Code of Conduct

[Michelle D'Souza]

> 
>> I think Michelle was getting at the importance of recognizing that certain actions can open the sphere of mutual and safe collaboration, dissent, disagreement, while some others can foreclose or antagonize it.
> 
> Again, I don’t know Shawn M. I do think that he should have a chance to collaborate, get it wrong, and grow. He should feel welcome to interact and debate safely as long as he plays by the *rules. Those are the rules I think we need to articulate in our CoC. (Perhaps we settle on strikes… meaning you can make a certain number of mistakes and then consequences).
> 

It sounds like we are all in agreement that our community should be open to conversation and discussion. I personally don’t feel that rules are the answer. It’s one of the things I like about the Contributor Covenant. It has a pledge that mirrors many human rights code: 

"In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.”

And it has examples. The examples give the reader a sense of what is considered positive behaviour and what is not. I think examples are extremely important particularly given the diversity of our community but will certainly not cover all cases. The ‘consequence’ (I don’t particularly like the negative connotation to that word) of something that does not fulfill the above pledge has to first be a conversation. Many things will be solved at this point. In fact, when the Fluid community was just starting, we had a troll in our IRC channel who was being disrespectful to Anastasia. The ‘consequence’ was that several people engaged them in a conversation that made it clear that their behaviour was not acceptable. I’ll be shocked if things ever need to go further than conversations.

Michelle