Re: [gentoo-council] CoC enforcement proposal

[Ferris McCormick]

On Thu, 2007-11-08 at 04:05 -0800, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> This is a bit later than I intended because of real life interference,
> but here's some ideas for how to enforce the CoC. It's a little long,
> sorry about that; we can push off the vote again if we don't have a
> majority of people prepared for it by the meeting.
>
> I separated it into problem, conceptual solution, and implementation so
> you can decide which levels you like and which could use tweaking.
>
> Thanks,
> Donnie
Referencing original proposal as circulated.

This is a big step forward, and if we had a binary situation:  either
accept it as written or go back to the drawing board, I'd prefer to
accept.  Thus my comments which follow are best viewed as requests for
clarification or of personal inclination.

1.  Are 3 (or 5) people sufficient to ensure quick reactions to mailing
list questions or IRC?  This is minor, and starting with 3 to put the
process in place and tune it as needed probably works.  My concern is
longer term.  Speaking for myself, for instance, I almost never see
problems on IRC until they are long over, and I suspect this is the case
for most people.  Similarly (usually) with mail.  And I don't think we
want a corps of full-time monitors.

By the way, I don't have an answer to my question, but my guess is that
starting with 3 growing to 5 in practice is probably about right.

2.  As to forums, I've never seen that the forum moderators need any
help with what they are doing.  Actually, in a sense I think the forums
are kind of a model for what you are proposing.

3.  I note that most actions are very short term, so if things are
working as they should, the lead (or council) will seldom or never get
involved in the day to day process.  I think this is a huge plus for
your proposal!

4.  I learned from talking to some of the proctors that they did
generally work in private.  It would be useful perhaps to see how
closely the bulk of what they did conformed to your proposal (as opposed
to how previous Council perceived them).  And of course where it
diverged.  (I am addressing the last sentence of the first paragraph of
the "implementation" section here, and just raising a question.)

5.  Do you perceive the enforcement group as an arm of the Council
rather than as a group of its own?  Previously, the Council did not seem
to know what to do when the Proctors' views of Code of Conduct and
Councils' *individual* views of Code of Conduct seemed to diverge.  This
led to the unusual step of simply eliminating the Proctors.  I rather
doubt that you would find much enthusiasm for working in such an
environment again.  So, what you are proposing probably works for any
given Council (assuming continuing commitment from council to council).
I think my concern is addressed to (a) continuing commitment; (b)
consistency and continuity.  The Gentoo community need to understand the
rules so that they become a part of our culture, so that even with
annual assessment, we should expect evolution rather than catastrophe.

(This was all a bit muddled.  That's sure indication that so are my
thoughts, so take it for what it's worth.)

6.  "Developers can be members of both [Council and Code of Conduct
team]."  This is the one sentence I take exception to.  It's better to
work for more community involvement rather than allow concentration
resulting in personnel wearing multiple hats.

7.  Off the top of my head, why not allow (or require) that one member
of the team be a user but not a developer?  Userrel, all, comments?

Very nice work,
Regards,
Ferris
  
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc)