code-of-conduct-feedback

Feedback on the IndieWebCamp code-of-conduct.

Burden is in the wrong place
The tl;dr says:

"respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered"

This places the burden on the person who is being bothered, which in many cases is not appropriate. While this can work for specific instances, and may make sense in the case of online communication, we should make it clear that we are not expecting people to deal with their own problems at events. Aaron Parecki 16:46, 26 June 2019 (PDT)

Contact Information

 * The CoC doesn't give explicit contact information for victims of abuse and harassment. We should add one (or a few).
 * There's an issue with the first point, the contact information. The contact information is going to differ depending on where in the community the behaviour takes place. Behaviour taking place at an IRL event should really be referred to the organiser of the event or someone they nominate, behaviour on-wiki or on IRC can really only be resolved by someone with administrative/moderator powers in those spaces, while behaviour on, say, a Github issue that's on an associated project that has opted into the CoC would be better handled by the maintainer of that project. ——tommorris.org 06:24, 12 April 2016 (PDT)

Event Specific

 * The CoC is, in some places, very event specific and doesn't speak non-events like the IRC/Slack channel and the GitHub repos. This was discussed at [2018/Organizers] and [/2018/NYC/Organizers]. CoC was changed to reflect online associated places. Behavior in non IndieWeb spaces was also discussed. No resolution decided.

Data and Privacy Policy
In my opinion the CoC should have a section on expectations of data privacy. Something along the lines of any personal identifiable data collected in a private email or form submission should not be considered public by the community. This includes email used to collect attendance or distribute tickets for events.

Instead we encourage community members to encourage use of public guestbooks or check-ins to allow for attendees to network or find like minded individuals in the area.

Any collection of personal data should always be made explicit to attendees and everyone shoudl be given an opt-in rather than opt-out option,


 * Not sure this belongs in CoC but I wouldn't want an attendee to have to find the HWC, IWC planning guide to find the privay policy. That is why CoC makes sense to me. I have no problem encouraging this conduct among organizers.

Political Orientation

 * I propose that we add "political orientation" or something to that effect to the list of things. -- 2013-02-15 10:14 PST
 * This sounds reasonable. Is there a pre-existing phrase used by one of the code-of-conduct-examples that conceptually covers this? 12:06, 15 February 2013 (PST)
 * None that I know of. (And I can't believe that this is two years old now?) 2015-03-15 15:20 PST
 * Yup, was waiting for an answer to hopefully re-use a pre-existing phrase rather than making up our own. Since in 2+ years no one has found a pre-existing example, is this solving a non-problem? Anticipated problem? Or Under/unreported? 15:45, 15 March 2015 (PDT)
 * Django code of conduct uses "political belief" "Be welcoming. We strive to be a community that welcomes and supports people of all backgrounds and identities. This includes, but is not limited to members of any race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, colour, immigration status, social and economic class, educational level, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, size, family status, political belief, religion, and mental and physical ability." —  gRegor Morrill (talk) 18:29, 16 June 2015 (PDT)
 * Possibly relevant: the StrangeLoop conference uninvited Curtis Yarvin ("Mencius Moldbug") because of (odious) political writings . The organizer's rationale for excluding him was that it would be an unwelcome distraction from the technical content of the conference. It's worth considering what we would do... 18:05, 16 June 2015 (PDT)

Content Posted Outside the Community
Similar to the discussion of politics, above, and discussed around the 2018 Organizers Summit, among other times.

How does (or can) the CoC resolve issues where individuals may be following CoC at events, in IRC, etc., but they post content elsewhere that would violate CoC, contribute to systemic/historical dynamics of oppression, incite discrimination, etc.?

Some example policies from orgs and services for dealing with user-generated content that might offer some overlap or insight, along with similar writings about divisive content and how technology choices (like a focus on chat + wiki) can influence community outcomes:


 * Google Play: Restricted Content / Inappropriate Content
 * Google Ads Policies (prohibited content & practices, restricted content)
 * Google Autocomplete Policies
 * Google - How Search Works (statements on core values)
 * Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines
 * Google Inclusive ML Guide - AutoML
 * Google's AI Principles
 * Google's Responsible AI Practices
 * Microsoft's AI Principles
 * Complicating the Narratives – The Whole Story (suggestions for defusing polarization)
 * Case study (annotations on the above)
 * Aaron Halfaker (studies Wikipedia, how to keep communities open and collaborative)
 * Ethical OS Toolkit (danger zones of psychology / sociology w.r.t. tech's ability to amplify)
 * Santa Clara Univ - Ethics in Technology Practice

Criticism
Criticism of the IndieWeb Code of Conduct:
 * 2018-10-16: : Code of Conduct and the IndieWebCamp Nürnberg 2018

Issues with other Codes of Conduct
Challenges documented about other codes of conduct that may be helpful for improving the IndieWeb code-of-conduct including reporting/escalating/handling mechanisms to reduce the potential for harm:
 * 2020-10-28: Jeremy Howard: I violated a code of conduct

Age

 * How do people feel about adding age to the list of things we respect people regardless of? --Waterpigs.co.uk 23:21, 14 February 2013 (PST)
 * Done. Tantek 12:06, 15 February 2013 (PST)
 * Thanks. --Waterpigs.co.uk 12:08, 15 February 2013 (PST)
 * Great addition, We should suggest this upstream to http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Community_anti-harassment/Policy Kylewm.com 10:55, 11 March 2015 (PDT)

Add caste to respectfully list
In the "Respect" section, the sentence with "treating all individuals respectfully, regardless of" has a list of aspects.

Propose adding "caste" to that list.

Other codes of conduct that explicitly mention caste:
 * Mozilla CPG
 * W3C CEPC
 * Mastodon Server Rules
 * DrupalCon Code of Conduct

Question in chat: "What do folks here think of explicitly listing caste in the second paragraph in the 'Respect' section? (and while at it, explicitly listing 'race' which we somehow overlooked there though we mention racism lower down in the doc)"

Suggest change(s):
 * s|nationality, ethnicity|nationality, caste, race and/or ethnicity|
 * s|nationality, ethnicity|race and/or ethnicity, caste, nationality|
 * new order is more parallel to the order of list items in Mozilla’s CPG

Opinions:
 * +1 undefined
 * +1 : for adding, no particular opinion on ordering (per chat)
 * +1 : for adding… and I think the second ordering maps more closely to my mental model of those concepts (but I am absolutely no expert!) (per chat)
 * +1 : for adding as well (per chat)
 * +1
 * +1/0/-1

code-of-conduct updated with second suggested change accordingly 2022-07-20.