Ubuntu Code of Conduct: omissions and suggestions

[Elizabeth K. Joseph]

On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 8:16 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt at canonical.com> wrote:
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> Hi folks
>
> When Ubuntu’s Code of Conduct
> <http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct> was published in
> 2005, it was groundbreaking. Few other open-source projects had one.
> It was far from perfect, but it had real benefits — most of all in
> establishing expectations, and rarely also in providing the authority
> to remove counterproductive project members.
>
> The Code had a minor update in 2009,
> <https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/updating-the-ubuntu-code-of-conduct>
> and a major revision in 2012. Since then, tens of thousands of other
> open-source projects have discussed and adopted their own codes of
> conduct. So it’s no surprise that the state of the art has advanced.
>
> By today’s standards, Ubuntu’s code of conduct falls short in four
> notable areas, as identified on the Geek Feminism wiki:
> <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Code_of_conduct_evaluations>

This has been on my mind a lot since Sarah Sharp's keynote at SCALE14x
(where we had the UbuCon Summit). It's a great talk, video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCvK_7FagGE&t=31m5s

During part of it she suggests that you shouldn't write your own CoC
and enforcement policy and that the following orgs and people can help
with this:

Safety First PDX: http://safetyfirstpdx.org/
Ashe Dryden: http://www.ashedryden.com/
Frame Shift Consulting: http://frameshiftconsulting.com/

I know we've "been fine" always writing our own (indeed, ours was the
first in an open source project AFAIK), but I think it's worth
considering if we want some help from experts :)

> 1.  No descriptions of common but unacceptable behavior. This means,
>     for example, that the Ubuntu IRC Council has had to provide their
>     own descriptions, even of things that don’t apply just to IRC.
>     <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IRC/Guidelines>

This may be an interesting one to dig into, but I'm not sure how I
feel about it. I worry that giving examples can provide a framework
that people feel they can wiggle out of. But again, I'm not one of the
experts, so there may be a great deal of value here.

> 2.  No reporting instructions with contact information. This is perhaps
>     the most glaring omission (and what motivated me to write today).

This is a good point. I was very vocal[0] back when we had in person
UDS that various types of contact information was made available on
the anti-harassment page for the event, but I never followed through
in our written document online. I think adding a section about
contacting the CC would be great.

> 3.  No information about enforcement. Version 1.0 said “the Ubuntu
>     Community Council will arbitrate in any dispute”, with 1.1 adding
>     “Ubuntu governance bodies”, but 2.0 removed both of these.
>     <https://launchpad.net/codeofconduct> Matthew Garrett made a start
>     on defining the enforcement process in 2007, but it didn’t go
>     anywhere. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CodeOfConductDisputeResolution>
>     The current process may be precise and well-known to the Community
>     team, but defining it in the Code itself would be much more
>     reassuring to potential reporters.

Good point, this should be addressed.

> 4.  No clear demarcation between an anti-harassment policy and more
>     general community guidelines. And more pertinently, no clear
>     anti-harassment policy at all.

We should definitely work on this. It's easy to explicitly condemn
harassment as C de-Avillez suggests, but we may need to explore
whether we need to go beyond this (define it, have a separate policy).

> I would add a fifth issue:
>
> 5.  Needless bureaucracy of “signing” the Code

This has been something we've been concerned about for years. I
believe the main holdup was that it's all done in Launchpad and
Launchpad has been feature frozen for years, essentially bounding us
to use what we had with GPG signatures, and having few other options.

My hope is that we can finally find a solution so we can move past
this, perhaps even moving the process off of Launchpad if that
continues to be a blocker.

[0] https://bugs.launchpad.net/uds-project/+bug/907673

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2