#40 Enforcing the code of conduct
Closed: duplicate 6 years ago Opened 8 years ago by duffy.

See this post from the outreach-list regarding the actual enforcement of the code of conduct as currently written:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/outreach/2015-July/000067.html

Langdon asked that this be made a ticket for council discussion, with the concern that an unenforceable / consequence without an SOP is a threat and isn't the right way to go:

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/outreach/2015-August/000073.html

For reference, the actual text is:

"FUDCon brings together contributors and users from all over the world and this diversity is one of our greatest strengths. This diversity however can also lead to communication issues and unhappiness. Attendees are required to be considerate and respectful of each other. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • "Refraining from rude behaviour

  • "Refraining from any sort of harassment or discrimination (based on ethnic background, religion, gender, sexuality, body shape, disability, geographic location, sports team, preferred operating system or anything else)

  • "Obeying local laws

"Attendees who are in violation of this policy may be subject to removal and banning from FUDCon (and future Fedora events). Whether an attendee is in violation is at the sole discretion of the conference organizers. Anyone with a possible concern relating to the code of conduct is encouraged to either email Rupali Talwatkar or talk directly to one of the designated FUDCon volunteers. Designated FUDCon volunteers will have a dark blue coloured VOLUNTEER badge."

The line of particular concern here is:

"Attendees who are in violation of this policy may be subject to removal and
banning from FUDCon (and future Fedora events)."


I raise to the attention of the council that the solution suggested in the original post would be either difficult to implement or plain illegal in many european countries.
Blacklist are often subjected to strict regulations, and we don't want to enter this field.

If someone has an unacceptable behaviour, it should be either raised to the local authorities or the council depending of the gravity.

=> should be
"Attendees who are in violation of this violation of this policy may be asked to leave and reported to the council or local authorities"

My suggestion: simply remove the extraneous text "(and future Fedura events)".

Local organizers certainly should have the ability and right to remove participants that violate the rules of their local event. They do not, however, have the ability to decide what happens beyond that (I would argue that is the pervue of the board/council to decide). Given this, it's best to just not mention it, and avoid any potential confusion or misunderstandings.

Replying to [comment:1 hguemar]:

I raise to the attention of the council that the solution suggested in the original post would be either difficult to implement or plain illegal in many european countries.
Blacklist are often subjected to strict regulations, and we don't want to enter this field.

If someone has an unacceptable behaviour, it should be either raised to the local authorities or the council depending of the gravity.

=> should be
"Attendees who are in violation of this violation of this policy may be asked to leave and reported to the council or local authorities"

And the council does what? If you want to leave it undefined in the code of conduct I can see the utility in that, however I do think there should be a plan/SOP as Langdon has suggested.

We as a group also have methods at our disposal that do not amount to blacklisting. For example, we can choose not to provide travel funding to individuals that have egregious enough offenses or are repeat offenders. I certainly am not comfortable financially assisting people that violate the code of conduct. It sends completely the wrong message in my opinion.

So if the council wishes to change the code of conduct as Haïkel has suggested (odd copy/paste error aside), we should make sure we have some understanding of what the council will actually do in that event.

I agree with getting a plan, and that offenders should be penalised.

It's just dangerous to leave local organizers enforcing decisions beyond an event, as they're likely to violate local regulations by keeping list of offenders (that's what I meant by blacklisting).
And we can't refuse funding someone without this kind of list which has restrictive regulations in many countries.

Only the council with the assistance of Fedora Legal should be able to maintain such list.

Replying to [comment:1 hguemar]:

I raise to the attention of the council that the solution suggested in
the original post would be either difficult to implement or plain illegal
in many european countries.
Blacklist are often subjected to strict regulations, and we don't want
to enter this field.

If someone has an unacceptable behaviour, it should be either raised to
the local authorities or the council depending of the gravity.

=> should be
"Attendees who are in violation of this violation of this policy may be
asked to leave and reported to the council or local authorities"

And the council does what? If you want to leave it undefined in the code
of conduct I can see the utility in that, however I do think there should
be a plan/SOP as Langdon has suggested.

If this is following the discussion we had at the FLOCK Council Update double-session, then another issue at hand is that we do not have an "official institutional memory" for CoC violations. It has been mentioned that the Community Working Group is often where these situations are resolved, and if this is the case, then keeping a record that includes reports to the CWG, conference organizers, and Council will help inform future actions and support decisions.

The private council trac may be an alright place to start collecting these until/if/when we establish an official channel?

We as a group also have methods at our disposal that do not amount to
blacklisting. For example, we can choose not to provide travel funding to
individuals that have egregious enough offenses or are repeat offenders.
I certainly am not comfortable financially assisting people that violate
the code of conduct. It sends completely the wrong message in my opinion.

Agreed.

Once we have a list of violations, we can check against it when making support decisions (whack-a-mole re-registration issues notwithstanding.)

So if the council wishes to change the code of conduct as Haïkel has
suggested (odd copy/paste error aside), we should make sure we have some
understanding of what the council will actually do in that event.

I think the reporting/review SOP should be super public and transparent, and the remedial actions allow for case-by-case solutions. A list of historical and potential sanctions (rejection of registration/speaker proposals at conferences, banning in IRC, denial of travel/financial aid, revocation of group membership/status) would establish options without dictating remedy. That is kind of how it's done in other contexts (e.g. "violators could face up to $X fine and Y time period in sanction.")

I can appreciate the earlier comment in this thread about not wanting to make hollow threats, but I reckon a list of sanctions itself is a deterrent against some types of anti-social behavior.

I think we need more precise reference on the "blacklist are illegal", because I think that's a wrong interpretation.

What is likely regulated is making list of people ( at least in France, but I know that's similar in switzerland and germany to some extent ), but we are already doing a list for the list of people present, for the list of speaker and for FAS, and there is a ton of exceptions that would apply in french laws. For example, if we follow the laws strictly, the list of speaker for FUDCON Paris should have been declared, and it was not. So saying that a blacklist would be illegal/difficult kinda mean that organizing any flock in France would be as much difficult/illegal.

So if there is something more illegal when this is a blacklist of people, we should know why, because for something that would be illegal in many european countries, I never heard about it under the angle of "blacklist of people".

Okay, so -- do we have a specific proposal here?

My thought here is to define, enforcing the CoC, clearly what happens for anti-social behavior etc., but we cannot let it up to event owners to decide beyond the single event.

So Rex's proposal to just drop the "(and future Fedora events)" sounds reasonable to me, because the event owner should be able to deny access to "his" event, but not to future events.[[br]]
Probably we could add another sentence that in case of violation of CoC, regardless of what the owner of an event decided, the Council will discuss further actions if justified. This can go from denial of travel aid to time-based rejection of registration/speaker proposals or anything else.

What I don't like to see in an open community, as Fedora, is to have too many rules and judges for everything. People should be able to know how to behave, but this is valid also the other way around. All contributors and owners, which have very different cultures and feelings about what exactly could be against the CoC, should behave accepting and eventually discussing any opinion without the need to go beyond the red line of our CoC.

This ticket is likely of interest to tatica as the [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Diversity_Adviser Diversity Adviser] as well. It might be worth getting her opinion and time to review this ticket too.

Replying to [comment:13 jflory7]:

This ticket is likely of interest to tatica as the [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Diversity_Adviser Diversity Adviser] as well. It might be worth getting her opinion and time to review this ticket too.

Sure.

For the record, I'm going going to do anything with this until we migrate to pagure. It's too important and I hate trac that much.

This looks like a holdover from trac and is duplicating ticket #105

Metadata Update from @jwboyer:
- Issue close_status updated to: None

6 years ago

Metadata Update from @jwboyer:
- Issue unmarked as depending on: #145

6 years ago

Metadata Update from @jwboyer:
- Issue close_status updated to: duplicate
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

6 years ago

Login to comment on this ticket.

Metadata