Code of conduct

[benschwarz]

TLDR; Ruby Australia supported events are required to follow a code of conduct. Organisers, sponsors and attendees of RA supported events must adhere to this code of conduct.

• As an organiser, you, the ruby alumni / support people will be expected to take action and do whatever it necessary to provide the expected environment for all people present.
• As an attendee, if you do not follow these requirements, action will be taken.
• As a sponsor, your sponsorship may be revoked. We may provide contracts describing these conditions, and moneys may not be returned. (That, is a whole other ballgame, but we need to cover it.)

  Background

Ruby Australia now offers support to Railscamp, Rubyconf & Railsgirls events — that support still needs to be defined (I'll cross-reference a new github issue), but in a nutshell it means: limited financial support, insurance, banking and general administration.

As such, in order for Ruby Australia to facilitate professional and safe events, with support to all volunteers for aforementioned events, we need a document that describes what we expect of all participants.

---

I'd like to supply this quote, from this article.

I do not think you are responsible for everyone’s behavior or anything puppet-master-ish, but I think you are responsible for defining the intellectual “space” everyone’s behavior is conducted in. You create and enforce the boundaries. You define what is okay and what is not. And if you refuse to own that power, then you are an unsafe event runner, and I don’t trust you.

Deliverables

These items will change as we add detail to this issue over time.

• [ ] Add a code of conduct to ruby.org.au, available in either the footer or main navigation
• [ ] Main navigation to be reduced, we'll need a bit of a re-jiggle of content here
• [ ] Code of conduct to be sent to, discussed and reviewed with current railscamp, rubyconf and railsgirls organisers

This thread / issue is the place to pitch suggestions, or reference pull requests, all opinions are welcome. Keep it friendly and professional.

References:

• Python code of conduct (Thanks @garann!)
• JSConf code of conduct
• Pycon code of conduct (Thanks @stefsullrew)

Matz is nice, so we are nice too

[geelen]

I think this is really important, thanks Ben for posting this issue.

The JSConf code of conduct is great, though maybe it needs to be adapted/extended for railscamps (where organisers aren't wearing STAFF shirts, being sent home may be more complicated, etc). Good starting point though.

[quamen]

I think this is a positive step forward, and important that we have a discussion about it, so thanks for starting the discussion @benschwarz.

I like the quotation, in that spirit here are some of my thoughts:

I think any code of conduct should be about the general atmosphere and behaviour, including specific do's and don'ts is useful but it leaves open the argument of "You never said I couldn't specifically behave in this way".

I'm not religious, but a "do unto others as you would have done to you" over-arching statement would be good. Followed by something along the lines of, "if someone tells you what you're doing is not cool, cease doing it without argument". You do not get to decide what offends others, if they tell you they are offended, do the right thing by them.

---

I just read the JSConf document after writing out my thoughts, seems like a pretty good place to start with our own code of conduct.

If we need Staff or Organiser t-shirts for events, I'm sure we could sort that out no worries.

[hughevans]

Having these sorts of policies and frameworks in place is a massive boon to organisers. Sponsorship is especially tricky, so being able to point sponsors at a concrete set of statements is great.

[jonathantneal]

A general rule of thumb, both in our code and in our conduct is: "Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle

I am also a fan of the IndieWebCamp Code of Conduct:

"Be respectful of other people, respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered, and if you can't resolve an issue contact staff. If you are being a problem, it will be apparent and you'll be asked to leave."

I like reading things that are positive and respectful, versus negative and accusatory, so, with that in mind, here is my draft of a Code of Conduct @ https://gist.github.com/jonathantneal/6314522

[SlexAxton]

While very in favor of codes of conducts, my one suggestion is to essentially leave a clause in that says "Because you are offended, doesn't mean there was wrong-doing, and because you weren't offended doesn't mean there wasn't wrong doing. The decision to remove someone from the conference will be made by the staff of the event, and we'd appreciate you coming directly to us with issues so we can deal with them swiftly and appropriately."

The only reason I like to say something along those lines (you can definitely pretty it up) is because people are really weird and have a lot of incorrect hang ups. People who are offended by something like two dudes holding hands shouldn't have their world view forced on everyone else for the sole reason that something was 'offensive.' It also encourages people to bring issues to you, rather than invoke the code of conduct themselves.

For the most part, breaking a code of conduct is something that "you know when you see it." They are fairly easy to find technicalities and apply personal bias to. So I'd encourage some language that decides who the arbiter(s) are, and explicitly only allow issues to flow through her/him/them.

[lachlanhardy]

I've spent a lot of time in the last few years trying to learn to set aside my privilege or at least view it from outside. It's remarkably hard, so I'm stoked to see this happening.

I hate that "Matz is nice, so we are nice too" isn't enough for everybody, but I can understand why that's the case.

I'm completely with @quamen on describing the high-level attitudes and behaviours we want rather than specifics. I also think @jonathantneal's gist is a great example of what we want. I'd almost take it as is.

Explicit organiser/staff tees are important as identifiers. If somebody unfamiliar with the community or event is upset or flustered, they may not remember who to go to or who welcomed them at the start. It also provides a sense of authority when addressing a potentially troublesome situation. It's not just some other member of the community telling you to calm down or change your behaviour (although it'd be nice if you'd listen to them too) but it is an authorised member of the community.

On a similar note, I noticed some of the other codes of conduct listed above have explicit contact details on them. I think that's vital.

On the RubyAU site, I recommend listing the committee member names, photos, emails and phone numbers at the bottom of the code of conduct. I know the names, photos and sites are already listed on the committee pages, but this is about contactability and discretion. (for the latter reason, I don't advocate listing twitter profiles etc as contacts for these circumstances, although if people use public channels, that's their choice and their concerns should be addressed. But perhaps taken to a private channel, preferably in person).

This, of course, means that each event does need its own specific code of conduct if only to change who the contacts are.

And it means that if you volunteer to be a committee member or event organiser, you volunteer to have your phone number publicly on the web.

I consider that a fair trade off for being available to anyone who is uncomfortable or worse.

This is turning large, so I'll stop for now.

(And, hey, happy to be an official contact for this kind of thing at any event I'm attending. I have some experience in dealing with conflict resolution, harassment situations and the like.)

[mfhholmes]

From my experience:

• taking undue offence is as bad as giving undue offence - as well as the bullies & boorish idiots there are "permanent victims" who love the drama of being offended. Any code of conduct needs to allow for this.
• rigid codes of conduct dealing with specific behaviours with specific rules tend to encourage bad behaviour because they engender an 'it's not banned so it must be OK' attitude.
• no set of rules will cover all situations, so it's better to have a set of guidelines and an impartial judge who can decide on the specifics of each situation

I agree completely that the organisers of an event are responsible for setting the tone and policing behaviour :)

Good initiative :)

[mipearson]

as on irc: Don't discuss it, it will turn into a shiftest. Take some people who know what they're doing, get them to help you write it, ship it.

Most of the people here (myself included) have no experience with the complexities of an something like this and their commentary / personal hangups will be harmful to the process, not helpful.

[SlexAxton]

I think quite a few of the people who've commented have experience writing these specifically for the intent of running tech conferences. Everyone seems to be in pretty good agreement, and the output has been quite positive.

[mipearson]

That's cos @benschwarz hasn't posted it to the rails-oceania list yet ;)

[DylanLacey]

I have to agree wholeheartedly with the "Offense != Wrongdoing" comment. I think, in many ways, tech event codes of conduct are best done like the Team Values statements of Agile fame; They're agreements on ways to act to other people to maximize awesome outcomes. Lists of rules aren't as useful as a set of ideals to live.

I also really like the idea of giving the attendees the power to help encourage behaviour fitting the code... Stuff like "If someone says you're making them uncomfortable, please stop" as mentioned, but also making it clear that the organisers have the final say, but not the only responsibility.

[mermop]

Hi, I'm a bit of an outsider but was one of the people who raised this in the first place so I thought I'd contribute.

We went through a bit of this at Rails Girls Wellington - the code of conduct we ended up with is here - even though we didn't expect there to be any problems at a one-day majority-women workshop, and there weren't. We spoke to a few people who'd had experience facilitating larger events with more complicated communities, and that really helped.

The processes surrounding the code of conduct - what the organisers expect to do when there's a complaint - are kind of more important than the code itself, and it's not the kind of thing that can be crowdsourced. It is really important to have community legitimacy for the policy itself, so it is definitely worth discussing it - even though mipearson has a good point that much of the commentary will probably be fairly uninformed.

The processes that we ended up with - although they were untested - were setting up three people as contacts for complaints. If someone came to one of them with a complaint, we would take them aside and discuss it to figure out exactly what happened, and what action they wanted to be taken. This is important - again, although we didn't get first hand experience, we were told by someone with more experience that it's really important you don't take any action that's more severe than what the complainant wants to happen.

For example, if X is annoying Y, and Y asks the contact to have a quiet word to X to make it clear that their behaviour is unacceptable, expelling X from the event is going to make Y really uncomfortable as well as making X unhappy.

So after talking to the complainant - one on one is best for this - you'd then get two or three people to take the person or people who have been complained about aside and have a chat with them. It's important to outnumber them in this conversation, just in terms of power dynamics.

Chances are that the person who's been complained about doesn't think they have done anything wrong, and it's possible that they haven't. The conversation with them is the most difficult - most of the time you won't want to expel them, just encourage them to stop a certain behaviour.

However, although there's a perception that people abuse these complaint functions, going to someone with a complaint about someone else's behaviour is difficult and most people will let things go a fair while before they do it. Every complaint should be taken seriously, if it's something covered by the code of conduct, even if you don't think it is that bad. The example of someone being made uncomfortable by two dudes holding hands is something that wouldn't be covered by the code of conduct anyway.

Getting together a code of conduct that everyone can respect is the first step in having functional avenues for complaint. The ideal end result of getting those avenues working is events where people who inadvertently make people uncomfortable can be pulled up and made aware of their behaviour, people who intentionally harass people can face repercussions from people other than the people they've harassed, and people from groups vulnerable to harassment or people-being-dicks-without-noticing-they-are-being-dicks - such as women, ethnic minorities, LGBTetc people - can feel comfortable coming along and contributing to the community.

[garann]

@benschwarz, I think there may be a misattribution up there? I can take no credit for involvement with the Python code of conduct. But since I'm here.. A lot of codes of conduct seem to focus on attendees' rights to complain, and I think that makes them less effective because no one really wants to complain. Whatever the code of conduct states (and I think y'all are right that it should be as general as possible), if it's clear that representatives of the conference will take primary responsibility for displaying that kind of good behavior and having a little chat with anyone who's not getting it, it seems a lot more legitimate.

[benschwarz]

@garann oh, I just updated it with attribution for suggesting the link. I'd meant to reference a lot more stuff in the issue when I raised it, but I had a lot of software to ship, so it was a little rushed :smile_cat:

[tjmcewan]

@benschwarz has there been any movement on this? I'd like to get the CoC on the site. If you haven't already, can you please discuss @jonathantneal's proposed code with the parties you mentioned above? I'll have a go at the navigation within the next week or so.

[tjmcewan]

:+1: It's great; let's get it up.

[joshprice]

:+1: Really like the tone and succinctness. Happy for this to be published.

The YOW policies also read well. Posting here for reference: http://yowconference.com.au/policies/

[quamen]

:+1: :shipit:

[DylanLacey]

This is excellent.

[mariovisic]

I had a read though and this looks excellent guys :+1: