Public anti-harassment / civility policy for review and forum?

[acrymble]

In keeping with our attempts to promote diversity and a safe place to share ideas, I wondered if we might not want to adopt an anti-harassment policy for reviewers, authors, and contributors to our forum, which would be enforced by the editorial board, to make it clear that:

1) We accept scholarly debate, challenging of ideas and methods, disagreeing etc 2) We do not accept ad hominem attacks, aggression, or intimidation.

There's a good template on Geek feminism: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy

Would this be useful? I think we try to create that type of space already, but this might help make people more comfortable about contributing. @amandavisconti has done this for the DH slack website, which is where I got the idea.

[amandavisconti]

Great idea! I feel this would be useful. (It was the previous thread #152 about improving inclusion that made me finally set aside time to submit a lesson, for what it's worth—seeing discussions like this and an anti-harassment policy may attract more PH community members.)

[acrymble]

Attempt:

This is a statement of the Programming Historian's principles and sets expectations for the tone and style of all correspondence between reviewers, authors, editors, and contributors to our public forums.

The Programming Historian is dedicated to providing an open scholarly environment that offers community participants the freedom to thoroughly scrutize ideas, but also provides a harassment-free space for all contributors to the project, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion. We do not tolerate harassment or ad hominem attacks of community participants in any form. Participants violating these rules may be expelled from the community at the discretion of the editorial board. Thank you for helping us to create a safe space.

[fredgibbs]

I like it! We might also add that anyone feeling uncomfortable can or should contact any editor or the omsbudpeople.

[amandavisconti]

Would something about making learners with little knowledge in an area feel welcome be useful here? Perhaps this kind of belittling is already subsumed under harassment, but because it's a part of tech culture it might be helpful to specifically discuss it. I'm thinking of forums where I've seen questions be treated as "too simple to answer", people being derogatory about the choice to use a certain OS or language, or sincere requests for help directed to Let Me Google That For You. A couple possibilities if this is of interest:

"We believe there are no stupid questions: requests for clarification help improve our lessons and teach future learners who have the same question".

Or just adding something to the "regardless of" list such as "technical knowledge or experience".

[ianmilligan1]

Late to this as I've been on the road, apologies all.

I think this is a fantastic idea, @acrymble, and really love @amandavisconti's suggestion... the sort of snarkiness and "let me Google that for you" stuff over on Stack Overflow (a la this article) are worth trying to nip in the bud right away.

[acrymble]

Attempt 2:

This is a statement of the Programming Historian's principles and sets expectations for the tone and style of all correspondence between reviewers, authors, editors, and contributors to our public forums.

The Programming Historian is dedicated to providing an open scholarly environment that offers community participants the freedom to thoroughly scrutize ideas, to ask questions, make suggestions, or to requests for clarification, but also provides a harassment-free space for all contributors to the project, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion, or technical experience. We do not tolerate harassment or ad hominem attacks of community participants in any form. Participants violating these rules may be expelled from the community at the discretion of the editorial board. If anyone witnesses or feels they have been the victim of the above described activity, please contact our ombudspersons (Ian Milligan [email] or Miriam Posner [email]). Thank you for helping us to create a safe space.

[fredgibbs]

i think this is great, and that we should post this on the about page, as the second section (and maybe combine the open source and gold open access that will follow it).

[amandavisconti]

I like this. Thanks for drafting it, @acrymble!

[acrymble]

No way to make a sticky post like on most forums, huh? It'd be useful to have it closer to the github forum, since it feels quite separate from the website.

[ianmilligan1]

For starters, we could put a link in our site description? A la up here:

[wcaleb]

We could include it as a template in all new issues and pull requests, a la #189.

[miriamposner]

Just a note to say that I like it, too, and I'm so glad you thought to do this, Adam.

Miriam

On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 1:49 PM, W. Caleb McDaniel notifications@github.com wrote:

We could include it as a template in all new issues and pull requests, a la #189 https://github.com/programminghistorian/jekyll/issues/189.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/programminghistorian/jekyll/issues/229#issuecomment-194524586 .

[acrymble]

I have posted this on my review ticket for the latest submission: https://github.com/programminghistorian/ph-submissions/issues/11

This seems like a natural spot to put it as well.