llvm dev - May 2016 - Resuming the discussion of establishing an LLVM code of conduct

Am 05.05.2016 um 10:58 schrieb C Bergström via llvm-dev:
> Sincerely and pragmatically - what do you think will be different
> after this is in place.. Bureaucracy is great, but what's broken or
> pandemic that you're trying to fix?
 From the last discussion, I gather that it's an attempt to prevent 
damage before it can happen.
I'm quite sceptical about that. It's hard to do in general because you 
can't really foresee what people will do, and it will give trolls just 
another tool to work with; last time it was badly done because it tried 
to cover all bases and ended up being overspecific (judging from the 
comments, it's still happening; I can't see the text because the website
requires Javascript and I cannot activate that on non-preapproved websites).

However, some people in the committee insist.
I suspect some want to protect the current cooperative tone, and some 
want to avoid another accusation of being unfair as certainly happened 
the last time a troll was evicted from the list.
I do not think the former can be achieved without inviting other kinds 
of damage, and to the latter I'd say that you can't evade responsibility
for misdecisions is the same, whether you misdecide a specific case or 
misdecide the rules. Except that the latter has far more far-reaching 
consequences but people tend to feel the impact less...
> From my side I can be a sarcastic smartass from time to time, but
> overall I don't see that being a heavy burden.. (maybe I'm
mistaken?)
It's all a question of perceived aggression.
Some people will perceive you to be a burden, some won't even notice, 
most will be somewhere in-between. It's more dependent on the reader's 
cultural and personal background than anything else.
> Other than myself - very rarely you get some disagreements on the ML,
> but has it ever been serious?
I think the last time this discussed, something like that came up once 
in the lifetime of the ML, and it was dealt with.
> If one very good engineer is unintentionally/inadvertently causing
> friction - how would you deal with that at a policy level which is
> different from what happens today?
I have seen that happen in another community.
In the end, he was evicted. The reasoning was that even an excellent 
engineer does more damage than good if he's deterring a dozen people, 
some of which might be as good as him or grow into being as good as him. 
Also, letting him stay would mean that his behaviour would get copied.

So I'm generally in favor of having a code of conduct, but it should be 
short, vague enough to allow flexible reactions to unforeseen 
behavioural patterns, and concentrate more on intent and effect than on 
specific behaviours, so we don't end in a court system with lawyers and 
appeals and procedure in a community that simply has neither resources 
nor expertise to properly execute that.

That's just my 2 cents from the sideline; I had expected LLVM to become 
a significant part of my life so I did take sides last time this was 
discussed, but none of my expectations have materialized (due to reasons 
outside of the LLVM project) so I'm not going to vote this time, I'm 
just offering my observations and background knowledge.

Regards,
Jo

Chandler - I do not want to derail, hijack or change the topic of this
discussion - Would you be ok with me going into specific examples?

On 5 May 2016 at 10:41, Joachim Durchholz via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> I can't see the text because the website requires Javascript and
> I cannot activate that on non-preapproved websites).
Does this work?

http://reviews.llvm.org/file/data/cbdfdhpm24f25l4xlxy2/PHID-FILE-of4akbarftxe7qdv6wq5/D13741.diff

cheers,
--renato

On 5 May 2016 at 10:54, C Bergström <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
wrote:
> Chandler - I do not want to derail, hijack or change the topic of this
> discussion - Would you be ok with me going into specific examples?
I think this is the right place for that.

I had some comments on the submission itself, but they were mostly
about wording, not the concepts.

cheers,
--renato

On 5 May 2016 at 10:41, Joachim Durchholz via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> Also, letting him stay would mean that his behaviour would get copied.
If everything else disappears, I think this is what should remain.

We don't want to accept "bad behaviour" because once it's
accepted, it
propagates. The LKML is the best example. From our history, we have
done that remarkably well.

I just hope the new Code doesn't get abused by a few trolls to
undermine the very thing it's trying to promote. That's why I think
wording is very important here.

cheers,
--renato

On 5 May 2016, at 11:42, Renato Golin via llvm-dev <llvm-dev at
lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> 
> I just hope the new Code doesn't get abused by a few trolls to
> undermine the very thing it's trying to promote. That's why I think
> wording is very important here.
We’ve been through a similar process in FreeBSD recently and I’ve learned a few
lessons in the process.  I can’t emphasise Renato’s point enough.  It is
absolutely vital to have outside review of a code of conduct.  There are a lot
of terms that are quite loaded in specific contexts and groups and it’s very
easy for them to end up in a CoC if it’s not written by or reviewed members of
those groups.

One of the key purposes of a CoC is to communicate the ideals of a community to
outsiders (including outsiders of different nationalities and even those that
don’t live in the San Francisco Bay Area).  For this to work, it has to use the
vocabulary that people outside of the community understand and be very careful
to avoid ambiguous and loaded terminology.

David

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 3719 bytes
Desc: not available
URL:
<http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20160505/c7641e17/attachment.bin>

On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 2:55 AM C Bergström <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
wrote:
> Chandler - I do not want to derail, hijack or change the topic of this
> discussion - Would you be ok with me going into specific examples?
>
IMO, no, I don't think that would be a productive direction. I also suspect
it would have a high probability of (unintentionally) leading to exactly
the kinds of situations the code of conduct is designed to prevent.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20160505/d0bdc49a/attachment.html>