[Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct

[Jason H]

Thank you Edward.

I am doing that, but "out loud" if you will, on this group. I am asking questions and getting answers (you're the first to actually answer any of my questions).

I am committed to having a free and inclusive community, but with Linux Kernel just having gone through this, and the fall-out still on going, I personally would have us wait to see how that turns out before proceeding with our own. I would like to learn from their mistakes.

So far (but after your email was written) I replied with concerns about 
1) the Committee, 
-- the allocation of seats to specific birth demographics
-- the politics of said committee
---- members having to embrace the politics of the said committee.
-- the personal weight of members being affected by their contributions, in terms of testimony or punishment. 
2) having received a message from someone who was pro-CoC, but whose message clearly in violation of the CoC.
-- If that is acceptable, then why have a CoC at all?

I'm asking a lot of questions and reading all the answers. I appreciate your substantive reply.

Here's an operable suggestion: Choose the committee members at random, per each incident, from the list active users at random. Keep choosing until 3 users have indicated they would participate. That would be the best way to avoid most of the concerns I questioned about.


> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2018 at 1:21 PM
> From: "Edward Welbourne" <edward.welbourne at qt.io>
> To: "Jason H" <jhihn at gmx.com>
> Cc: "development at qt-project.org" <development at qt-project.org>, "Ulf Hermann" <ulf.hermann at qt.io>
> Subject: Re: [Development] QUIP 12: Code of Conduct
>
> Jason H (24 October 2018 17:09)
> > - Is "Sceintific racism" actual racism or just statistics?
> 
> If it's racism, it's racism, however qualified.
> Extrapolation from populations to individuals misuses statistics.
> It isn't scientific, it just abuses tools lifted out of science.
> 
> > I really want to know where we are with James Damore because I thought
> > his paper was well-researched with a scientific basis?
> 
> I had to look that name up.
> While no source is unbiased, I'll take [0] as a tolerable source.
> They do, at least, have a fairly solid understanding of what science is
> (and isn't).
> 
> * [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/James_Damore
> 
> Apparently he fails to understand the difference between very minor
> statistical differences between broad populations and the details of
> individuals.
> 
> Specifically: though the proportion of women who are good at certain
> tech jobs might be marginally smaller than the proportion of men who
> are, a recruiter who has the economic power of Google and commits to
> recruiting equally should be able to do so, without compromising its
> recruitment standards, provided there aren't *other factors* at play
> that prevent it from doing so.  The crucial detail here is that Google
> employs a tiny proportion of the population from which it could draw
> recruits.  So half of Google's relevant technical staff - which is how
> many women Google would need to hire to meet the given goal - fits well
> within the available pool of suitably-skilled women.
> 
> Google would (in this hypothetical world) have to work a little harder
> and pay a little more (but it's only a little, since the statistical
> effect is quite small in fact) to find the women than to find the men,
> but it's not short of applicants and Google, in particular, has
> expertise in the field of selecting the best few from a plethora of
> candidates - at least when it comes to pointing one at web pages.  The
> fact that Google doesn't manage to hire equally many good women as men
> in various tech positions *is* evidence that there are other factors at
> play, aside from the scientific evidence of very minor differences in
> aptitude (mostly stemming from differences in interest).
> 
> It is, furthermore, patently clear that the world does have other
> factors that contribute to the gender divide in various jobs.  When
> boards are dominated by men, it is no great surprise that women aren't
> as widely represented in upper management, from the ranks of which most
> boards are drawn, to take just one example.
> But this is something of a digression.
> 
> > Having been interested in software from a very young age, and later
> > specifically Open Source, one thing that appealed to me was that it
> > was a meritocracy.
> 
> Well, many software practitioners at least aim to make software projects
> meritocratic.  However, their ability to do so may be compromised by
> social dynamics (and economics) in various ways.
> 
> > The best code survives, your code contributions are limited only by
> > your code being the best.
> 
> If those evaluating how good something is are, unwittingly, operating in
> an environment that some folk find hostile, those folk get driven off
> and the evaluators fail to see how good their contributions would have
> been, if they'd only felt at ease.  The aim of a code of conduct is to
> avoid that.
> 
> I endure rudery from others moderately calmly, partly because I come
> from a highly-privileged background that gives me the confidence to not
> worry that the rudery will actually cause problems I can't handle.  I
> prefer, and usually manage, to work in environments in which I and those
> around me don't need to endure such rudery - partly because, while I can
> endure it, I don't like it; but also because I don't want others to be
> driven away, whose contributions I might welcome.
> 
> There may be bad codes of conduct out there; please don't let that put
> you off trying to think about what a good code of conduct would look
> like.  In particular, note that there are some "entrenched interests"
> that don't seem to like codes of conduct; and they've taken pains to
> talk up the misadventures of groups struggling to make them work.  Other
> groups, garnering far less publicity, have bumbled along quite happily
> for years with codes of conduct that seem to work fine.
> 
> So please don't just write off the code of conduct as a bad plan; try to
> help us make a good code of conduct and a good process around it.
> In particular, please at least read it before criticising it,
> 
> 	Eddy.
>