On Sun, 03 Jun 2018 17:47:58 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents

within

the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the

first

place?

I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

Unfortunately, conduct codes generally aren't worth the paper they are
written on. People who are inclined to behave badly towards others in
the 1st place will do so regardless of any code or any consequences of
violating the code.

I would say that such a generalization is itself of dubious value.

The only thing a conduct code really accomplishes is to make some

subset of the signers feel good about themselves. Actions are more
important than words.

It communicates that this community has a policing force, which itself is
non-obvious and thus worth communicating, and provides that force
guidelines for action.

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016. It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC. I don't think any useful purpose will be
served by re-litigating that point.

regards, tom lane

I remember that thread, but I don't remember any vote being taken. And
the participants in the thread were self-selected for interest in the
topic, so any consensus there is not necessarily reflective of the
community at large.

That's pretty much par for the public dynamic of this community. And, as
noted above, such a policy doesn't need the community at-large's approval:
it's a document that constrains those that wrote it.

I am completely in favor of civil discourse and behavior, but I am not
in favor of unenforcible red tape.

The core team does have enforcement tools at its disposal. They are at
least being open about the circumstances and extents under which they would
leverage those tools.

David J.

On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 4:47 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

Is there some archive of the discussion that brought on this effort and

the

considerations of the committee itself? I wish I had seen the earlier
announcements in 2016 as I would have definitely participated.

If you poke around in our mailing list archives for early 2016 (Jan/Feb),
you'll find a number of threads about it. Mostly on the -general list,
IIRC.

I did go back and read through the 2016 content rather thoroughly. But
where has all the discussion been going on for the last two years? Am I to
understand that this effort has been going on in an entirely undocumented
manner? I find that difficult to fathom such a thing happening in this
community so I'm sure my understanding is mistaken. Where can we see the
details of what was considered and what drove the committee to its
apparently final proposal?

Another more specific factual question - have there been incidents within
the active Postgresql community where behaviour by individuals who are
participants in the community have conducted themselves in a manner that
brought on the actual need for such a code of conduct to exist in the

first

place?

I believe there were a couple of unfortunate incidents at conferences.
Now, conferences are generally expected to have their own CoCs and enforce
them themselves; this CoC is meant more to cover on-line interactions.
You could argue that we shouldn't create such a CoC until something bad
happens on-line; but I'd prefer to think that having a CoC might prevent
that from ever happening at all, which is surely better.

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016. It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC. I don't think any useful purpose will be
served by re-litigating that point.

I also don't want to re-litigate anything and I do trust that core members
and people involved with the effort are acting in good faith for their
efforts. I'd just like to see what that consisted of so that I can consider
it from a fully informed basis and not waste anyone else's time. I've cc'd
Stacey in hopes that perhaps this can be clarified soon. I would like to
review what was considered before I finalize any opinion about what's been
proposed.

thanx & best regards,

-- Ben Scherrey

On 06/03/2018 09:21 PM, David G. Johnston wrote:

On Sunday, June 3, 2018, George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net
<mailto:gneuner2@comcast.net>> wrote:

That's pretty much par for the public dynamic of this community.  And,
as noted above, such a policy doesn't need the community at-large's
approval: it's a document that constrains those that wrote it.

If that is the case then it is of no real use as only a handful of
people wrote it. Otherwise could you explain what you mean?

I am completely in favor of civil discourse and behavior, but I am not
in favor of unenforcible red tape.

The core team does have enforcement tools at its disposal.  They are at
least being open about the circumstances and extents under which they
would leverage those tools.

David J.

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 7:06 AM, Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com>
wrote:

On 06/03/2018 09:21 PM, David G. Johnston wrote:

That's pretty much par for the public dynamic of this community. And, as
noted above, such a policy doesn't need the community at-large's approval:
it's a document that constrains those that wrote it.

If that is the case then it is of no real use as only a handful of people
wrote it. Otherwise could you explain what you mean?

​The core committee can, if they so choose, e.g., remove someones login
from postgresql.org, period. They don't *need* a published code of conduct
to take action in situations they deem to violate whatever code the members
collectively hold to. But making it public and publishing a corresponding
dispute resolution process brings a level of openness and formality to the
process that benefits the community as a whole. While input from those the
Core Team serves is valuable at the end of the day they are a benign
dictatorial committee when it comes to official PGDG policy and actions and
this document is their group think made manifest for others to learn about
and provide feedback as to how they would wish for the Core Team to behave.

And, since the Core Team is delegating the role of community policing to
others, a document detailing that is needed for those other's benefit if
nothing else.

David J.

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

I did go back and read through the 2016 content rather thoroughly. But
where has all the discussion been going on for the last two years?

It's been private, mostly either (a) the exploration committee responding
to comments that were received at PGCon 2016 [1]https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Coc_qa_pgcon2016 or privately, or (b) the
core team arguing among ourselves whether we were prepared to support the
draft yet. I'm embarrassed to admit that a whole lot of the delay has
been due to (b). Core did finally resolve our differences in in-person
meetings at PGCon 2018, which is why you're seeing this now rather than
some other time.

Anyway, the core discussions certainly aren't going to be made public,
and I doubt that Stacey has any intention of publishing the exploration
committee's private mail either. If you compare the current draft to
what was available in 2016, I don't think you'll find any differences
that are so substantive as to require public defense. We tried to make
the wording simpler and less intimidating, but that's about it.

regards, tom lane

[1]: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Coc_qa_pgcon2016

On Sun, 3 Jun 2018 at 22:47, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016. It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC. I don't think any useful purpose will be
served by re-litigating that point.

This is somewhat at odds with your message here.

/messages/by-id/18630.1454960447@sss.pgh.pa.us

It's rather disappointing that discussion was effectively silenced
based on the implication that there would be time for further
discussions before the implementation stage, only to have consultation
deferred until late on in the implementation itself.

If we're going to move on from that (as I assume), as to the content
of the CoC itself, can I echo others' comments that

engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute,

is far too open to interpretation.

Geoff

I just want to chime in and thank all those who worked on this Code of
Conduct. It's well thought out, and I'm personally very glad to see it. I
think this just makes our community and its work stronger. I strongly
support it being put into effect.

Evan Macbeth

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 2:29 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1]. That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle. They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team. This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

regards, tom lane

[1] /messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

-- 
Evan Macbeth - Director of Support - Crunchy Data
+1 443-421-0343 - evan.macbeth@crunchydata.com

On 06/03/2018 05:57 PM, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:

Anyway, a big +1 to the effort of everyone who worked on the CoC for
the past several years. From feedback in other forums through the years,
I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident.

This is the #1 reason for a Code of Conduct.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On 06/03/2018 07:57 PM, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:
[snip]

Anyway, a big +1 to the effort of everyone who worked on the CoC for
the past several years. From feedback in other forums through the years,
I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident.

How will New Users know that the CoC exists, much less read it? Will there
be a click-through "you must read and accept the CoC before being allowed to
join a mailing list"?  What about the people already on the mailing list?

--
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

If there's been so much Bad Behavior that's so Weakened the Community, then
someone's done an excellent job of hiding that Bad Behavior.

On 06/04/2018 09:57 AM, Evan Macbeth wrote:

I just want to chime in and thank all those who worked on this Code of
Conduct. It's well thought out, and I'm personally very glad to see it. I
think this just makes our community and its work stronger. I strongly
support it being put into effect.

Evan Macbeth

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 2:29 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
<mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1].  That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle.  They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team.  This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
<https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct&gt;

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org <mailto:coc@postgresql.org>.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

                        regards, tom lane

[1]
/messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com
</messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com&gt;

-- 
Evan Macbeth - Director of Support - Crunchy Data
+1 443-421-0343 - evan.macbeth@crunchydata.com 
<mailto:evan.macbeth@crunchydata.com>

--
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly
moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an openly
inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about this:

I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about
participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's
mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The
following minor modification would work:

"To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community
interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."

There is no language that protects different political or social views.
In today's climate it is important especially as we are a worldwide
project. Something simple like the following should be enough:

"Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to
age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political affiliation,
social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project
into disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen
outside the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be
handled where they occur not here.

This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a similar
sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case. This based on
the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.

It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
conduct. "

Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people
these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to
have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed
behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

"considered offensive by fellow members"

Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:

I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to
someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that I'm better at that
particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their
knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied
-- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist"
could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive.
Which is correct?

I'm talking to is my slave!  I heard of an American university that
doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of
the history of slavery.

The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use the
terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.

I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my
first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a
technical issue.  The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they
implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct.  Yet, if
I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
Knowing your audience is important.

Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government
Bonds.  They used two very common hand gestures that are very
Australian.  Bond sales dropped.  On investigation, they found the bonds
were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene.
The gestures?  Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the
thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most
Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word c**t is
part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and highly
frowned upon.

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!

Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't say
it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has problems
but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions rational.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On 06/04/2018 09:44 AM, Ron wrote:

If there's been so much Bad Behavior that's so Weakened the Community,
then someone's done an excellent job of hiding that Bad Behavior.

The inner circle of any community is very good at protecting itself and
exerting authority without representation or recourse due to a single
ideology of protectionism of one's status or potential public blow back
at said community.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On 06/04/2018 06:33 AM, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:

    I did go back and read through the 2016 content rather thoroughly.
But where has all the discussion been going on for the last two years?
Am I to understand that this effort has been going on in an entirely
undocumented manner? I find that difficult to fathom such a thing
happening in this community so I'm sure my understanding is mistaken.
Where can we see the details of what was considered and what drove the
committee to its apparently final proposal?

The -core committee has been taking a more direct approach to policies
within the community without the traditional community input. This is
both good and bad. Discussions of a policy nature are inherently
political and thus opening it to the wider community can be a large
distraction to the purpose of the community.

The downside is that some policies are now coming down via fiat or at
least very little actual discourse on need, direction or purpose.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

El 2018-06-04 12:52, Joshua D. Drake escribió:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly
moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an
openly inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about
this:

I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about
participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's
mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain. The
following minor modification would work:

"To that end, we have established this Code of Conduct for community
interaction and participation within the Postgresql.org project."

There is no language that protects different political or social
views. In today's climate it is important especially as we are a
worldwide project. Something simple like the following should be
enough:

"Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to
age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political
affiliation, social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

i don't know, because a check "Your agree ours rules", may enough.

Categorize, we will can have different interpretation.

On 4 Jun 2018, at 17:59, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

<snip>

I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to someone on a technical subject. In the sense that I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive. Which is correct?

Like most things, it depends on context. ;)

I'm talking to is my slave! I heard of an American university that doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of the history of slavery.

The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use the terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.

I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a technical issue. The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they implicitly know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct. Yet, if I wrote that publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults). Knowing your audience is important.

Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government Bonds. They used two very common hand gestures that are very Australian. Bond sales dropped. On investigation, they found the bonds were mainly bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene. The gestures? Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional Greeks found them offensive.

Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word c**t is part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and highly frowned upon.

Yes. Us Aussie's often use the word "cunt". Again, depends on context. :)

Personally... I don't think I've used it more than 5 times in total, in the years I've been in the UK.

Those times I did, it was _definitely_ not in a politically correct fashion. Nor online. YMMV.

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!

Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions rational.

Possibly a weird viewpoint, but I personally have a different way of looking at the CoC thing.

From my observations of people so far, it seems like there are two main GROUPings (pun intended :>)
of people:

* Those who like and want rules for everything. "For without rules how will people know what to do?"
* Those who don't like nor want rules for everything. "Stop trying to control me! Let me work out an optimal approach myself!"

It's a scale thing, not black and white.

Personally, I'm somewhere near the middle (it varies slightly over time).

My point being, that when some threshold of "too many rules" is reached the people in the Community
who _don't_ like excess rules will leave. Conversely, people who _need_ rules in order to feel
comfortable will start to stick around.

Neither group is intrinsically right nor wrong. They just operate internally differently, and
have different needs.

Adding a CoC will change the quantity-of-fules mix _slightly_, depending on how in-your-face people
are with it.

Our Community will naturally adjust it's makeup over time to reflect this change.

Mentioning the above, as I hope we're going into this "eyes wide open". ;)

+ Justin

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On 4 Jun 2018, at 18:24, Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> wrote:
<snip>

Adding a CoC will change the quantity-of-fules mix _slightly_, depending on how in-your-face people
are with it.

s/quantity-of-fules/quantity-of-rules/

Interesting typo though. :)

--
"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those
who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the
first group; there was less competition there."
- Indira Gandhi

On Jun 4, 2018, at 10:59 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive. Which is correct?

I don’t think it’s offensive but it plainly fails your “if you wouldn’t say it to a client, don’t say it here” test.

Generally we so-called “snowflakes” aren’t the ones raising hell about CoCs, which is the third rail I’ve seen most likely to set off the actually hypersensitive types who fling this so-called insult around.

To be honest, examples like “sacrifice a willing virgin” or “offering my first born […]”, etc. do not contribute to conversations but rather bury rhetorical and technical weaknesses under a top layer of historical/emotional semiotic thatch that must be cut through to appropriately determine the validity of an argument. I do not understand what one might hope to preserve by ensuring users of such phrases are permitted to continue putting up such smokescreens.

Ultimately, the important thing this CoC provides is some concrete language to point at when a party is aggrieved and explicit avenues of redress available when one refuses to address one’s own behavior. We’re adults here, the strawmen of people being harangued out of the community because they said a bad word are unlikely to materialize.

+1

--
Jason Petersen
Software Engineer | Citus Data
303.736.9255
jason@citusdata.com

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.

Thanks for all the efforts on this. It is nice to see us explicitly
moving toward modernizing our community policies and creating an openly
inclusive community. There are a couple of notes I have about this:

I think we need language that explicitly states that this is about
participation within postgresql.org only. It is not postgresql.org's
mission or purpose to police actions outside of their domain.

Actually, it's intentional that we are not saying that. The idea is
that any interaction between PG community members is subject to the CoC,
whether it takes place in postgresql.org infrastructure or not, so long as
there is not another CoC that takes precedence (such as a conference's
CoC). The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
the FreeBSD community awhile back [1]/messages/by-id/CA59563A-A97B-4FFC-A414-9888392F541B@justatheory.com (The linked-to discussion unfortunately seems to be 404 now, so I'm relying on David's summary.), wherein one community member was
abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
act.

IIRC, the earliest drafts did have language about like what you suggest
here, but we took it out after the FreeBSD case was pointed out.

There is no language that protects different political or social views.
In today's climate it is important especially as we are a worldwide
project. Something simple like the following should be enough:
"Examples of personal characteristics include, but are not limited to
age, race, national origin or ancestry, religion, political affiliation,
social class, gender, or sexual orientation."

We've gone back and forth on how long the "examples of personal
characteristics" list ought to be; it was longer before, and some folks
didn't like that. (For onlookers who don't feel like checking the current
draft, JD has added "political affiliation" and "social class" to the
present text. The May 2016 draft had seventeen entries and was
undoubtedly way too far in the other direction.) In the end, since it's
just examples anyway, I'm inclined to keep it short. We can and will
tweak the text in future if actual problems arise and somebody argues
that their hurtful conduct wasn't proscribed.

In the end, whether reasonable things happen is going to depend on
the reasonableness of the CoC committee members. That's part of the
reason that we've set it up so that that committee is distinct from,
but answerable to, the core team. Core will take action if the CoC
committee is seen to be getting out of hand --- though I think that
that's very unlikely to happen.

regards, tom lane

[1]: /messages/by-id/CA59563A-A97B-4FFC-A414-9888392F541B@justatheory.com (The linked-to discussion unfortunately seems to be 404 now, so I'm relying on David's summary.)
(The linked-to discussion unfortunately seems to be 404 now, so I'm
relying on David's summary.)

On 05/06/18 06:41, Jason Petersen wrote:

On Jun 4, 2018, at 10:59 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com
<mailto:jd@commandprompt.com>> wrote:

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
offensive. Which is correct?

I don’t think it’s offensive but it plainly fails your “if you
wouldn’t say it to a client, don’t say it here” test.

Generally we so-called “snowflakes” aren’t the ones raising hell about
CoCs, which is the third rail I’ve seen most likely to set off the
actually hypersensitive types who fling this so-called insult around.

To be honest, examples like “sacrifice a willing virgin” or “offering
my first born […]”, etc. do not contribute to conversations but rather
bury rhetorical and technical weaknesses under a top layer of
historical/emotional semiotic thatch that must be cut through to
appropriately determine the validity of an argument. I do not
understand what one might hope to preserve by ensuring users of such
phrases are permitted to continue putting up such smokescreens.

Dem der big words you be using!  You are over analysing.

Nothings buried!

Note that in discussing the CoC, I've not used colourful language as
part of, nor instead of, any argument I've presented -- other than as
examples.

Any real difficulties would be mentioned explicitly, if not already
known by the listener.

If a rational argument is needed, it can/will be provided. Colourful
language is no substitute for valid arguments, that we are agreed. Nor
should it be used as a smokescreen.

Colourful language makes conversation less stilted when used
'appropriately', and can help bonding.  A lot depends on context.

One place where I worked, I pretended to blame people for things outside
their control.  There were 4 people I didn't indulge such humour too: 
the manager (it may well have been his fault, and he would likely take
it badly in any case), the technical manager (he was too stressed), and
2 people who obviously did not appreciate that kind of humour.  Others
had no problem with it.

With some friends/colleagues I've used grossly offensive language.
However, in the context it's been taking in the spirit intended and not
at face value.  Though, I'm careful not to overdo it, and not every time
we spoke.  There are things I  might say face-to-face, that I would not
write in an email -- as I've no idea of how the reader might be feeling
when they read, context and body language are important to consider.

Ultimately, the important thing this CoC provides is some concrete
language to point at when a party is aggrieved and explicit avenues of
redress available when one refuses to address one’s own behavior.
We’re adults here, the strawmen of people being harangued out of the
community because they said a bad word are unlikely to materialize.

+1

If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

I fear that the CoC is likely to be misused.

Have seen many heated arguments in these lists, but none that got out of
hand.

I strongly feel that a CoC is neither needed nor useful here. It is a
Politically Correct check list item.

-100

Cheers,
Gavin

On 2018-Jun-05, Gavin Flower wrote:

If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

"We're all adults" is wishful thinking. Some old people are just kids
who aged but didn't actually mature.

--
�lvaro Herrera https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

On 2018-06-04 22:26, Alvaro Herrera wrote:

On 2018-Jun-05, Gavin Flower wrote:

If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

"We're all adults" is wishful thinking. Some old people are just kids
who aged but didn't actually mature.

Also to point out... there is the occasional teen who does meaningful
stuff with Open Source.

So, "we are all adults here" might not actually be 100% correct. :D

+ Justin

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> writes:

On 2018-Jun-05, Gavin Flower wrote:

If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

"We're all adults" is wishful thinking. Some old people are just kids
who aged but didn't actually mature.

I'm sure we'd all be ecstatic if the CoC committee never actually has
anything to do. The point of this exercise is to make new people ---
particularly women and others who have often felt disadvantaged in
technical communities --- feel safe and welcome here.

Also: we *have* had cases where women who had been contributors left
because of harassment, and I'd like to ensure that doesn't happen again.

regards, tom lane

On 4 June 2018 at 17:53, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> writes:

On 2018-Jun-05, Gavin Flower wrote:

If we are all adults, then we don't need a CoC.

"We're all adults" is wishful thinking. Some old people are just kids
who aged but didn't actually mature.

I'm sure we'd all be ecstatic if the CoC committee never actually has
anything to do. The point of this exercise is to make new people ---
particularly women and others who have often felt disadvantaged in
technical communities --- feel safe and welcome here.

Also: we *have* had cases where women who had been contributors left
because of harassment, and I'd like to ensure that doesn't happen again.

+1000
Dave Cramer

davec@postgresintl.com
www.postgresintl.com

On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.

Actually, it's intentional that we are not saying that. The idea is
that any interaction between PG community members is subject to the CoC,
whether it takes place in postgresql.org infrastructure or not, so long as
there is not another CoC that takes precedence (such as a conference's
CoC). The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
act.

O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X
being disciplined for behavior that has nothing to do with
PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that
but it is none of our business if contributor X gets into a fight
(online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community.

Thanks,

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

... The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
act.

O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X
being disciplined for behavior that has nothing to do with
PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that
but it is none of our business if contributor X gets into a fight
(online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community.

Fair. As written, I think that would only fall under the CoC if somebody
made an argument that it was bringing disrepute to the PG community.
The extent to which that would hold up would depend a lot on details,
like who was involved. Peripheral community members would probably not
be considered to be representing the community ... at the other extreme,
members of the core team had better keep our noses clean at all times.
That's the price of community leadership.

regards, tom lane

On Jun 4, 2018, at 3:30 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.

Actually, it's intentional that we are not saying that. The idea is
that any interaction between PG community members is subject to the CoC,
whether it takes place in postgresql.org infrastructure or not, so long as
there is not another CoC that takes precedence (such as a conference's
CoC). The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
act.

O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X being disciplined for behavior that has nothing to do with PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that but it is none of our business if contributor X gets into a fight (online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community.

That can be a problem when people who are known by some to be toxic join a community, and those who have previous experience with them leave. That can leave them as a "missing stair" or, worse, if they continue to be horrible but within moderation guidelines they can provoke responses from other participants that can cause them to be moderated or be chastized and then leave. In some cases that has caused the entire culture to drift, and pretty much destroyed the community.

(Community management is hard. The more you formalize some of it the more you have to formalize all of it and do so near-perfectly. Developers, who tend to prefer hard black/white, true/false rules rather than leaving some decisions to personal judgement can be some of the worst people at doing community management, and some of the easiest to manipulate.)

Cheers,
Steve

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1]. That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle. They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team. This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

regards, tom lane

[1] /messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
works.

One concern is, who checks for the correctness of the translations. I
think committers could do the job since there are good number of
non-English native speakers in the group.

Best regards,
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php
Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

On Jun 4, 2018, at 6:41 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:

On 06/04/2018 01:46 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

... The reason for this is an unfortunate situation that took place in
the FreeBSD community awhile back [1], wherein one community member was
abusing another via Twitter, and their existing CoC failed to cover that
because it had been explicitly written to cover only community-run forums.
So we're trying to learn from that mistake, and make sure that if such a
situation ever came up here, the CoC committee would have authority to
act.

O.k. I can see that. The problem I am trying to prevent is contributor X
being disciplined for behavior that has nothing to do with
PostgreSQL.Org. I am not sure what the exact good solution is for that
but it is none of our business if contributor X gets into a fight
(online or not) with anyone who is not within the PostgreSQL.Org community.

Fair. As written, I think that would only fall under the CoC if somebody
made an argument that it was bringing disrepute to the PG community.
The extent to which that would hold up would depend a lot on details,
like who was involved. Peripheral community members would probably not
be considered to be representing the community ... at the other extreme,
members of the core team had better keep our noses clean at all times.
That's the price of community leadership.

+1.

I would add that if you choose to contribute to PostgreSQL and make
representations that you contribute to PostgreSQL, then you are acting
as an ambassador of the community in various forums, and as such should
be mindful of how you treat people, regardless of your level of contribution.

I would also say I’m less concerned about people fighting (disputes happen
all the time amongst the best of friends) vs. someone targeting and/or harassing
people inappropriately, which is very different. And to reiterate, according to the
CoC, should someone file a report, it is reviewed by a committee of people
who will do their best to determine whether or not the behavior was inappropriate
and/or brings disrepute to the PG community.

Jonathan

Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@sraoss.co.jp> writes:

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
works.

Good idea, but let's wait till the text is official; I'm not sure if
we'll change the draft again in response to the current discussions.

regards, tom lane

Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
works.

Good idea, but let's wait till the text is official; I'm not sure if
we'll change the draft again in response to the current discussions.

Of course. I will wait for the text to be settled down.

Best regards,
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php
Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

On 05/06/18 01:07, Tom Lane wrote:

Tatsuo Ishii <ishii@sraoss.co.jp> writes:

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

Do we want official translations of this? We allow local communities
do their own manual translations. However CoC is so important, I feel
like we need more for Coc. Good thing with CoC is, it is expected that
it would be stable (at least I hope so) and translation works when
it's changed is expected to be minimal, unlike the manual translation
works.

Good idea, but let's wait till the text is official; I'm not sure if
we'll change the draft again in response to the current discussions.

Also I think official text should have its own page on the website,
rather than just be on the wiki. Hopefully that's already planned.
--
Vik Fearing +33 6 46 75 15 36
http://2ndQuadrant.fr PostgreSQL : Expertise, Formation et Support

Vik Fearing <vik.fearing@2ndquadrant.com> writes:

Also I think official text should have its own page on the website,
rather than just be on the wiki. Hopefully that's already planned.

Right; we'll mark the formal blessing of the text by moving it onto
the main website. The translated versions should end up there too.

(I believe there are plans afoot to move all the "locked" wiki pages'
content to the main site, but I'm not involved in making that happen.)

regards, tom lane

Geoff Winkless <pgsqladmin@geoff.dj> writes:

On Sun, 3 Jun 2018 at 22:47, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

In any case, we went over all these sorts of arguments at excruciating
length in 2016. It's quite clear to the core team that a majority of
the community wants a CoC. I don't think any useful purpose will be
served by re-litigating that point.

This is somewhat at odds with your message here.
/messages/by-id/18630.1454960447@sss.pgh.pa.us

It's rather disappointing that discussion was effectively silenced
based on the implication that there would be time for further
discussions before the implementation stage, only to have consultation
deferred until late on in the implementation itself.

I think you're forgetting the sequence of events. That was posted in
Feb 2016. In May 2016 we posted a draft CoC which was open for public
discussion, and was discussed extensively at a public meeting at PGCon
in that same month [1]https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Coc_qa_pgcon2016, and the draft was subsequently revised a good bit
as a result of that, and republished [2]/messages/by-id/CA+OCxowroZoDXk0O9NpyXTJ9dTnD8RiPvJXxK4xD=dA5w7c=cg@mail.gmail.com. It's taken us (mainly meaning
core, not the exploration committee) way too long to agree to a final
draft from there, but claiming that there's been no public input is just
wrong.

If we're going to move on from that (as I assume), as to the content
of the CoC itself, can I echo others' comments that

engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute,

is far too open to interpretation.

Yeah, it's fuzzy, but as Steve Atkins notes downthread, black and white
is hard to get to in this game. I do not think dropping the provision
altogether would be a good thing, nor would lawyering it to death be an
improvement. We're better off applying Justice Stewart's "I know it
when I see it" approach.

In reality I suspect actions under that provision will be quite rare.
You'd need somebody to actually file a complaint, and then for the CoC
committee to agree that it's a good-faith complaint and not a form of
using the CoC as a weapon. Given reasonable people on the committee,
that seems like it'll be a fairly high bar to clear. But, given an
unambiguous case, I'd want the committee to be able to take action.

regards, tom lane

[1]: https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Coc_qa_pgcon2016
[2]: /messages/by-id/CA+OCxowroZoDXk0O9NpyXTJ9dTnD8RiPvJXxK4xD=dA5w7c=cg@mail.gmail.com

On 06/04/2018 05:18 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Geoff Winkless <pgsqladmin@geoff.dj> writes:

If we're going to move on from that (as I assume), as to the content
of the CoC itself, can I echo others' comments that

engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into disrepute,

is far too open to interpretation.

Yeah, it's fuzzy, but as Steve Atkins notes downthread, black and white
is hard to get to in this game. I do not think dropping the provision
altogether would be a good thing, nor would lawyering it to death be an
improvement. We're better off applying Justice Stewart's "I know it
when I see it" approach.

Yeah, I think we have to be careful to not overdue this. We need to come
at this with, "Everyone has the best intentions" else it is just going
to fail.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On Jun 4, 2018, at 7:23 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Vik Fearing <vik.fearing@2ndquadrant.com> writes:

Also I think official text should have its own page on the website,
rather than just be on the wiki. Hopefully that's already planned.

Right; we'll mark the formal blessing of the text by moving it onto
the main website. The translated versions should end up there too.

I assumed this would be put onto the website, just wanting for the
“final word.”

And +1 for translations.

Jonathan

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
We are now asking for a final round of community comments.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm aware of at least one actual case of a
person leaving the community because of harassment. I do not think
it's a hypothetical problem. Whether a CoC can fix it remains to
be seen, but doing nothing will certainly not fix it.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into
disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside
the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled
where they occur not here.

See discussion elsewhere in thread, particularly the FreeBSD precedent
about actions "outside the community". We shouldn't be too legalistic
about exactly where that boundary is.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such
conduct. "
Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people
these days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to
have it called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed
behavior is called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

I'm not following this complaint. That's part of the conclusion,
which is *supposed* to restate what came before it, with more concision
and hence necessarily less precision.

regards, tom lane

On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
wrote:

On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem.
Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into
disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside
the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled where
they occur not here.

This is good point. There are those who would think that one has performed
an action that brings the project into disrepute and a similar sized bias
that suggests that in fact that isn't the case. This based on the CoC would
be judged by the CoC committee.

It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that committee
that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo chamber for a
single ideology and that will destroy this community.

If I may suggest: The committee should be international as well and
include people from around the world. The last thing we want is for it to
be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.

3) "... members must be sensitive to conduct that may be considered
offensive by fellow members and must refrain from engaging in such conduct.
"

Again overly broad, especially given the hypersensitivity of people these

days. I have found that it is enough to disagree with someone to have it
called offensive. This section should be removed as proscribed behavior is
called out in detail in the paragraphs above it.

"considered offensive by fellow members"

Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:

I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when talking to

someone on a technical subject. In the sense that I'm better at that
particular skill, but some hypersensitive American could get their knickers
in a twist (notice, that in this context, no gender is implied -- also in
using that that expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend
some snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly offensive.
Which is correct?

I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.

This is an economic common project. The goal should be for people to come
together and act civilly. Waging culture war using the code of conduct
itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this goes on *all*
(not just one or two) sides.

I'm talking to is my slave! I heard of an American university that

doesn't want people to use the term master, like in an MSc, because of the
history of slavery.

The PostgreSQL project already has this problem, note we don't use the
terms Master and Slave in reference to replication anymore.

I've used the expressions "sacrifice a willing virgin" and "offering my
first born to the gods" as ways to ensure success of resolving a technical
issue. The people I say that to, know what I mean -- and they implicitly
know that I'm not seriously suggesting such conduct. Yet, if I wrote that
publicly, it is conceivable that someone might object!

Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults). Knowing
your audience is important.

I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and mature.
At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with red MAGA hats.
And yet everyone managed to be civil. We manage to do better than the US
does on the whole in this regard and we should be proud of ourselves.

Consider a past advertising campaign in Australia to sell government

Bonds. They used two very common hand gestures that are very Australian.
Bond sales dropped. On investigation, they found the bonds were mainly
bought by old Greek people, who found the gestures obscene. The gestures?
Thumbs up, and the okay gesture formed by touching the thumb with the next
finger -- nothing sexually suggestive to most Australians, but traditional
Greeks found them offensive.

Using Australia as an example, my understanding is that the word c**t is
part of nomenclature but in the states the word is taboo and highly frowned
upon.

Again key point that a CoC committee needs to be international and used to
addressing these sorts of issues.

Be very careful in attempting to codify 'correct' behaviour!

Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't say
it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has problems but
generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions rational.

I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I think the
presumption ought to be that people are trying to work together.
Misunderstanding can happen. But let's try to act in a collegial and
generally respectful way around eachother.

--
Best Regards,
Chris Travers
Database Administrator

Tel: +49 162 9037 210 | Skype: einhverfr | www.adjust.com
Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin

Hello,

Maybe must include policy of money support from several at member from
country less earnings. For examplo Cuba.

El 2018-06-05 10:45, Chris Travers escribió:

El 2018-06-05 10:54, gilberto.castillo@etecsa.cu escribió:

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 8:29 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1]. That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle. They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team. This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

Reading through this, it seems like a generally useful and fair set of
rules. I want to offer some comments though about some specific issues
here.

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

The initial membership of the CoC committee will be announced separately,
but shortly.

One of the issues I see here is the issue of cross-cultural attacks, and a
certain American slant on where inappropriate behavior might begin when it
comes to disparaging remarks. In my blog I covered one hypothetical about
an argument via email signatures over a culture war issue like same-sex
marriage for example where one side might put forth an American viewpoint
and someone else might condemn sexual ethics that permit accepting
homosexual contact using, say, Gandhi as an authority.

This is a serious issue. It won't go away. There will be, at some point,
Americans trying to push these sorts of issues via email signatures and the
like, and it will cause conflict. The current code of conduct makes it
very clear that the second viewpoint is not welcome, but is very ambiguous
on the first viewpoint. I.e. arguing that marriage shouldn't be a bond
that binds parents to their children but solely exists for the benefit of
the spouses could be a cultural attack and hence an attack on the national
backgrounds of many people in the community around the world but that isn't
clear. My concern is that the current code of conduct will lead to these
disputes ensuring that the CoC community gets to decide who gets to feel
like they are not protected, and I think we all agree that's not what we
want.

For this reason I think the introduction should be left as is, but I would
suggest one of two modifications to the second section (Inclusivity):

1. Either include culture as a part of the protected criteria to indicate
that this definitely is protected and that culture-war pushing will not be
tolerated any more than any other disturbance of the peace, or
2. Note that trolling or divisive political behavior likely to threaten
the peace will be dealt with as a violation of the code of conduct, or
3. Simply demand civility and leave a lot of the examples out.

On to the code of conduct committee:

This needs to be explicitly international and ideally people from very
different cultures. This is the best protection against one small group
within one country deciding to push a political agenda via the Code of
Conduct. I would recommend adding a note here that the committee will be
international and culturally diverse, and tasked with keeping the peace and
facilitating a productive and collegial environment.

Unless there are substantial objections, or nontrivial changes as a result
of this round of comments, we anticipate making the CoC official as of
July 1 2018.

regards, tom lane

[1] /messages/by-id/56A8516B.8000105@agliodbs.com

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

Am 05.06.2018 17:03 schrieb Chris Travers:

On to the code of conduct committee:

This needs to be explicitly international and ideally people from very
different cultures. This is the best protection against one small
group
within one country deciding to push a political agenda via the Code of
Conduct. I would recommend adding a note here that the committee will
be
international and culturally diverse, and tasked with keeping the peace
and
facilitating a productive and collegial environment.

I strongly agree with this.

CoCs discussed in other projects have an inclination towards US view
points. Maybe the reason for this is that many community members are US
residents and are having the problems of their society in mind when
thinking of what a CoC should be. But what is acceptable in the US might
be unacceptable in other parts of the world and vice versa.

Please procure that the CoC is not a vehicle to propagate US values.

Regards

Lutz

On 06/04/2018 09:55 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:

On 06/03/2018 11:29 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct
We are now asking for a final round of community comments.

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of problem.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm aware of at least one actual case of a
person leaving the community because of harassment. I do not think
it's a hypothetical problem. Whether a CoC can fix it remains to
be seen, but doing nothing will certainly not fix it.

Adrian,

As one of the people that interacts with external members of the
community more than most, I can tell you that a CoC is something the
wider community wants. I have sat in feedback meetings with hundreds of
people who are potential community members. These people have ranged in
age, gender, sexual orientation and technical capability on all realms
of the spectrum. The majority of them aren't interested if we do not
have a written Code of Conduct.

All PostgreSQL contributors should be looking at this as an opportunity
to grow our community in a more open and diverse way.

Thanks,

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On 06/05/2018 07:45 AM, Chris Travers wrote:

It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo
chamber for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.

If I may suggest:  The committee should be international as well and
include people from around the world.  The last thing we want is for it
to be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.

+1

"considered offensive by fellow members"

Is definitely too broad. The problem comes in here:

I might possibly say that "I'm the master in this area" when
talking to someone on a technical subject.  In the sense that
I'm better at that particular skill, but some hypersensitive
American could get their knickers in a twist (notice, that in
this context, no gender is implied -- also in using that that
expression "get their knickers in a twist" could offend some
snowflake) claiming that I'm suggesting that whoever

"snowflake", I find that term hilarious others find it highly
offensive. Which is correct?

I agree with both concerns in the above exchange.

This is an economic common project.  The goal should be for people to
come together and act civilly.  Waging culture war using the code of
conduct itself should be a violation of the code of conduct and this
goes on *all* (not just one or two) sides.

[snip]

Yes and that is a problem. We need to have some simple barrier of
acceptance that we are all adults here (or should act like adults).
Knowing your audience is important.

I would point out also that the PostgreSQL community is nice and
mature.  At PGConf US I saw what appeared to be two individuals with red
MAGA hats.  And yet everyone managed to be civil.  We manage to do
better than the US does on the whole in this regard and we should be
proud of ourselves.

To be fair, those were South Africans but yes, nobody gave them any
public grief as far as I know.

Correct. I think one way to look at all of this is, "if you wouldn't
say it to your boss or a client don't say it here". That too has
problems but generally speaking I think it keeps the restrictions
rational.

I will post a more specific set of thoughts here but in general I think
the presumption ought to be that people are trying to work together.
Misunderstanding can happen.  But let's try to act in a collegial and
generally respectful way around eachother.

+1

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On 06/05/2018 08:19 AM, Lutz Horn wrote:

Am 05.06.2018 17:03 schrieb Chris Travers:

On to the code of conduct committee:

This needs to be explicitly international and ideally people from very
different cultures.  This is the best protection against one small group
within one country deciding to push a political agenda via the Code of
Conduct.  I would recommend adding a note here that the committee will be
international and culturally diverse, and tasked with keeping the
peace and
facilitating a productive and collegial environment.

I strongly agree with this.

CoCs discussed in other projects have an inclination towards US view
points. Maybe the reason for this is that many community members are US
residents and are having the problems of their society in mind when
thinking of what a CoC should be. But what is acceptable in the US might
be unacceptable in other parts of the world and vice versa.

Please procure that the CoC is not a vehicle to propagate US values.

Let's remember that we are an International project and let's not direct
particular frustration at any particular set of values. It would be very
easy to start a culture war within this thread alone.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 11:41 AM, Jason Petersen <jason@citusdata.com> wrote:

Ultimately, the important thing this CoC provides is some concrete language
to point at when a party is aggrieved and explicit avenues of redress
available when one refuses to address one’s own behavior. We’re adults here,
the strawmen of people being harangued out of the community because they
said a bad word are unlikely to materialize.

+1

This seems like a good summary on the purpose of the CoC.

It is of course possible that a member of the committee could act in
bad faith for any number of reasons. You can say the same thing about
any position of leadership or authority within the community, though.
That hasn't really been much of a problem in my experience, and I see
no reason for particular concern about it here.

--
Peter Geoghegan

Am 05.06.2018 17:33 schrieb Joshua D. Drake:

Let's remember that we are an International project and let's not
direct particular frustration at any particular set of values. It
would be very easy to start a culture war within this thread alone.

I am not quite sure what you mean by "particular frustration". I think
that it is obvious that most CoCs are not, for example, developed by
communities in Africa or Asia. Most are developed in North America and
Europe with a strong weight in the US. Observing this does not claim
that the values voiced by the vocal majority are good or bad, only that
they can be biased.

That's why I support the nottion of making the international character
of both the project and the board explicit.

Regards

Lutz

O.K,

Remember my Country Please!!!!.

El 2018-06-05 11:29, Joshua D. Drake escribió:

Am 05.06.2018 17:26 schrieb Joshua D. Drake:

As one of the people that interacts with external members of the
community more than most, I can tell you that a CoC is something the
wider community wants. I have sat in feedback meetings with hundreds
of people who are potential community members. These people have
ranged in age, gender, sexual orientation and technical capability on
all realms of the spectrum. The majority of them aren't interested if
we do not have a written Code of Conduct.

May I ask what the context of these meetings was? Where where they held?
For which country or part of the broader community where the
participants representative?

Regards

Lutz

On 06/05/2018 08:41 AM, Lutz Horn wrote:

Am 05.06.2018 17:26 schrieb Joshua D. Drake:

As one of the people that interacts with external members of the
community more than most, I can tell you that a CoC is something the
wider community wants. I have sat in feedback meetings with hundreds
of people who are potential community members. These people have
ranged in age, gender, sexual orientation and technical capability on
all realms of the spectrum. The majority of them aren't interested if
we do not have a written Code of Conduct.

May I ask what the context of these meetings was? Where where they held?
For which country or part of the broader community where the
participants representative?

Happy to discuss offlist. I don't want to distract from this thread.

jD

Regards

Lutz

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On Tue, 5 Jun 2018 at 01:18, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I think you're forgetting the sequence of events. That was posted in
Feb 2016. In May 2016 we posted a draft CoC which was open for public
discussion, and was discussed extensively at a public meeting at PGCon
in that same month [1], and the draft was subsequently revised a good bit
as a result of that, and republished [2]. It's taken us (mainly meaning
core, not the exploration committee) way too long to agree to a final
draft from there, but claiming that there's been no public input is just
wrong.

Fair; however I still maintain that there was no further consultation
on whether one was required, which was the implication of your
message, and which your latest email implied had occurred when it
suggests that the wider community was consulted on whether it is
required.

However searching through the lists for concepts, rather than words,
is pretty difficult, so it's quite possible that I missed the email
asking for votes and as I said, I'm just going to drop that one.

In reality I suspect actions under that provision will be quite rare.
You'd need somebody to actually file a complaint, and then for the CoC
committee to agree that it's a good-faith complaint and not a form of
using the CoC as a weapon. Given reasonable people on the committee,
that seems like it'll be a fairly high bar to clear. But, given an
unambiguous case, I'd want the committee to be able to take action.

I'm just worried that expressing a political (or other) opinion on
(eg) twitter that some people find disagreeable could easily be
considered to bring the community into disrepute.

eg a patent lawyer might reasonably consider that a hypothetical core
developer (let's call him Lon Tame :P ) making public statements on an
ongoing patent dispute implying that the case is baseless could make
patent lawyers look upon the PostgreSQL community less favourably, ie
his actions have done damage to the reputation of PostgreSQL in the
eyes of other patent lawyers.

I'm pretty sure no-one here (or indeed on the committee) would think
that that was reasonable but because of the wording a court might well
disagree; I'm not a lawyer so I'm unsure whether you could leave
yourself open to action in the event that the person bringing the
complaint considers it was mishandled by the committee: by including
this line there's a potential legal argument that you really don't
need to be having.

Geoff

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 10:37 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:

It is of course possible that a member of the committee could act in
bad faith for any number of reasons. You can say the same thing about
any position of leadership or authority within the community, though.
That hasn't really been much of a problem in my experience, and I see
no reason for particular concern about it here.

I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It adopted a
CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far more likely to be abused
than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it was
ever invoked it was by one of the founders of the project (whom I
previously personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the manner
that I had feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did not
like rather than any legitimate concern. Unfortunately this is not such an
unusual circumstance as one might hope in these projects or conferences. It
is impossible to separate the concept of political correctness from these
CoCs I find and they are much more dangerous things than they appear. We
should tread with extreme cautious about adopting such a thing.

-- Ben Scherrey

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 10:48 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
wrote:

On 06/05/2018 08:41 AM, Lutz Horn wrote:

Am 05.06.2018 17:26 schrieb Joshua D. Drake:

As one of the people that interacts with external members of the
community more than most, I can tell you that a CoC is something the
wider community wants. I have sat in feedback meetings with hundreds
of people who are potential community members. These people have
ranged in age, gender, sexual orientation and technical capability on
all realms of the spectrum. The majority of them aren't interested if
we do not have a written Code of Conduct.

May I ask what the context of these meetings was? Where where they held?
For which country or part of the broader community where the participants
representative?

Happy to discuss offlist. I don't want to distract from this thread.

I want to know as well. I've been asking for this kind of backgrounder
information and nothing has been forthcoming.

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 4:45 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@adjust.com>
wrote:

On Mon, Jun 4, 2018 at 6:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
wrote:

On 06/03/2018 04:08 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

My comments:

1) Reiterate my contention that this is a solution is search of
problem. Still it looks like it is going forward, so see below.

2) "... engaging in behavior that may bring the PostgreSQL project into
disrepute, ..."
This to me is overly broad and pulls in actions that may happen outside
the community. Those if they are actually an issue should be handled where
they occur not here.

This is good point. There are those who would think that one has
performed an action that brings the project into disrepute and a similar
sized bias that suggests that in fact that isn't the case. This based on
the CoC would be judged by the CoC committee.

It is my hope that PostgreSQL.Org -Core chooses members for that
committee that are exceedingly diverse otherwise it is just an echo chamber
for a single ideology and that will destroy this community.

If I may suggest: The committee should be international as well and
include people from around the world. The last thing we want is for it to
be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.

It will be. This is the PostgreSQL *global* development group and project,
after all. Yes, there is definitely a slant in the project in general
towards the US side, as is true in many other such projects, but in general
we have decent coverage of other cultures and countries as well. We can't
cover them all on the committee (that would make for a gicantic
committee), but we can cover it with people who are used to communicating
and working with people from other areas as well, which makes for a better
understanding.

It won't be perfect in the first attempt, of course, but that one is
covered.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/&gt;
Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/&gt;

Do we need a code of conduct like this, or so we need a more general dispute resolution process? Something that is public and aimed at mediating disputes (even ones about bad conduct) and removing repeat offenders. To be honest, larger issues of harassment should be handled by the police.

A code of conduct is basically "be excellent to each other", but what that means is never going to be well codified in a document anyone can produce. It's why we have a judiciary in the "real world".

I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement a code of conduct go well. I'm a fairly socially liberal person, but have been told in one group that my views as a cis, hetero, white, middle class make aren't welcome in discussions about getting more women or minorities to participate. Specifically there was a discussion in that group about how since women often bare the burden of child care, even when both partners work, that side projects as a hiring criteria are sexist. I mentioned that as an involved father I also find little time to work on side projects and that the issue is more about those with kids than specifically women and was essentially run out of the group.

Another time, same group, someone was discussing guns, and someone else said that this kind of discussion is why women don't participate much. I mentioned that I know more women who own guns, hunt, and target shoot than I do men who do that. I was again told to shut up and banded for a few days when I pressed as to why a not-male-centric discussion was being censored in the name of sexism and fairness.

How will this CoC handle these situation? I obviously offended people and had no intention of doing so. I was also told that the moderators/CoC commitee would act fairly, and I obviously believe I was mistreated by them. Forgive me for not believing in the benevolence of the governors.

Jim

On June 5, 2018 11:49:06 AM EDT, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 10:37 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:

It is of course possible that a member of the committee could act in
bad faith for any number of reasons. You can say the same thing about
any position of leadership or authority within the community, though.
That hasn't really been much of a problem in my experience, and I see
no reason for particular concern about it here.

I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It
adopted a
CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far more likely to be
abused
than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it was
ever invoked it was by one of the founders of the project (whom I
previously personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the
manner
that I had feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did not
like rather than any legitimate concern. Unfortunately this is not such
an
unusual circumstance as one might hope in these projects or
conferences. It
is impossible to separate the concept of political correctness from
these
CoCs I find and they are much more dangerous things than they appear.
We
should tread with extreme cautious about adopting such a thing.

-- Ben Scherrey

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:49 AM, Benjamin Scherrey
<scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:

I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It adopted a
CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far more likely to be abused
than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it was ever
invoked it was by one of the founders of the project (whom I previously
personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the manner that I had
feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did not like rather
than any legitimate concern. Unfortunately this is not such an unusual
circumstance as one might hope in these projects or conferences. It is
impossible to separate the concept of political correctness from these CoCs
I find and they are much more dangerous things than they appear. We should
tread with extreme cautious about adopting such a thing.

It's impossible for me to know what really happened in that situation,
but it doesn't seem like the CoC was likely to have been much of a
factor in any telling. If this individual was in a position of
influence and decided to act maliciously, they would no doubt have
found another way to do so in the absence of a CoC. On the other hand,
it's easy to imagine a newer non-influential community member finding
no recourse against abusive behavior because that isn't explicitly
provided for; they might simply not know where to start, and become
totally discouraged.

Nobody is claiming that the CoC is perfect, or that it can anticipate
every situation; it's just a framework for handling disputes about
abusive and/or antisocial behavior. The core team have had exclusive
responsibility for "Handling disciplinary issues" as part of their
charter, at least until now. You can make exactly the same slippery
slope argument against that.

--
Peter Geoghegan

I also think that a CoC focuses on the wrong things. If someone is disruptive, they need to be told to leave, just like in every forum ever.

We should focus on ensuring that the code and documentation is free from slurs and culturally specific idioms. We should hold gatekeepers accountable for making decisions based on technical merit and not the person who proposed an idea or submitted a patch.

We can't control the behavior of the internet as a whole. We can control our codebase and our gatekeepers.

Jim

On June 5, 2018 12:06:54 PM EDT, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

Do we need a code of conduct like this, or so we need a more general
dispute resolution process? Something that is public and aimed at
mediating disputes (even ones about bad conduct) and removing repeat
offenders. To be honest, larger issues of harassment should be handled
by the police.

A code of conduct is basically "be excellent to each other", but what
that means is never going to be well codified in a document anyone can
produce. It's why we have a judiciary in the "real world".

I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement
a code of conduct go well. I'm a fairly socially liberal person, but
have been told in one group that my views as a cis, hetero, white,
middle class make aren't welcome in discussions about getting more
women or minorities to participate. Specifically there was a discussion
in that group about how since women often bare the burden of child
care, even when both partners work, that side projects as a hiring
criteria are sexist. I mentioned that as an involved father I also find
little time to work on side projects and that the issue is more about
those with kids than specifically women and was essentially run out of
the group.

Another time, same group, someone was discussing guns, and someone else
said that this kind of discussion is why women don't participate much.
I mentioned that I know more women who own guns, hunt, and target shoot
than I do men who do that. I was again told to shut up and banded for a
few days when I pressed as to why a not-male-centric discussion was
being censored in the name of sexism and fairness.

How will this CoC handle these situation? I obviously offended people
and had no intention of doing so. I was also told that the
moderators/CoC commitee would act fairly, and I obviously believe I was
mistreated by them. Forgive me for not believing in the benevolence of
the governors.

Jim

On June 5, 2018 11:49:06 AM EDT, Benjamin Scherrey
<scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 10:37 PM, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:

It is of course possible that a member of the committee could act in
bad faith for any number of reasons. You can say the same thing

about

any position of leadership or authority within the community,

though.

That hasn't really been much of a problem in my experience, and I

see

no reason for particular concern about it here.

I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It
adopted a
CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far more likely to be
abused
than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it

was

ever invoked it was by one of the founders of the project (whom I
previously personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the
manner
that I had feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did

not

like rather than any legitimate concern. Unfortunately this is not

such

an
unusual circumstance as one might hope in these projects or
conferences. It
is impossible to separate the concept of political correctness from
these
CoCs I find and they are much more dangerous things than they appear.
We
should tread with extreme cautious about adopting such a thing.

-- Ben Scherrey

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Nobody is claiming that the CoC is perfect, or that it can anticipate

every situation; it's just a framework for handling disputes about
abusive and/or antisocial behavior

1) Antisocial is a cop-outs word that is so broad as to be useless. That previous sentence can be classified as antisocial because of its accusive tone.

2) Why do we need a separate process for personal disputes that have no parties who officially represent the organization in any way?

Jim
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:

Do we need a code of conduct like this, or so we need a more general
dispute resolution process?

We haven't really had many "disputes" in general, so I'm not sure why you
feel that something else is needed. In any case, given that not everyone
is even happy with the notion of a CoC, moving for something that's even
more far-reaching seems unlikely to succeed right now. Perhaps we can
revisit the scope of coverage in a few years when we have some experience
with this version.

A code of conduct is basically "be excellent to each other", but what
that means is never going to be well codified in a document anyone can
produce. It's why we have a judiciary in the "real world".

Agreed, and that's why we need a committee to resolve the actual meaning
of "be excellent to each other" in any particular situation. We've not
tried to nail down exact behavior requirements in the document.

I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement
a code of conduct go well.

Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too. The proposed CoC
does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether those
are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
on the judgment of the committee members. We have a provision in there
for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it if
we see abuses.

In general, the PG community has a long track record of mostly civil
interactions, so I'm optimistic that that will continue. The CoC should
only come into play in cases where people are not following community
norms. If we were trying to impose a CoC to improve a situation where
not-so-civil interactions were common, I agree that it likely wouldn't
work.

regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 09:32 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:

I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement
a code of conduct go well.

Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too. The proposed CoC
does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether those
are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
on the judgment of the committee members. We have a provision in there
for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it if
we see abuses.

A community that has an exceedingly reasonable and popular CoC is Ubuntu:

https://www.ubuntu.com/community/code-of-conduct

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 11:36 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
wrote:

On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:32 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:

I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group implement
a code of conduct go well.

There’s also a lot of evidence to the contrary, where groups have
successfully implemented CoCs as well by extension, the corporate
environment and policies and procedures organizations have put in
place to create safe working environments. To echo a point Peter G. made
upthread, yes, mistakes are made and yes nothing will be perfect, but the
main goal is to ensure that if someone is being harassed by a community
member, they have an appropriate avenue to safely report it and ensure
the CoC committee will review.

Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too. The proposed CoC
does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether those
are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
on the judgment of the committee members. We have a provision in there
for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it if
we see abuses.

If you read the reporting guidelines, it is requested that someone filing a
report provides as much evidence as possible, and that is a really
important provision, both for the person reporting and for the committee
to review and adjudicate fairly.

And having the independence and the check-and-balance with the core
committee is also key too, to ensure each report is given a fair, objective
review to the best of the abilities of each committee.

In general, the PG community has a long track record of mostly civil
interactions, so I'm optimistic that that will continue. The CoC should
only come into play in cases where people are not following community
norms. If we were trying to impose a CoC to improve a situation where
not-so-civil interactions were common, I agree that it likely wouldn't
work.

+1

Jonathan

On June 5, 2018 12:36:37 PM EDT, "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

On 06/05/2018 09:32 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:

I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group

implement

a code of conduct go well.

Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too. The proposed CoC
does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether

those

are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
on the judgment of the committee members. We have a provision in

there

for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it

if

we see abuses.

A community that has an exceedingly reasonable and popular CoC is
Ubuntu:

https://www.ubuntu.com/community/code-of-conduct

We can go back and forth with examples and counter examples of CoC that have been abused. The point is largely that they're abused often enough that you felt the need to clarify you've found one that hasn't been.

Complete aside, and probably a CoC violation because it'll upset people. I wish this many people cared about having a proper bug tracker for this project and we spent this much time determining how to do that. My personal experience with the hackers and bugs lists are that things get lost and end up being incredibly difficult to find or reference. However, we have to spend our time being hip and adopting policies that really have no reason to exist as overt and probably even subtle, but persistent abuse will already be dealt with by moderators in their capacity as moderators.

Jim

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[T]he

main goal is to ensure that if someone is being harassed by a community
member, they have an appropriate avenue to safely report it and ensure
the CoC committee will review

To be honest, this is a bigger problem. Why would someone not feel comfortable contacting the core team? Why would they feel better contacting the CoC board who is probably mostly core team or otherwise self-selected community members who have a strong belief in the CoC (and I don't mean that kindly)?

Jim
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 6:21 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

I also think that a CoC focuses on the wrong things. If someone is
disruptive, they need to be told to leave, just like in every forum ever.

We should focus on ensuring that the code and documentation is free from
slurs and culturally specific idioms. We should hold gatekeepers
accountable for making decisions based on technical merit and not the
person who proposed an idea or submitted a patch.

We can't control the behavior of the internet as a whole. We can control
our codebase and our gatekeepers.

I think in our case those fears are overblown.

There is a very well-founded fear among a lot of people of ideological
litmus tests being imposed on economic commons. The current impetus for a
code of conduct here followed one attempt at that on some other projects.
On my blog I have discussed these things. One can find them there. I
think a whole lot of us understand that at some point there will be an
attempt to use our code of conduct to that end. This has been discussed
before and one of the key points is that not having a code of conduct
doesn't really protect us because the MO in these cases has been "Look at
that extremely offensive viewpoint! You should have a code of conduct we
can use to throw him out!" So having a code of conduct doesn't hurt and it
may provide a bulwark against some of the larger efforts in this regard.
In essence often not having a code of conduct is an encouragement for
people to push a politically charged code of conduct. Having a politically
neutral code of conduct at least suggests we have rejected the politically
charged ones.

We are an international and largely politically neutral project. I doubt
that as a community we would have tolerated trying to harass, for example,
either side in the recent Irish referendum to stop using PostgreSQL if they
were, or that we would tolerate an effort to politically hijack the
community for culture war issues, or trying to drive people out for trying
to form viable third parties in the US political landscape. An
international CoC committee is our best defense against an effort to co-opt
the community in the way you are worried about.

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 9:32 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Yeah, personally I'm a bit worried about this too. The proposed CoC
does contain provisions to try to prevent misusing it, but whether those
are strong enough remains to be seen --- and it'll depend a good deal
on the judgment of the committee members. We have a provision in there
for periodic review of the CoC, and it'll be important to adjust it if
we see abuses.

​Having the CoC link actually link to information about the Core Team, in
addition to simply using the term, would be good. There is also no
description of how a complaint against a committee member would be resolved
(just that one should contact individual members instead of using the group
list) nor is there mention of whether the committee or individual core team
members should be addressed should the complaint be against a core team
member.

Related, there is no public mention of how a core team members' membership
could be revoked - just that invitations are done by existing members.

Tangential, are there plans to increase number of core team members. IIRC
its actually decreased by one between the time of the first proposal of the
CoC and now.

In general, the PG community has a long track record of mostly civil

interactions, so I'm optimistic that that will continue.

​+1​

As an outside observer I am a bit curious that the Core Team wouldn't be
able to handle accepting the, likely low volume, of complaints directly; is
the management of a committee necessary​
​
​? It seems likely more time will be spent administering the annual member
selection process than the members will spend performing those duties.
Having an administrative aide seems worthwhile - which is basically where
things stand today and could be continued on with until such time as a
specific need for a committee is felt.​

​David J.

James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> writes:

I also think that a CoC focuses on the wrong things. If someone is disruptive, they need to be told to leave, just like in every forum ever.

That's pretty much what the CoC *is*: it's just trying to set out an
agreed-on framework for exercising the power to ban somebody. Up to now,
if someone was being disruptive enough that that would be a reasonable
thing to do, the decision would be taken by the core team, according to
no defined principles and with no mechanism for appeal --- nor any guards
against core abusing its power. AFAIR, core has never actually done any
such thing, and I'd like to think that the CoC committee will never need
to ban anybody either. But if it does come to that, we'll have a much
better governance mechanism in place for it.

regards, tom lane

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 9:51 AM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

To be honest, this is a bigger problem. Why would someone not feel
comfortable contacting the core team? Why would they feel better contacting
the CoC board who is probably mostly core team or otherwise self-selected
community members who have a strong belief in the CoC (and I don't mean that
kindly)?

The CoC states that the committee's members cannot come from the core team.

--
Peter Geoghegan

On Jun 5, 2018, at 9:51 AM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

[T]he

main goal is to ensure that if someone is being harassed by a community
member, they have an appropriate avenue to safely report it and ensure
the CoC committee will review

To be honest, this is a bigger problem. Why would someone not feel comfortable contacting the core team? Why would they feel better contacting the CoC board who is probably mostly core team or otherwise self-selected community members who have a strong belief in the CoC (and I don't mean that kindly)?

The whole point of having a CoC is to advertise that we, as an organization, don't tolerate harassment and offensive behaviour. It also advertises that "we" will deal with it, if reported, and provides a clear, appropriate point of contact to do so. It also states roughly what process will be taken at that point.

Also, an alternative perspective, what makes you think every member of the core team would be comfortable being contacted? Handling allegations of, for example, drunken tech bros sexually harassing people isn't comfortable, is time consuming and does require a particular set of soft skills - skills that do not correlate with software architecture chops.

Cheers,
Steve

I'm sorry for the double post.

If you read the reporting guidelines, it is requested that someone filing a

report provides as much evidence as possible, and that is a really
important provision, both for the person reporting and for the committee
to review and adjudicate fairly.

What does fairly mean?

Let's role play. I'll be a homophobic person.

You've just submitted a proposal suggesting that we change master-master replication to be multi-partner replication. I've told you I don't like the wording because of it's implication of supporting homosexual marriage, which I believe to be a personal offense to me, my marriage, and my "deeply held religious beliefs". You tell me that's not your intent and that you do not plan to change your proposed wording. You continue to use the term in all correspondences on the list and I continually tell you that supporting gay marriage is offensive and that you need to not be so deeply offensive. I submit all our correspondences to the CoC committee and complain that you're purposely using language that is extremely offensive.

What is a "fair" outcome? Should you be banned? Should you be forced to change the wording of your proposal that no one else has complained about and others support? What is a fair, just outcome?

Jim
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 12:01 AM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

I'm sorry for the double post.

If you read the reporting guidelines, it is requested that someone

filing a
report provides as much evidence as possible, and that is a really
important provision, both for the person reporting and for the committee
to review and adjudicate fairly.

What does fairly mean?

Let's role play. I'll be a homophobic person.

You've just submitted a proposal suggesting that we change master-master
replication to be multi-partner replication. I've told you I don't like the
wording because of it's implication of supporting homosexual marriage,
which I believe to be a personal offense to me, my marriage, and my "deeply
held religious beliefs". You tell me that's not your intent and that you do
not plan to change your proposed wording. You continue to use the term in
all correspondences on the list and I continually tell you that supporting
gay marriage is offensive and that you need to not be so deeply offensive.
I submit all our correspondences to the CoC committee and complain that
you're purposely using language that is extremely offensive.

What is a "fair" outcome? Should you be banned? Should you be forced to
change the wording of your proposal that no one else has complained about
and others support? What is a fair, just outcome?

Jim

God I love you , Jim!! Again, just roleplaying of course. :-)

"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:

Tangential, are there plans to increase number of core team members. IIRC
its actually decreased by one between the time of the first proposal of the
CoC and now.

We're thinking about it, but it's not something to be hasty over.

As an outside observer I am a bit curious that the Core Team wouldn't be
able to handle accepting the, likely low volume, of complaints directly; is
the management of a committee necessary?

That's more or less how things have worked up to now, or really not
worked, because there have been hardly any incidents in which anyone
approached core for such a complaint. I would say there are a number
of things wrong with it:

1. Nobody knows that they could approach core on such a matter;

2. Nobody knows exactly what sorts of matters core might be willing
to act on;

3. There's no appeal process, nor any clean way to deal with the
situation if the complaint is against a core member. (Which is a
case I sure hope never happens, but we ought to design to handle it.)

So publishing a formal CoC at all is mainly meant to deal with weak
points 1 and 2, and then the details of the process are there to try
to fix point 3.

Yeah, managing the committee is a lot of overhead that in an ideal
world we wouldn't need, but I think we have to accept it to have a
process people will have confidence in.

regards, tom lane

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 7:01 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

I'm sorry for the double post.

If you read the reporting guidelines, it is requested that someone

filing a
report provides as much evidence as possible, and that is a really
important provision, both for the person reporting and for the committee
to review and adjudicate fairly.

What does fairly mean?

Let's role play. I'll be a homophobic person.

You've just submitted a proposal suggesting that we change master-master
replication to be multi-partner replication. I've told you I don't like the
wording because of it's implication of supporting homosexual marriage,
which I believe to be a personal offense to me, my marriage, and my "deeply
held religious beliefs". You tell me that's not your intent and that you do
not plan to change your proposed wording. You continue to use the term in
all correspondences on the list and I continually tell you that supporting
gay marriage is offensive and that you need to not be so deeply offensive.
I submit all our correspondences to the CoC committee and complain that
you're purposely using language that is extremely offensive.

What is a "fair" outcome? Should you be banned? Should you be forced to
change the wording of your proposal that no one else has complained about
and others support? What is a fair, just outcome?

I think the fundamental outcome is likely to be that people who cause
trouble are likely to get trouble. This sort of case really doesn't worry
me. I am sure whoever is stirring the pot will be asked at least to cease
doing so.

But let's look at all fairness in a more likely scenario where someone
involved in, say, Human Rights Campaign posts something arguing that
marriage is not a bond that binds parents to their children but something
that exists solely for the benefit of the spouses and a conservative from,
say, India, complains. Do we ask the individual to change his or her
signature?

What happens if the signature proclaims that Tibet should be free and
Chinese folks on the list worry about ramifications for participating in
these cases?

But worse, what if by not taking sides, we say that this isn't big enough
for us to adjudicate and so the conservative from India puts up a quote on
his email signature citing Gandhi's view that accepting consent-based
morality to sexual contact leads to accepting homosexual contact, and this
leads to misery for everyone. When challenged he points out it is just
social critique like the other signature.

Now what do we do? Do we side with one or the other? Or do we ban both or
refuse to get involved? At that point there are no longer any good options
but I will state my preference would be to reiterate to both that we ought
to have a live-and-let-live culture and this applies to cultural
differences on concepts of gender and marriage.

This sort of thing will happen. I have watched calls for pushing gay and
lesbian roles on television in the US lead to policies of censorship of
Western media in countries like Indonesia (where Glee among other shows are
now formally banned), and this is one issue which is incredibly divisive
throughout the world with a lot of people having very deep-seated feelings
on the issue, where one can expect small differences to lead to big
conflicts. And I think we want to avoid wading into those conflicts.

Jim

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On 06/05/2018 10:26 AM, Chris Travers wrote:

Let's role play. I'll be a homophobic person.

You've just submitted a proposal suggesting that we change
master-master replication to be multi-partner replication. I've told
you I don't like the wording because of it's implication of
supporting homosexual marriage, which I believe to be a personal
offense to me, my marriage, and my "deeply held religious beliefs".
You tell me that's not your intent and that you do not plan to
change your proposed wording. You continue to use the term in all
correspondences on the list and I continually tell you that
supporting gay marriage is offensive and that you need to not be so
deeply offensive. I submit all our correspondences to the CoC
committee and complain that you're purposely using language that is
extremely offensive.

What is a "fair" outcome? Should you be banned? Should you be forced
to change the wording of your proposal that no one else has
complained about and others support? What is a fair, just outcome?

I think the fundamental outcome is likely to be that people who cause
trouble are likely to get trouble.  This sort of case really doesn't
worry me.  I am sure whoever is stirring the pot will be asked at least
to cease doing so.

Your example is flawed because:

Multi-Partner has nothing to do with sexuality unless you want to make
the argument that your belief is that a relationship should be between
one person and another and in this argument a man and a woman which has
literally nothing to do with the word multi or partner in a technical
context.

Your example would carry better wait if you used master-master
replication to be man-man or woman-woman neither of which makes any
sense in the context of replication.

Since man-man or woman-woman makes zero sense in the context of
replication it would immediately be -1 from all the -hackers of any
sense which for the most part is all of them.

In short the fundamental outcome is that the community wouldn't let it
get that far. We have 20 years of results to show in that one.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

Your example is flawed because:

Multi-Partner has nothing to do with sexuality unless you want to make the
argument that your belief is that a relationship should be between one
person and another and in this argument a man and a woman which has
literally nothing to do with the word multi or partner in a technical
context.

Gay couples often call their significant other their partner. It's not
uncommon, at least where I'm from. Partner can be a very politically
charged word because of this, especially outside of a strictly business
sense, e.g. LLP. Partner doesn't really have a "technical" meaning.

Does your insistence that my RPC isn't correct an attack on my RPC?

In short the fundamental outcome is that the community wouldn't let it get
that far. We have 20 years of results to show in that one.

So, you're saying we don't need a CoC because in 20 years you've never had
an issue? That doesn't seem like a good response.

On 06/05/2018 10:44 AM, James Keener wrote:

Your example is flawed because:

Multi-Partner has nothing to do with sexuality unless you want to
make the argument that your belief is that a relationship should be
between one person and another and in this argument a man and a
woman which has literally nothing to do with the word multi or
partner in a technical context.

Gay couples often call their significant other their partner.

Yes but the argument against the use of the word partner isn't
technically relevant to the feature.

So, you're saying we don't need a CoC because in 20 years you've never
had an issue? That doesn't seem like a good response.

No my response is that 20 years of community experience is that we as a
community on public lists would not allow it to get that far because the
original proposal or complaint wouldn't be technically relevant.

The CoC is going to be most relevant for:

1. Showing a clear understanding that not all people have a voice they
are comfortable using

2. Showing a clear understanding that all people are equal in the policy
of this community

3. That those who are subject to #1, they have a team to back them up or
correct them should a problem arise.

Does the CoC help or harm me? No. You? Probably not.

I will reference what Jonathan Katz mentioned yesterday:

"I know it does make a difference to have a code of conduct in terms of
helping people to feel more welcome and knowing that there is an
avenue for them to voice feedback in the case of an unfortunate incident."

This is what the CoC is about, nothing more and nothing less. That is
what we should be focusing on. To throw my own slogan on this bird:

People, Postgres, Data

JD
--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

Greetings,

* Magnus Hagander (magnus@hagander.net) wrote:

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 4:45 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@adjust.com>
wrote:

If I may suggest: The committee should be international as well and
include people from around the world. The last thing we want is for it to
be dominated by people from one particular cultural viewpoint.

It will be. This is the PostgreSQL *global* development group and project,
after all. Yes, there is definitely a slant in the project in general
towards the US side, as is true in many other such projects, but in general
we have decent coverage of other cultures and countries as well. We can't
cover them all on the committee (that would make for a gicantic
committee), but we can cover it with people who are used to communicating
and working with people from other areas as well, which makes for a better
understanding.

It won't be perfect in the first attempt, of course, but that one is
covered.

This drives to a point which I was thinking about also- what is needed
on the committee are people who are worldly to the point of
understanding that there are different cultures and viewpoints, and
knowing when and how to ask during an investigation to get an
understanding of if the issue is one of cultural differences (leading
potentially to education and not to reprimand, as discussed in the CoC),
something else, or perhaps both.

The CoC committee doesn't need to be comprimised of individuals from
every culture to which the community extends, as that quickly becomes
untenable.

I'm confident that the Core team will work to ensure that the initial
committee is comprised of such individuals and that both Core and the
subsequent CoC committees will work to maintain that.

Thanks!

Stephen

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 10:08 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

So publishing a formal CoC at all is mainly meant to deal with weak
points 1 and 2, and then the details of the process are there to try
to fix point 3.

Yeah, managing the committee is a lot of overhead that in an ideal
world we wouldn't need, but I think we have to accept it to have a
process people will have confidence in.

It's worth pointing out that the community has grown considerably in
the last ten years. I assume that adding a bit of process to deal with
these kinds of disputes is related to that.

We have a pretty good track record through totally informal standards
for behavior. Setting a good example is absolutely essential. While
that's still the most important thing, it doesn't seem particularly
scalable on its own.

--
Peter Geoghegan

On Jun 5, 2018, at 08:49, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
I thought the same thing as a member of the Django community. It adopted a CoC that I vocally warned was dangerous and far more likely to be abused than provide any benefit. I was shocked when the very first time it was ever invoked it was by one of the founders of the project (whom I previously personally respected) and it was absolutely used in the manner that I had feared which was to shut someone up whose opinion he did not like rather than any legitimate concern.

Speaking as someone who has served on the board of the Django Software Foundation:

1. The Django Code of Conduct is considered a success and a valuable asset to the growth and health of the community.
2. Others involved in the event mentioned above would not describe it in the same terms

--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com

I accidentally didn't send this to the whole list. I'll let Chris resend
his response if he'd like.

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 1:58 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:42 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

I accidentally didn't send this to the whole list. I'll let Chris resend
his response if he'd like.

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 1:58 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

I think the fundamental outcome is likely to be that people who cause

trouble are likely to get trouble. This sort of case really doesn't worry
me. I am sure whoever is stirring the pot will be asked at least to cease
doing so.

Are you implying that either of my RPCs are causing "trouble" for either
advancing a technical proposal, not wanting to change wording they feel is
clear and non-political, or for voicing their concerns that a proposal is
highly offensive?

There's an old Icelandic mythic poem "Lokasenna" which describes what I
have seen happening very well. If you come to the feast to pick fights,
fights is what one will get.

The whole point of the CoC is that people shouldn't feel like they're
causing "trouble" if they feel like they're being picked on or offended or
marginalized. That's specifically why people want them: they want to know,
or at least feel like, they'll be taken seriously if someone is
legitimately picking on them or marginalizing them.

I complain a lot about the CoC, but I agree with Tom (I think it was) in
saying that there does need to be some written framework for how disputes
are handled by the organization. I just feel that CoC has, unfortunately,
become a politically charged term that often find themselves talking about
politically charged subjects instead of saying you should focus on
technical topics and not on the person when discussing a technical topic
and how a dispute will be handled if someone is misbehaving. I've seen them
used as weapons in real life and have watch disputes play out over the
internet, e.g. the famous push for opal to adop the Contributor Covenent by
someone not affiliated with the project and who (potentially/allegedly)
misunderstood a partial conversation they heard. (
https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941).

The question is: how can you (honestly) make people feel like we'll take
complaints seriously, while also not allowing for the politics that I've
seen surround recent incarnations of Codes of Conduct?

Jim

At the end I see signals in the current CoC that make me hopeful. Phrases
like "common interest" occur. There are some minor changes I think would
help avoid problems. But they aren't big deals. The big thing is I trust
our community not to exclude people based, for example, on political or
cultural perspectives and thats really important.

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 12:36 AM, Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
wrote:

On 06/05/2018 10:26 AM, Chris Travers wrote:

Let's role play. I'll be a homophobic person.

You've just submitted a proposal suggesting that we change
master-master replication to be multi-partner replication. I've told
you I don't like the wording because of it's implication of
supporting homosexual marriage, which I believe to be a personal
offense to me, my marriage, and my "deeply held religious beliefs".
You tell me that's not your intent and that you do not plan to
change your proposed wording. You continue to use the term in all
correspondences on the list and I continually tell you that
supporting gay marriage is offensive and that you need to not be so
deeply offensive. I submit all our correspondences to the CoC
committee and complain that you're purposely using language that is
extremely offensive.

What is a "fair" outcome? Should you be banned? Should you be forced
to change the wording of your proposal that no one else has
complained about and others support? What is a fair, just outcome?

I think the fundamental outcome is likely to be that people who cause
trouble are likely to get trouble. This sort of case really doesn't worry
me. I am sure whoever is stirring the pot will be asked at least to cease
doing so.

Your example is flawed because:

Multi-Partner has nothing to do with sexuality unless you want to make the
argument that your belief is that a relationship should be between one
person and another and in this argument a man and a woman which has
literally nothing to do with the word multi or partner in a technical
context.

Your example would carry better wait if you used master-master replication
to be man-man or woman-woman neither of which makes any sense in the
context of replication.

Since man-man or woman-woman makes zero sense in the context of
replication it would immediately be -1 from all the -hackers of any sense
which for the most part is all of them.

In short the fundamental outcome is that the community wouldn't let it get
that far. We have 20 years of results to show in that one.

Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this
community does not gain an advantage for adopting a CoC?

On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:06, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this community does not gain an advantage for adopting a CoC?

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people, recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

What we do have is 20 years of people demonstrating reasonable good judgment, which we can conclude will apply to a CoC committee as well.
--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com

Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:42 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

The question is: how can you (honestly) make people feel like we'll take
complaints seriously, while also not allowing for the politics that I've
seen surround recent incarnations of Codes of Conduct?

At the end I see signals in the current CoC that make me hopeful. Phrases
like "common interest" occur. There are some minor changes I think would
help avoid problems. But they aren't big deals. The big thing is I trust
our community not to exclude people based, for example, on political or
cultural perspectives and thats really important.

The one thing that gives me any hope of success is that this has
historically been an apolitical community, so that these sorts of problems
don't naturally arise. As long as it stays that way, I think a CoC can
work to smooth out edge-case situations. I tend to agree that a CoC
could not fix tensions in a community that naturally needs to deal with
political or religious issues. If someone tries to inflame political or
religious feelings among the PG community, I hope we have the sense to
walk away. (Maybe we could put something in the CoC about that, but
I have the sense that it'd do more harm than good.)

regards, tom lane

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:

On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:06, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com>

wrote:

Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this

community does not gain an advantage for adopting a CoC?

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people,
recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?
What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
in a different outcome? Without that then your claim does not even rise up
to the standard of theoretical. Frankly this claim does not seem very
plausible to me at all. Let's try to keep our standards here. I'm not
trying to harp on you personally, it's just that you're the unlucky
umpteenth time I've seen this claim made with zero satisfaction.

-- Ben Scherrey

Greetings,

* Benjamin Scherrey (scherrey@proteus-tech.com) wrote:

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people,
recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?
What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
in a different outcome? Without that then your claim does not even rise up
to the standard of theoretical. Frankly this claim does not seem very
plausible to me at all. Let's try to keep our standards here. I'm not
trying to harp on you personally, it's just that you're the unlucky
umpteenth time I've seen this claim made with zero satisfaction.

While I can't say for sure, I feel reasonably confident that the level
of proof you're asking for here isn't going to be forthcoming as it's a
matter that Core has decided is best kept private, not unlike what we
would expect the CoC Committee to do in instances where appropriate,
possibly at the request and/or agreement of the individual or
individuals involved.

So while I can understand why you're asking, it's not particularly
useful to continue to do so. Specific suggestions about how to change
the proposed CoC would be useful, but the ongoing discussion about if
one is needed is not.

Thanks!

Stephen

Hi,

On 2018-06-06 02:20:45 +0700, Benjamin Scherrey wrote:

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:

On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:06, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com>

wrote:

Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this

community does not gain an advantage for adopting a CoC?

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people,
recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them.

What would satisfy you? Dishing out all the details for everyone to see?
That'd both personally effect the victim and the alleged perpetrator,
and have potential legal implications. At some point you're going to
have to trust that community stewards are working in good faith (which
doesn't imply agreeing on everything) and not trying to just screw with
you for the sake of it.

Sorry but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this
will make Postgres go faster" would on a code change.

You do trust us to run code on your systems without having read every
line.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:20, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
I'm not trying to harp on you personally, it's just that you're the unlucky umpteenth time I've seen this claim made with zero satisfaction.

Given that we are talking about human beings here, who (unlike code commits) have careers and a reasonable expectation of privacy, it's possible that the reason you have heard this upteen times is that there are issues in the community that you are not aware of. I would say that it more likely that bad faith and conniving on the part of upteen people.

--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 12:20 PM, Benjamin Scherrey
<scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:

I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?
What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
in a different outcome? Without that then your claim does not even rise up
to the standard of theoretical. Frankly this claim does not seem very
plausible to me at all. Let's try to keep our standards here.

Whose standards are these? By my count, the majority of e-mails you've
ever sent to a PostgreSQL mailing list have been sent in the last 2
days, to this code of conduct thread.

--
Peter Geoghegan

On 06/05/2018 12:12 PM, Christophe Pettus wrote:

On Jun 5, 2018, at 12:06, Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> wrote:
Doesn't that 20 years of results pretty clearly demonstrate that this community does not gain an advantage for adopting a CoC?

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people, recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

What we do have is 20 years of people demonstrating reasonable good judgment, which we can conclude will apply to a CoC committee as well.

+1

jD

--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

On Jun 5, 2018, at 3:16 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> writes:

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 8:42 PM, James Keener <jim@jimkeener.com> wrote:

The question is: how can you (honestly) make people feel like we'll take
complaints seriously, while also not allowing for the politics that I've
seen surround recent incarnations of Codes of Conduct?

At the end I see signals in the current CoC that make me hopeful. Phrases
like "common interest" occur. There are some minor changes I think would
help avoid problems. But they aren't big deals. The big thing is I trust
our community not to exclude people based, for example, on political or
cultural perspectives and thats really important.

The one thing that gives me any hope of success is that this has
historically been an apolitical community, so that these sorts of problems
don't naturally arise. As long as it stays that way, I think a CoC can
work to smooth out edge-case situations. I tend to agree that a CoC
could not fix tensions in a community that naturally needs to deal with
political or religious issues. If someone tries to inflame political or
religious feelings among the PG community, I hope we have the sense to
walk away. (Maybe we could put something in the CoC about that, but
I have the sense that it'd do more harm than good.)

I would say that the ethos of the community cannot be codified, but is
something the community leaders must continue to exemplify.

Jonathan

Hi PostgreSQL Community,

some points I like to make mainly because of observations of how other
open source projects handle this topic:

1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a
committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and
denunciation. That is why some projects choose not to have one
https://freie-software.org/verein/coc.html - they say: "we're friends -
that's our CoC, more would be harmful" [1]Appendix - Google translation of the CoC of Freie Software:

3) https://shiromarieke.github.io/coc.html explains why there's no safe
space and CoC won't change that (she's a queer woman who experienced
harassment and sexual assault)

In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a
secondary judicial system but to use the already existing ones.

I hope these points can influence what is in the CoC or whether there
will a CoC at all.
Personally, I find 2) a very good case against CoC (although I like the
"we're friends - that's our CoC, more would be harmful").

Best,
Sven

On 03.06.2018 20:29, Tom Lane wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community, as a result of which
the core team announced a plan to create an exploration committee
to draft a CoC [1]. That process has taken far longer than expected,
but the committee has not been idle. They worked through many comments
and many drafts to produce a version that seems acceptable in the view
of the core team. This final(?) draft can be found at

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct

[1]: Appendix - Google translation of the CoC of Freie Software:

Code of Conduct
Don't have it. Don't want to have.

That's the short version. The long version follows.

A "Code of Conduct" is a code of conduct in the sense of a set of norms
intended to determine the behavior of addressees of the Code.

Thoughts on the normalization of the self-evident
If one reads current, relevant regulations, one finds that normal
self-evident behaviors are normalized there. What is required there is
the attitude and behavior of a reasonably reasonable, reasonably well
behaved person.

That seems remarkable. Rules are set up when there is a risk that they
will be broken. You should act on the addressee from the outside,
because you fear that he will not behave properly without this impact.

Such a framework thus says something about the constitution of the
community or society to which the rules apply. In this case, a
reasonable behavior is obviously not (of course) obvious.

Among friends, the behaviors and attitudes described in the relevant
regulations, such as respect, attention and helpfulness,
non-discrimination, the will to cooperate, rule-free intercourse, etc.,
are self-evident. Friends behave as each other as required in these
rules. At least most. If not always.

The biggest lump in the whole country ...
The relevant regulations then provide for the appointment of persons or
bodies to whom, if one believes the rules have been violated, one can
turn to oneself.

In most cases such a complaint is permissible not only in case of
personal concern, but also if one thinks that the rules have been
violated to the detriment of one or the other. Experience teaches that
this often challenges behaviors that can kill any friendship. Knowing
better and being feeling informers usually have only like-minded people
as social contact.

But we do not want to promote either conceit or denunciation.

If someone does not behave as it is self-evident, then there are
reasons. These can be different types. A clear word among friends in
private or in a small circle is then helpful - for the "victim", as well
as for the "perpetrator". The latter deserves respect,
non-discrimination, attention, helpfulness and understanding. The latter
should actually be self-evident, but it is often not the case when
executing a Code of Conduct.

Nor is a rule-free, friendly dealing with the accused possible. The
roles of the judge and a friend are incompatible. Friends meet at eye
level; the judge has power and authority to exercise, even if he acquits.

Penalties among friends?
Finally, a Code of Conduct will include a sanctioning apparatus to
sanction undesirable behavior. Deliberate addition of evils
(punishments) among friends is a contradiction in terms.

From this, it can be concluded that the moment a Code of Conduct takes
effect, the friendship is already over. When we get to that point, we
should dissolve our club, because then we failed - all together.

Therefore, we do not need and do not want a code of conduct in the sense
of a set of rules.

Resistance to unreasonableness
Sometimes, in recent times, the demand for a code of conduct in the form
of a corresponding set of rules is unfortunately linked with a
(financial) aid offer. Help under such a condition we refuse.

Freedom, as we want to understand and live it, occasionally requires
resistance to the imposition of doing something unreasonable and harmful.

Respectful help and patronage are incompatible. Freedom requires and
requires maturity. We can not propagate freedom and accept paternalism.

We are friends. That is already in the name of our association. This is
our "Code of Conduct". That is enough. More would be harmful.

Sorry...

1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects

I know this on going regurgitation is going to cause my team to leave the project, right around 100 posts on this off topic topic.... it was bad enough when the original idea came up (2 years ago I think). It used to be exciting to sit back and review the day or weeks posts... not much anymore.

Regards,
Ozz

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 2:06 PM, Sven R. Kunze <srkunze@mail.de> wrote:

1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-May/122922.html

This guy left LLVM for several reasons. The pertinent reason for us
was that he had to agree to a code of conduct in order to attend
conferences, which he found to be unacceptable. He did not have to
agree that the idea of a code of conduct was a good one, though. It
would have been perfectly possible for him to be opposed in principle
to the idea of a CoC, while also formally agreeing to it and attending
those conferences. I gather that his objections were around questions
of unintended consequences, the role of a certain authority to assess
violations of the CoC, and so on (I surmise that he was not actually
opposed to or constrained by any of the specific rules around content
in technical presentations and so on).

I for one accept that these may have been reasonable concerns, even
though I don't really agree, since the LLVM CoC seems quite
reasonable. Anybody that participates in an open source community soon
learns that their opinion on almost any matter may not be the one that
prevails. There are often differences of opinion on -hackers that seem
to fundamentally be down to a difference in values. We still manage to
make it work, somehow.

2) CoC might result in not so equal peers and friends, might result in a
committee which feels above their peers, and might promote conceit and
denunciation.

I think that having a code of conduct is better than not having one,
and I think that the one that we came up with is appropriate and
proportionate. We could speculate all day about specific unintended
consequences that may or may not follow. That doesn't seem very
constructive, though. Besides, the time for that has passed.

In related discussions, people recurringly ask not to establish a secondary
judicial system but to use the already existing ones.

I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.
Naturally, the rules across disparate groups vary widely for all kinds
of reasons. Formalizing and being more transparent about how this
works seems like the opposite of paternalism to me.

--
Peter Geoghegan

On Jun 5, 2018, at 15:20, Peter Geoghegan <pg@bowt.ie> wrote:
I don't follow. Practically any organized group has rules around
conduct, with varying degrees of formality, means of enforcement, etc.

I believe the objection is to setting up a separate CoC committee, rather than using the core team as the enforcement mechanism.

This is more important than may be obvious. Having a separation of the CoC committee and the organization that sets up and supervises the CoC committee is very important to prevent the perception, or the fact, that the CoC enforcement mechanism is a Star Chamber that is answerable only to itself. It also allows for an appeal mechanism.

--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com

On 5 June 2018 at 17:34, Ozz Nixon <ozznixon@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry...

1) CoC might result in developers leaving projects

I know this on going regurgitation is going to cause my team to
leave the project, right around 100 posts on this off topic topic.... it
was bad enough when the original idea came up (2 years ago I think). It
used to be exciting to sit back and review the day or weeks posts... not
much anymore.

With all due respect, it is completely unreasonable to quit just because
there has been some discussion of the rules for co-existing within the
project. The intent of codes of conduct is usually supposed to be to make
it clear that bullying and harassment are not permitted, something that is
not always clear to everybody. That doesn't mean that any particular
position on them is required, only that discussion of them is definitely
*not* off topic. In any event, if you aren't interested in a thread, you
can easily mute it. Personally, I have about 95% of pgsql-hackers muted,
because I simply don't have time to be interested in every topic that is
discussed, and I suspect many subscribers are similar. If somebody is so
sensitive to even being aware of a discussion of the issue that they feel
they have to leave, then I would expect them to leave at some point anyway
due to becoming offended by some trivial matter that nobody else would even
notice.

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people,
recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?

You want us to name names? I've tried to leave specific peoples' names
out of this; I don't think it would be helpful to them to dredge up old
wounds. And I'm quite sure they wouldn't care to be contacted by
somebody trying to "verify" things.

What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
in a different outcome?

We have none, sure. But what *can* be confidently asserted is that doing
nothing will result in no improvement. It'll also create the perception
that we're actively uninterested in improving the situation, thus driving
away people who might otherwise have joined the community.

I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix. Yes, this is an
experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.

regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people,
recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?

You want us to name names? I've tried to leave specific peoples' names
out of this; I don't think it would be helpful to them to dredge up old
wounds. And I'm quite sure they wouldn't care to be contacted by
somebody trying to "verify" things.

What evidence do we have that indicates this CoC would have likely resulted
in a different outcome?

We have none, sure. But what *can* be confidently asserted is that doing
nothing will result in no improvement. It'll also create the perception
that we're actively uninterested in improving the situation, thus driving
away people who might otherwise have joined the community.

I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix. Yes, this is an
experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.

Good to hear this is considered an experiment.

To that end will there be quarterly/yearly reports, suitably anonymized,
that spell out the activity that took place with reference to the CoC?

regards, tom lane

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 16:45 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:

If I may suggest: The committee should be international as well
and include people from around the world. The last thing we want is
for it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural
viewpoint.

Being international/intercultural certainly has some value, but I think
it's at least as useful to have people with different competencies and
professional backgrounds.

For example: having some people who have a background in something like
psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
(in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
managers) would be valuable too.

--
Jan Claeys

On 06/05/2018 05:07 PM, Jan Claeys wrote:

On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 16:45 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:

If I may suggest: The committee should be international as well
and include people from around the world. The last thing we want is
for it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural
viewpoint.

Being international/intercultural certainly has some value, but I think
it's at least as useful to have people with different competencies and
professional backgrounds.

For example: having some people who have a background in something like
psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
(in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
managers) would be valuable too.

Oh, please no that would be a trip down the rabbit hole.

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

On Jun 5, 2018, at 17:07, Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> wrote:

For example: having some people who have a background in something like
psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
(in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
managers) would be valuable too.

While it's good for the CoC committee to reach out for professional expertise if they need it, it should be on an engagement basis (if the CoC committee needs a lawyer, they find and retain a lawyer). The damage that someone smart who thinks they know another profession can do is substantial.

--
-- Christophe Pettus
xof@thebuild.com

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:

On 06/05/2018 05:07 PM, Jan Claeys wrote:

Being international/intercultural certainly has some value, but I think
it's at least as useful to have people with different competencies and
professional backgrounds.
For example: having some people who have a background in something like
psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
(in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
managers) would be valuable too.

Oh, please no that would be a trip down the rabbit hole.

Yeah. For my own 2 cents, it's important that the committee members
be well known and trusted by the community-at-large; otherwise people
will be afraid to submit reports, making all this work pointless.
Combining that with the requirement for diversity is already going to
make it a difficult exercise to assemble a perfect team. And then
there's the matter of whether people want to serve at all --- this is
likely to be a pretty thankless and unpleasant task, and one requiring
the sort of soft skills that tend not to be in abundance in a collection
of computer geeks ;-). So I suspect that the pool of potential members
is not really very large. Plus, since we put a time limit on how long
people can serve, we're going to need a fresh set of faces every couple
years. So we shouldn't fool ourselves about how much we're going to be
able to ask in terms of additional qualifications.

regards, tom lane

On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Benjamin Scherrey <scherrey@proteus-tech.com> writes:

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:12 AM, Christophe Pettus <xof@thebuild.com> wrote:

Not at all. The need for a CoC is not theoretical. Real people,
recently, have left the community due to harassment, and there was no
system within the community to report and deal with that harassment.

I keep hearing this claim. I've followed up and tried to verify them. Sorry
but "trust me" doesn't cut it here any more than "trust me this will make
Postgres go faster" would on a code change. What's the context for this?

You want us to name names? I've tried to leave specific peoples' names
out of this; I don't think it would be helpful to them to dredge up old
wounds. And I'm quite sure they wouldn't care to be contacted by
somebody trying to "verify" things.

+1, this is ridiculous.

JD

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

I have always been impressed with the core team's and posters' professionalism on this forum. I think the subject matter is vastly responsible for that, actuall and a natural filter for the people and the actual posts. But I also give this compliment  to all of you as individuals.
Apparently we are OPPOSITE of most of the world: There is more trouble(at conferences) in person than anonymously online!
Overall, in the years I have been active or lurking, I have seen plenty of room for people to take their own ideas and turn them into projects based on or to help postgresql ( and be responsible for them and their own community). I feel that is a great way to give all ideas and people a chance to contribute and be expressed. 
The CoC has not been needed, but this group is still growing after all these years. Better to have it before it's needed. Just glad to be part of a bunch of people where it HASN'T been needed, and let's all keep using and building this wonderful contribution to the world called 'Postgres'

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 3:00 PM, Ron<ronljohnsonjr@gmail.com> wrote: On 06/03/2018 04:54 PM, Berend Tober wrote:

Tom Lane wrote:

Two years ago, there was considerable discussion about creating a
Code of Conduct for the Postgres community...

We are now asking for a final round of community comments...

I really like that this was included: "Any allegations that prove not to
be substantiated...will be viewed as a serious community offense and a
violation of this Code of Conduct."

Good attempt to prevent the CoC being used as vindictive weaponry.

But a futile attempt: "A lie can travel half way around the world while the
truth is putting on its shoes."

--
Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:

On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix. Yes, this is an
experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.

Good to hear this is considered an experiment.

To that end will there be quarterly/yearly reports, suitably anonymized,
that spell out the activity that took place with reference to the CoC?

That seems like a good idea from here. I don't know exactly how much
can be reported without risking privacy issues, but surely we could at
least provide the number of incidents and how they were resolved.

regards, tom lane

On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:07 AM, Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> wrote:

On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 16:45 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:

If I may suggest: The committee should be international as well
and include people from around the world. The last thing we want is
for it to be dominated by people from one particular cultural
viewpoint.

Being international/intercultural certainly has some value, but I think
it's at least as useful to have people with different competencies and
professional backgrounds.

For example: having some people who have a background in something like
psychology, sociology, education, law, human resources, marketing, etc.
(in addition to the likely much easier to find developers, DBAs and IT
managers) would be valuable too.

Besides what the others have said I don't think this would help.

The real fear here is the code of conduct being co-opted as a weapon of
world-wide culture war and that's what is driving a lot of the resistance
here. This is particularly an American problem here and it causes a lot
of resistance among people who were, until the second world war, subject to
some pretty serious problems by colonial powers.

Putting a bunch of American lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, marketers
etc on the board in the name of diversity would do way more harm than good.

--
Jan Claeys

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On 06/05/2018 08:55 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:

On 06/05/2018 04:41 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

I'm getting a little tired of people raising hypothetical harms and
ignoring the real harms that we're hoping to fix. Yes, this is an
experiment and it may not work, but we can't find out without trying.
If it turns out to be a net loss, we'll modify it or abandon it.

Good to hear this is considered an experiment.

To that end will there be quarterly/yearly reports, suitably anonymized,
that spell out the activity that took place with reference to the CoC?

That seems like a good idea from here. I don't know exactly how much
can be reported without risking privacy issues, but surely we could at
least provide the number of incidents and how they were resolved.

Yeah I like it too. We don't have to give out any confidential
information but it adds to the transparency and allows the community as
a whole to see that.

regards, tom lane

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

## note: these are my personal opinions and views

On 6/3/18 11:29, Tom Lane wrote:

We are now asking for a final round of community comments.
Please send any public comments to the pgsql-general list (only).
If you wish to make a private comment, you may send it to
coc@postgresql.org.

This email thread is so long that it's easy to spend more time on the
emails than the CoC itself!

My main feedback on the CoC is that it doesn't really say anything about
what to do if the complaint is against a core team member. This was
mentioned elsewhere in the email thread and I'm a bit surprised there's
nothing explicit in the CoC. If someone feels they have been treated in
a grossly inappropriate manner by a core team member, is it worthwhile
to report this? I think they'd want to know a little more about what the
process will be for that special case.

I haven't reviewed CoC's from other open source projects recently, but
sexual harassment policies at non-technical organizations where I
volunteer do explicitly cover the case of complaints against leaders. So
maybe it's a gap worth closing.

The sorts of issues that would be addressed here certainly are
complicated. I remember not too long ago when Brendan Eich was pressured
to resign as CEO of Mozilla (after only 11 days iirc) because he had a
particular political view unrelated to technology. I also think there
might be some merit to Lutz Horn's point about western bias in CoCs; we
should note concerns about propagating those values. (This isn't new;
e.g. Pope Francis called it ideological colonization in the news.) The
Mozilla case is not directly related to a CoC but it's still interesting
as it touches on how complicated these conversations can become.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/04/05/faq-on-ceo-resignation/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ceo-brendan-eich-deserve-to-be-removed-from-his-position-due-to-his-support-for-proposition-8/

Overall, having a CoC seems to me like a good thing to do. My
interactions with leaders in the PostgreSQL have been positive and it
feels like they will be good stewards of a CoC. I'm looking forward to
seeing one adopted.

-Jeremy

## note: these are my personal opinions and views

--
Jeremy Schneider
Database Engineer
Amazon Web Services

Jeremy Schneider <schnjere@amazon.com> writes:

My main feedback on the CoC is that it doesn't really say anything about
what to do if the complaint is against a core team member. This was
mentioned elsewhere in the email thread and I'm a bit surprised there's
nothing explicit in the CoC. If someone feels they have been treated in
a grossly inappropriate manner by a core team member, is it worthwhile
to report this? I think they'd want to know a little more about what the
process will be for that special case.

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread. I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

In the event of a complaint against a CoC committee member, the
process proceeds normally, but that person is excluded from the
committee's discussions in the matter. Similarly, in the event of
a complaint against a core team member, the process proceeds
normally, but that person is excluded from any core review that
may occur.

and maybe also

In such cases, removal from the committee or core is another
possible sanction, in addition to those mentioned above.

regards, tom lane

I wrote:

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread. I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
complaint against someone else? They certainly shouldn't get to rule
on their own complaint. So maybe change "complaint against" to
"complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.

regards, tom lane

On Wednesday, June 6, 2018, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Jeremy Schneider <schnjere@amazon.com> writes:

My main feedback on the CoC is that it doesn't really say anything about
what to do if the complaint is against a core team member. This was
mentioned elsewhere in the email thread and I'm a bit surprised there's
nothing explicit in the CoC. If someone feels they have been treated in
a grossly inappropriate manner by a core team member, is it worthwhile
to report this? I think they'd want to know a little more about what the
process will be for that special case.

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread. I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

In the event of a complaint against a CoC committee member, the
process proceeds normally, but that person is excluded from the
committee's discussions in the matter. Similarly, in the event of
a complaint against a core team member, the process proceeds
normally, but that person is excluded from any core review that
may occur.

and maybe also

In such cases, removal from the committee or core is another
possible sanction, in addition to those mentioned above.

Yeah, while it is pretty much self-evident I would agree that stating it
explicitly would benefit the document. Both parts.

On the topic of privacy - who exactly, from an administrative aspect, has
access to the systems that house these kinds of confidential
communications? Do these emails end up in PostgreSQL.org servers long-term
or is it mainly transient distribution and only individual's personal email
accounts, with whatever hosting provider they choose, hold the messages
long-term?

David J.

On 2018-Jun-06, David G. Johnston wrote:

On the topic of privacy - who exactly, from an administrative aspect, has
access to the systems that house these kinds of confidential
communications? Do these emails end up in PostgreSQL.org servers long-term
or is it mainly transient distribution and only individual's personal email
accounts, with whatever hosting provider they choose, hold the messages
long-term?

postgresql.org does not host personal email accounts, with a few
exceptions. Most of these exceptions are actually just forwards to
mailboxes elsewhere, so the traffic stays in the relevant postgresql.org
server very briefly. The few accounts that that are actual mailboxes in
postgresql.org are, as far as I know, only country-specific accounts for
advocacy, not personal points of contact.

--
�lvaro Herrera https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

On 06/06/2018 11:22 AM, Tom Lane wrote:

I wrote:

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread. I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
complaint against someone else? They certainly shouldn't get to rule
on their own complaint. So maybe change "complaint against" to
"complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.

Well that is a standard conflict of interest issue. Having simple
language that says something such as:

A Member involved in complaints may not vote/rule on issues reported by
the respective member.

JD

regards, tom lane

--
Command Prompt, Inc. || http://the.postgres.company/ || @cmdpromptinc
*** A fault and talent of mine is to tell it exactly how it is. ***
PostgreSQL centered full stack support, consulting and development.
Advocate: @amplifypostgres || Learn: https://postgresconf.org
***** Unless otherwise stated, opinions are my own. *****

"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:

On the topic of privacy - who exactly, from an administrative aspect, has
access to the systems that house these kinds of confidential
communications? Do these emails end up in PostgreSQL.org servers long-term
or is it mainly transient distribution and only individual's personal email
accounts, with whatever hosting provider they choose, hold the messages
long-term?

The pginfra team, which has some overlap with core but is a separate
group (I'm not a member), are the guys with root on the servers.
So you have to trust them too as far as information security goes.
I don't know that the exact procedures for the CoC group have been
decided yet; but most likely it will work like the core team, for which
there's a closed mailing list that's not archived on the project servers.
The weakest link in the CoC traffic is likely to be the individual
committee members' email accounts --- I trust they'll take some suitable
precautions.

regards, tom lane

On 6/6/18 11:24, David G. Johnston wrote:

Yeah, while it is pretty much self-evident I would agree that stating
it explicitly would benefit the document.  Both parts.

On the topic of privacy - who exactly, from an administrative aspect,
has access to the systems that house these kinds of confidential
communications?  Do these emails end up in PostgreSQL.org servers
long-term or is it mainly transient distribution and only individual's
personal email accounts, with whatever hosting provider they choose,
hold the messages long-term?

I was just thinking the same question.  Given the technical nature of
our audience, it's fair to assume many people will think about this. 
It's not just about technology either; if someone considers reporting
harassment they should have confidence that friends on the core team
won't talk about the report at the bar.  I don't think these things are
self-evident; it's sometimes obvious what the right thing is to do, but
frankly there are too many cases where people didn't do the right thing
in the past. That's why there's generally high relational and
professional risk for people to report harassment.

Maybe something general like "Confidentiality will be maintained; the
committee/core member in question will not gain access to any
information from the report or proceedings directly or indirectly at any
point in time."

I could see some value to stating it.  But this isn't a requirement, and
I also highly value the concision of the current draft.  So we'll see
what happens.  :)

-Jeremy

--
Jeremy Schneider
Database Engineer
Amazon Web Services

On Wed, 2018-06-06 at 07:27 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:

The real fear here is the code of conduct being co-opted as a weapon
of world-wide culture war and that's what is driving a lot of the
resistance here. This is particularly an American problem here and
it causes a lot of resistance among people who were, until the
second world war, subject to some pretty serious problems by colonial
powers.

I don't see how this could happen any more than it already can, because
as far as I can tell the goal is not to discuss complaints in public;
the committee would handle cases in private. And if committee members
would try to abuse their power, I'm pretty sure they would be removed.

Putting a bunch of American lawyers, psychologists, sociologists,
marketers etc on the board in the name of diversity would do way more
harm than good.

I didn't say they have to be American, and I didn't say there has to be
a bunch of them. I just said it would be good if there were also
people who aren't (just only) developers, DBAs or other very technical
people.

--
Jan Claeys

On Thu, Jun 7, 2018 at 2:14 AM, Jan Claeys <lists@janc.be> wrote:

On Wed, 2018-06-06 at 07:27 +0200, Chris Travers wrote:

The real fear here is the code of conduct being co-opted as a weapon
of world-wide culture war and that's what is driving a lot of the
resistance here. This is particularly an American problem here and
it causes a lot of resistance among people who were, until the
second world war, subject to some pretty serious problems by colonial
powers.

I don't see how this could happen any more than it already can, because
as far as I can tell the goal is not to discuss complaints in public;
the committee would handle cases in private. And if committee members
would try to abuse their power, I'm pretty sure they would be removed.

Right. I think the fears are overblown but you do have to remember that we
started this whole public side of the process when there was a real effort
by some in around open source to push contributor codes of conducts that
were expressly political (the Contributor Covenant for example) and in the
wake of Opalgate.

I do not doubt that at some point we will face the same. I don't doubt
that such efforts will be unsuccessful. But I do think they will put the
project through some public controversy and grief and so we are best off to
try to minimize the attack surface.

Putting a bunch of American lawyers, psychologists, sociologists,
marketers etc on the board in the name of diversity would do way more
harm than good.

I didn't say they have to be American, and I didn't say there has to be
a bunch of them. I just said it would be good if there were also
people who aren't (just only) developers, DBAs or other very technical
people.

Ok I get what your concern is now. I am not sure the formal qualifications
matter but I would agree that the committee needs to be staffed with people
we trust to be good "people people" rather than good "tech people."

--
Jan Claeys

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On 6 June 2018 at 19:22, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I wrote:

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread. I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
complaint against someone else? They certainly shouldn't get to rule
on their own complaint. So maybe change "complaint against" to
"complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.

Which brings up the further complication of in which order are things
dealt with?

If people file complaints against each other. Is there benefit in
rushing to file a complaint?

"The Committee will inform the complainant and the alleged violator of
their decision at that time." That is unclear.

Are complaints considered AFTER information has been collected from
both parties? If so, it doesn't matter who complains first, both
parties will get their say.

But if the person being complained about only hears of the complaint
after judgement has been made this means there is benefit in being the
first to complain, which will encourage people to complain early so
they can get their boot in first. And also cause double the volume of
complaints, since it will be necessary to counter-complain in order
for the alleged violator to get their say.

Would it not be better to consider arbitration as the first step in
dispute resolution? Do we need judgement by a committee as the first
step? Do we even have time for judges to judge?

Thanks for working on this.

--
Simon Riggs http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

On 2018-06-08 09:46, Simon Riggs wrote:
<snip>

Would it not be better to consider arbitration as the first step in
dispute resolution?

This bit sounds like it'd need to be on a case-by-case basis.

It's pretty easy to imagine scenarios where arbitration wouldn't be
appropriate.

Whether or not they come about in the PG Community or not is a
different matter.

My point being that arbitration isn't necessarily automatically the
right direction.

I'd probably leave it up to the CoC team/people to figure it out. :)

+ Justin

On Fri, Jun 8, 2018 at 11:18 AM, Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> wrote:

On 2018-06-08 09:46, Simon Riggs wrote:
<snip>

Would it not be better to consider arbitration as the first step in
dispute resolution?

This bit sounds like it'd need to be on a case-by-case basis.

It's pretty easy to imagine scenarios where arbitration wouldn't be
appropriate.

Whether or not they come about in the PG Community or not is a
different matter.

My point being that arbitration isn't necessarily automatically the
right direction.

I'd probably leave it up to the CoC team/people to figure it out. :)

+1

If it were me I would just say that CoC has an obligation to try in good
faith to resolve things in line with the common interest of an
international community and leave it at that.

+ Justin

--
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers

Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. Robust and Flexible. No vendor
lock-in.
http://www.efficito.com/learn_more

On Tue, 2018-06-05 at 12:06 -0400, James Keener wrote:

Do we need a code of conduct like this, or so we need a more general
dispute resolution process? Something that is public and aimed at
mediating disputes (even ones about bad conduct) and removing repeat
offenders. To be honest, larger issues of harassment should be handled
by the police.

A code of conduct is basically "be excellent to each other", but what
that means is never going to be well codified in a document anyone can
produce. It's why we have a judiciary in the "real world".

I don't participate too much here, but I've never see a group
implement a code of conduct go well. I'm a fairly socially liberal
person, but have been told in one group that my views as a cis,
hetero, white, middle class make aren't welcome in discussions about
getting more women or minorities to participate. Specifically there
was a discussion in that group about how since women often bare the
burden of child care, even when both partners work, that side projects
as a hiring criteria are sexist. I mentioned that as an involved
father I also find little time to work on side projects and that the
issue is more about those with kids than specifically women and was
essentially run out of the group.

Another time, same group, someone was discussing guns, and someone
else said that this kind of discussion is why women don't participate
much. I mentioned that I know more women who own guns, hunt, and
target shoot than I do men who do that. I was again told to shut up
and banded for a few days when I pressed as to why a not-male-centric
discussion was being censored in the name of sexism and fairness.

How will this CoC handle these situation? I obviously offended people
and had no intention of doing so. I was also told that the
moderators/CoC commitee would act fairly, and I obviously believe I
was mistreated by them. Forgive me for not believing in the
benevolence of the governors.

i think that's much broader problem of CoC that anyone would like to
admit.

but before i go further, let me introduce context of my personal view.
i'm great fan of postgresql (although somewhat outside of my real work,
i use it a lot for work and hobby) and that community, which i find
really great.
i wouldn't describe myself as an active community member, i'm mostly
lurking (sometimes with significant delay) learning even more from other
people's problems and solutions, and at times when i could be of help to
someone it's too late (due to significant delays in reading).
as of CoC, i would say i really do not care that much and it does not
change my life a bit. but...
there's always a "but".
i personally hate formalizing everything for the idea of having all
formalized.

CoC in itself is political thing, for enforcing political correctness in
many social, cultural, geographical, political, religious, intimate, and
other aspects, all beyond community's interests.
not only is prone to be abused, but implicitly invites ways of abusing
to community's life.

and generally (not saying anyone here personally) people demanding
special treatment because of some CoC rules and people enforcing
policing force of CoC in the name of political correctness, or for their
personal needs of being part of, or contributing to that policing force
may be more dangerous to community and other members than people who can
very occasionally unintentionally offend someone.

and does real harassment comes from unintentional offense? maybe, when
the victim feels too much offended to try to understand what really
happened.
and than CoC becomes a tool to revenge, even more so when CoC is to
punish offender, not really to mediate between involved parties. culture
differences do not help in understanding each other when it comes that
far.
misunderstanding (involuntary or intentional (yes, that may happen)) is
far more expected than intentional offense, that should be addressed and
not political correctness.

formalizing correctness is never good, helps nothing, introduces
problems. creating entity for judging and punishing does not solve those
newly introduced problems.

wouldn't it be better if CoC didn't touch aspects beyond community's
interests, only stated that friendliness is expected, some ways of
mediation available and punishment only as a last resort solution?

when technical community walks into keeping eyes on member's personal
beliefs, feelings and way of life (like being too much polite, too much
rude, too much humorous, too much fanatic, too much religious, or
whatever) than that's not the same technical community anymore.

just my 2c, ban me my dear community if i violated your CoC ;)

On Jun 8, 2018, at 4:46 AM, Simon Riggs <simon@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:

On 6 June 2018 at 19:22, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

I wrote:

Yeah, somebody else made a similar point upthread. I guess we felt that
the proper procedure was obvious given the structure, but maybe not.
I could support adding text to clarify this, perhaps along the line of

Hmm ... actually, there's another special case that's not discussed,
which is what happens if a committee or core member wants to file a
complaint against someone else? They certainly shouldn't get to rule
on their own complaint. So maybe change "complaint against" to
"complaint by or against" in my proposed addition, and then we're good.

Which brings up the further complication of in which order are things
dealt with?

If people file complaints against each other. Is there benefit in
rushing to file a complaint?

"The Committee will inform the complainant and the alleged violator of
their decision at that time." That is unclear.

Are complaints considered AFTER information has been collected from
both parties? If so, it doesn't matter who complains first, both
parties will get their say.

But if the person being complained about only hears of the complaint
after judgement has been made this means there is benefit in being the
first to complain, which will encourage people to complain early so
they can get their boot in first. And also cause double the volume of
complaints, since it will be necessary to counter-complain in order
for the alleged violator to get their say.