[UbuntuWomen] Making Ubuntu-for-all _work_

[Jacinta Richardson]

Melissa Draper wrote:
> Jacinta Richardson wrote:

>>I'm not talking about changing the content of the CoC. [...]

> Actually, yes, you are. See below for explanation.

> If a CoC guidelines was to be created, it would only be useful if it
> became a recognised part of the CoC itself. You cannot have people
> 'sign' a document with a definition, then later on point to another
> document that is not even mentioned in the document, that contains a
> varied definition and say they agreed to it as well. The CoC will need
> to be changed. If you're going to change the CoC to add a link to a
> second definition, you may as well change the definition in the CoC and
> avoid linked documents that will confuse a good majority of people.

G'day Melissa,

I understand that you have a whole lot more experience with the Ubuntu community
and its setup than I do, and I appreciate your explanations here.  Would it be
possible for you to suggest some things that we can do, rather than telling me
what will be too hard or impossible?  For example, perhaps looking at the CoC is
too ambitious right now.  Perhaps instead, a list of etiquette guidelines could
be part of the UFA charter?  As someone who has this experience with the Ubuntu
community, I'm sure you could come up with some great ideas.

There's the forums policy page: http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php?page=policy
which suggests "Be respectful of all users at all times. This means please use
etiquette and politeness.", perhaps something like this would be the right place
to link to a definition of what those words mean.

The CoC says ( http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct ):

"Be respectful. The Ubuntu community and its members treat one another with
respect. Everyone can make a valuable contribution to Ubuntu. We may not always
agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour and poor manners. We
might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that
frustration to turn into a personal attack. It's important to remember that a
community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.
We expect members of the Ubuntu community to be respectful when dealing with
other contributors as well as with people outside the Ubuntu project, and with
users of Ubuntu."

and I doubt that anything that would be accepted as appropriate etiquette
guidelines will contain a different definion; ideally it should just expand on
this one.  For example:
	* Not quizzing people about their personal details seems fine by this definition,
	* Not belittling people's contributions seems fine
etc.  They're not in here, and I'm fine with them not being so, but I don't see
that it would hurt to include them in a similar document.


>>How powerful is the Community Council?  If it's made explicit that there is a
>>TOS (whatever it is), isn't that enough?  People don't have to be involved or
>>used the Ubuntu IRC channel or mailing lists.
> 
> The Community Council is not really a governing body. It is an advisory
> board, a dispute resolution option, and an avenue for people to receive
> recognition for their work in terms of Ubuntu Membership and Team
> approval. As such, the council cannot really expel people from the
> community -- in fact nobody can do so while there are dynamic mediums
> such as IRC, forums and mailing lists. The closest they can do is
> retract membership from members and admonish misbehaving people without
> any punishment other than harsh words.

The forum policy page says:

"If you were to continue to break this code of conduct your account would be
reviewed and you could be banned. It is the sole discretion of the forum
resolution team (currently the administrators) to ban violating accounts."

but you're right, banning a person's account is very different from banning that
person.  The biggest problem is that this discussion is about changing _people_.
 We can't change the community until we've changed enough people that the
community starts to adapt.  To change people we need to give them an incentive
to change; it can either be a stick or a carrot.  The value of the carrot
("greater diversity") tends to be questioned a lot, and while there are many men
who "get it", there are more who don't.  How can we make having more
women|young/old/disabled/etc  be a carrot, when it means that the majority have
to curb any desires they may have, from time to time, to be asses.

The problem with using a stick is two-fold.  1.  Punishment is a notoriously bad
way of encouraging people to learn.  2.  If the stick's effects don't actually
hurt in any way (that they care about), then you'll get trolls who misbehave
solely to be punished and thus turn it into a game.


This is one of the reasons I wanted to start a conversation on possible
consequences.  Perhaps through brainstorming we can come up with some ideas that
would work to encourage people.

> As for the CoC as a TOS, there is really no way to effectively advise
> without spamming.

Perhaps not, but perhaps it would be effective if list-admins had a form-letter
(or not) which they sent out in reply to each and every CoC violation.  Thus if
there were lots of violations, then people would be reminded a lot.  If there
were few, it obviously wouldn't be a problem.  If that's too spammy, perhaps a
link to the CoC could be added to the footers of each mailing list hosted on
ubuntu.com; that's not spammy at all, but it means that people like me don't
have to do a web search to find the Code when looking for it.  :)

I'm sure you could come up with some ideas on how these things could be improved
too.  :)  As you said, perhaps there should be policy documents available from
the mailing list sign-up page; or which are sent out when someone first
subscribes...  Having an over-arching policy set for all the ubuntu planets and
another for the IRC channels could help too.  A lot of people will happily
follow the rules if there are actually rules in place, so that's always
somewhere we can start.

All the best,

	Jacinta

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