If the process is supposed to be community driven and open for anyone to collaborate on, wouldn’t PRs to the repo make more sense? Then anyone can participate. It also makes it easier to see everyone’s contributions. You could also include explanations under each PR as to why something was or was not merged into the doc. Might help with transparency. Otherwise people have to read through a huge comments thread just to know what’s going on. Having been in the later position, organization really helps to make things approachable and collaborative for newcomers.
Perhaps general discussions could happen on the forum, but when someone wants to make a change they submit a PR to the repo along with an explanation as to why they think it’s important. Then it can be accepted or not along with an explanation.
PRs is exactly the right way to do it. All of my changes after the initial commit are run through PRs, so definitely propose changes to the policy in that way. Proposing changes to a text document is different from code changes however, PRs are good for structured changes, so we may have to put more structure into how we make changes.
One way to start is to declare principles, goals, and requirements. Also, system-level design (the policy won’t work in isolation). We may have proposed too early, so right now we probably should take a step back and work on basics.
Just had an idea. What if the CoC was split into 2 sections: preventative and reactionary?
preventative: best practices for communication, collaboration, inclusive language, things to not do, etc…
reactionary: how to ask for help, conflict resolution, consequences, etc…
Here’s my thinking. The whole thing is opt-in and volunteer based, so it’s not a binding legal agreement. Even if it was, the community is globally decentralized so it would be unrealistic to try enforce. This means that we can’t do much after the fact when things don’t go well.
The purpose of the CoC is to make the community safer, more diverse, and more collaborative. The best way to create that is via preventative measures and education. Also, people generally react well when you make their experiences better, but react poorly when you try to tell them what to do. We might get a higher ROI by cultivating the positive aspects of the community rather than trying to enforce rules or arbitration. It’s still important to have “rules” and consequences, but there’s a lot more we can do to create a better experience for everyone.
This is a really good point, it is important to keep in mind the bigger goals of the policy. Preventative actions and training do help a lot in traditional situations, so it should be seriously considered.
I think it would also help a lot with community engagement and buy-in.
When looking at something that says don’t [insert extreme negative thing here], no one is going to push back on that. It’s kind of a dead end because everyone agrees. It’s more of a conversation ender than a conversation starter.
When looking at best practices for communication and collaboration, it’s easier for people to share their ideas and get involved. Humans have been working to communicate and collaborate ever since humans were a thing. Here’s the tangible benefits I see from this approach:
people have a clear way to contribute value,
the mental/emotional direction is positive,
and if people help write the “best practices” they’re way more likely to actually apply and adopt them.
Just submitted a PR to the repo. It adds a folder called Community Development that will hold best practices for communication, values, and questions.
Also, added a version control system for the CoC. This can help us document major and minor changes more effectively. As the CoC evolves it’s important that people are opting in to the latest version. This makes it an active process rather than a one time thing that people forget about. Hopefully this will result in more engagement and more real world application of the principles we’re working to cultivate
Also, added some feedback to the open issues on the repo. I really think we should move to GitHub as fast as possible. It’s much easier to keep things organized there. This makes it easier for people to understand the CoC and contribute feedback. It also makes it easier for us to have discussions around specific ideas rather than having them all mixed together in a thread.
Also, I was trying to find a definition of “Integrity Ring” to add to the repo. This way people who are coming from Twitter, Reddit, etc can get caught up all in one place. I didn’t see a flag for “Integrity Ring” when I searched for it on the main page of this forum though. Can someone please explain exactly what the “Integrity Ring” is?
