Request for Comment: Stacks Code of Conduct (Beta)

[joberding]

Abstract

The following is an RFC for the Stacks Code of Conduct (Beta Version). Please review, make comments and suggestions on the proposed code of conduct. Prior work on the Code of Conduct and relevant documents can be found at https://github.com/stacksgov/pm/issues/119. The proposal and relevant milestones can be found at https://github.com/stacksgov/Stacks-Grants/issues/27.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders include all members of the Stacks community. Community members can be generally identified as members, contributors and leaders.

Problem

There is not an official code of conduct for the Stacks community that has been reviewed or voted upon by the community at large. On April 17, 2020, the Blockstack PBC team adopted a Code of Conduct based on the Contributor Covenant model. https://github.com/blockstack/stacks-blockchain/pull/1436/commits/38847fcf63894f3620320b67c2efe8fbe0cd9cea While the Contributor Covenant model is widely used in open source communities, there was no review or adoption of the April 17th code of conduct by the Stacks community at large. Even if the April 17th code of conduct is adopted by the community, there is no code of enforcement in existence. A code of conduct without a code of enforcement is useless.

Solution

The creation, adoption or adaption of a code of conduct submitted to the community for review and decision making via voting mechanism as proposed by the Governance group grant proposal. https://github.com/stacksgov/Stacks-Grants/issues/27

Anticipated Difficulties

Freedom of Speech An important potential problem is how wide the scope of enforcement should apply given freedom of speech issues. Some code of conduct models espouse enforcement related to communication outside the community. In addition, some members of our community believe that enforcement and removal should apply if community members engage in bad behavior in another public space.

Public Participation One anticipated difficulty is encouraging community participation in the code of conduct review and decision making process.

Risks

• Potential for stalled decision making.
• Failure to represent all members of the community.
• Too broad or too narrow in scope.
• Need to repeatedly update.
• Lack of acceptance by the community.

Stacks Code of Conduct - Beta

Purpose A primary goal of Stacks Community is to be inclusive to the largest number of contributors, with the most varied and diverse backgrounds possible. As such, we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion (or lack thereof). This code of conduct outlines our expectations for all those who participate in our community, as well as the consequences for unacceptable behavior. We invite all those who participate in the Stacks Community to help us create safe and positive experiences for everyone.

Open Citizenship A supplemental goal of this Code of Conduct is to increase open citizenship by encouraging participants to recognize and strengthen the relationships between our actions and their effects on our community. Communities mirror the societies in which they exist and positive action is essential to counteract the many forms of inequality and abuses of power that exist in society. If you see someone who is making an extra effort to ensure our community is welcoming, friendly, and encourages all participants to contribute to the fullest extent, we want to know.

A Can’t Be Evil Ethos A root ethos of the Stacks community is “Can’t Be Evil’. This rallying cry represents a deep core belief in a user owned internet flanked by the pillars of privacy and self sovereign identity. We strongly believe in individual rights together with decentralization. This ethos is a centerpiece of our community and development.

Our Pledge We as Stacks community members pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation. We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

Our Standards Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our community include:

• Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
• Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
• Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
• Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
• Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community

Examples of unacceptable behavior include:

• The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of any kind
• Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
• Public or private harassment
• Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, national origin, ethnic origin, nationality, immigration status, language, religion or lack thereof, or other identity marker.
• No racist, sexist, cissexist, ableist or otherwise oppressive behavior is allowed, casual or explicit. This includes any harmful language, behavior, or action toward people of color, trans folks, disabled and other marginalized identities in our community. These are violations of the Code of Conduct.
• Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

Enforcement Responsibilities Community moderators are responsible for clarifying and enforcing our standards of acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any behavior that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful. Community moderators have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate.

Scope This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event.

Enforcement Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported to the community leaders responsible for enforcement at moderator@stacks.org. All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly. All community leaders are obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.

Enforcement Guidelines Community leaders will follow these Community Impact Guidelines in determining the consequences for any action they deem in violation of this Code of Conduct:

1. Correction Community Impact: Use of inappropriate language or other behavior deemed unprofessional or unwelcome in the community. Consequence: A private, written warning from community leaders, providing clarity around the nature of the violation and an explanation of why the behavior was inappropriate. A public apology may be requested.

2. Warning Community Impact: A violation through a single incident or series of actions. Consequence: A warning with consequences for continued behavior. No interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, for a specified period of time. This includes avoiding interactions in community spaces as well as external channels like social media. Violating these terms may lead to a temporary or permanent ban.

3. Temporary Ban Community Impact: A serious violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior. Consequence: A temporary ban from any sort of interaction or public communication with the community for a specified period of time. No public or private interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, is allowed during this period. Violating these terms may lead to a permanent ban.

4. Permanent Ban Community Impact: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals. Consequence: A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the community.

Attribution This Code of Conduct is adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 2.0, available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/0/code_of_conduct.html.

Community Impact Guidelines were inspired by Mozilla’s code of conduct enforcement ladder.

Language was incorporated from the following Codes of Conduct: Citizen Code of Conduct licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. LGBTQ in Tech , licensed under a Creative Commons Zero License Django Project Code of Conduct, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Rust Code of Conduct

References

General Our Culture The Guide to Allyship Creative Commons: When we share, everyone wins

First Amendment Does Freedom of Speech Exist in Cryptocurrency Communities? First Amendment and Censorship | Advocacy, Legislation & Issues Mahanoy Area School District v. BL - SCOTUSblog

Participation Working Open & Public Participation Open Leadership Training Series : Working Open IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation Blockchain for Cities - A systematic literature review

Codes of Conduct http://safetyfirstpdx.org/resources/code_of_conduct.html Open Leadership Training Series : Write or Choose a Code of Conduct https://www.python.org/psf/conduct/ Your Code of Conduct HOWTO design a code of conduct for your community https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/ https://github.com/rust-lang/rust https://zcash.readthedocs.io/en/latest/rtd_pages/code_of_conduct.html https://electriccoin.co/code-of-conduct/ https://github.com/stumpsyn/policies/blob/master/citizen_code_of_conduct.md https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/0/code_of_conduct/ https://lgbtq.technology/coc.html

Moderation & Enforcement How We’re Making Code of Conduct Enforcement Real — and Scaling it. https://github.com/mozilla/inclusion https://github.com/mozilla/inclusion/pull/257/commits/dd8e90dee2ddbf94f65f1ca44069fcc5cc0dd77c?short_path=cc202f7#diff-cc202f7c9ffb912918fe950a7752b1a44e05396bf8a2c3f962eeb36acdfb3eaf Centralisation is a danger to democracy — Redecentralize.org Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

[alexrudloff]

I'm glad to see this getting so much attention! It seems that despite the differing opinions in this conversation thread, everyone seems to be converging on a revision to this document: that the CoC proposed here be limited in scope to offline and online spaces facilitated or owned by the Stacks Foundation. Is that understanding correct? @joberding Is that what you had in mind here, or am I misreading this?

At a meta-level, there seems to be a general concern that a CoC is an instrument of censorship and oppression, and its adoption would lead to a reduction in user freedoms. I think that the opposite is true, because this stance ignores the status quo without a CoC. Without a CoC, there are zero checks on the power that influential community members hold. Moderators can ban anyone they don't like; evangelists can smear anyone they don't like; core devs can belittle and reject PRs from anyone they don't like; etc. Resolving conflicts devolves into struggle sessions for legitimacy.

That does not sound like a freedom-respecting status quo to me, nor does it sound like a fertile ground upon which bottom-up community governance can flourish. The Stacks community is fortunate in that there do not yet seem to be any high-influence members who use their positions of authority to harm others. But, I say "yet" because as the community grows, it's a statistical certainty that this will not always be the case. In my opinion, it would behoove us to prepare for this eventuality before this happens.

In my mind, the true purpose of a CoC is that of a peace treaty. A good CoC will restrain the power that influence brings in order to stop it from being wielded to harm others. The purpose isn't to muzzle everyone or police everyone's activity here and elsewhere. Instead, it's to make sure that the folks who find themselves in positions of influence within the community are held accountable for how they wield the power that this influence brings. The more power they can wield, the higher the standards to which the community ought to hold them.

What would such CoC look like? It would do the following:

• Define a "bill of rights" for community members. For example, community members have a right to not be harassed by other community members.
• Define a procedure for identifying and impartially investigating possible violations of a member's rights. For example, community moderators could offer a private (but auditable) email address to which concerns could be submitted.
• Define a procedure for resolving any such investigations, including (this is important) the set of permissible actions that can be taken by those who wield the power of influence to resolve them. For example, a mod must suspend a user who unwittingly links to a scam website, but they cannot ban them for that on the first offense (or their mod privileges would be revoked).

This largely already happens today. All a CoC would do is codify it, so we all know what we all can expect from one another, and we can collectively distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate uses of all the forms of soft and hard power community members can accrue and wield here.

I think where people get concerned is less around the expected behavior, and more around who enforces it and how. Just as there are expectations around personal behavior, there's an expectation that protocols/networks themselves remain neutral -- if only to prevent "in groups" excessively bullying "out groups" through perceived CoC violations.

In other words,

• No one wants to work with jerks.
• Limiting the jerk factor increases participation
• Jerks ought to be allowed to exist because who gets to decide who is one in the first place.

My attempt to guide this conversation into something more productive (imo, at least) used Stacks Foundation as the vehicle for limiting that, but that was just an idea. I don't know if SF related things would extend to, say, github core discussions. Perhaps by way of grants? No idea.

I understand the sentiment and successful communities tend to need a CoC of some sort in order to scale.

@jcnelson The proposal should not be revised, it should be withdrawn altogether and the topic should become a Stacks Foundation internal matter.

This is a repo is for the governance of the Stacks project, not for the governance of the Stacks Foundation.

If the proposal stays here limited in scope, at some point what will happen is someone will try to increase the scope and we'll be back to spending our time and energy on this argument again.

The proposal needs to be withdrawn completely.

@john-neoswap Request for Comments generate comments. That's their entire point. STOP. You've made your point already 10 times.

[john-neoswap]

@alexrudloff Okay, I support keeping the conversation here as long as the proposal is also amended to say,

"This Code of Conduct pertains to the Stacks Foundation only. No attempt will ever be made to apply these ideas to the broader ecosystem, and no attempt to increase the scope of this code of conduct will ever be made."

[RagnarLifthrasir]

Let's go back to the reason for this proposal. Scroll to the top of the page from February 2021. It reads,

Problem There is not an official code of conduct for the Stacks community that has been reviewed or voted upon by the community at large.

What's the proof that this is a problem? Where's the documented evidence?

The burden of proof is on EVERYONE who supports an "official" code of conduct. Reply below with all examples of egregious behavior that requires a potentially potent tool for censorship and centralized control. In your evidence, please include the following:

1. Date of incident
2. Person or group
3. Summary of behavior
4. Actions taken or attempts to resolve the situation
5. Links supporting all of the above

Then explain why existing means of dealing with such problems are insufficient.

Until and unless the supporters of this proposal can prove that an official code of conduct for the Stacks community that has been reviewed or voted upon by the community at large is a problem so significant that it requires such a drastic, highly unpopular, dangerous tool, then this proposal is DOA.

[jsadlowe]

I appreciate the effort of this SIP but am against it because it doesn’t solve a problem and introduces new red tape. More importantly it has turned off a lot of people in the community, and is negatively impacting the perception of the ecosystem that so many of us are investing time and money to build. Pls remove this distraction from Github ASAP. Thx

[muneeb-ali]

I think enough community members have voiced concerns in this thread that the first step should be for the Stacks Foundation to define its own code of conduct for community events, online discussions, etc. And I agree that is not a SIP-level thing. The Foundation can work with the community members who are interested in this to produce that doc. It'd also give some real data points to how the CoC was practically useful, e.g., the community members who benefitted from it while participating in events/discussions that followed the CoC can then report back and share their experience. Did it make any difference at all? In what practical situations was it useful or harmful? We should be able to collect data about these questions.

Until Step 1 is done, and some real data around the benefits (or harms) of a CoC is collected, I think further discussions on this SIP are moot. Let's take baby steps first!

I also think discussions are generally healthy, so close as spam seems like one extreme end of the spectrum to me. However, I do believe that we should be careful about how much time/energy gets sucked into these things. Generally speaking, I'd love to see this much engagement and discussion around other SIPs or topics like miner decentralization, faster L1 speeds, etc.

EDIT: updated some language to make it more clear.

[RagnarLifthrasir]

I think there is enough evidence...

Then please provide it.

Please include the following:

1. Date of incident
2. Person or group
3. Summary of behavior
4. Actions taken or attempts to resolve the situation
5. Links supporting all of the above

Then explain why existing means of dealing with such problems are insufficient.

[muneeb-ali]

@RagnarLifthrasir I meant the other way around i.e., enough community members have voiced concerns that CoC is not needed that we should not proceed here and instead as first step the Foundation should work on a CoC for Foundation related things. I'm not suggesting here that there is enough evidence that a CoC is needed (I haven't seen any incidents).

(I also edited the earlier comment to make things more clear.)

[RagnarLifthrasir]

Thanks for clarifying @muneeb-ali.

However, if enough community members have voiced concerns that a CoC is unnecessary, why should the Foundation work on a CoC for Foundation-related things? The Foundation needs to first convincingly prove that a problem exists. Until a problem is proven, solutions aren't needed.

[sjc5]

The fundamental confusions in this entire discussion boil down to these two false ideas:

• The community controls the foundation (false)
• The foundation controls the community (false)

I read Muneeb's statement as impliedly saying "if they so wish" -- i.e., "the Foundation should work on a CoC if they so wish"

[RagnarLifthrasir]

On a different note, if we were to ask people active in Foundation-related things, they will say the biggest problem the Foundation faces is centralization. Therefore, the Foundation should first focus on decentralizing itself. I've suggested splitting it into three entities:

1. Core protocol
2. Grants
3. Events and communication

Then ideally, these three entities each become their own DAO.

Isn't this the point of Stacks?

[RagnarLifthrasir]

The fundamental confusions in this entire discussion boil down to these two false ideas:

• The community controls the foundation (false)
• The foundation controls the community (false)

I read Muneeb's statement as impliedly saying "if they so wish" -- i.e., "the Foundation should work on a CoC if they so wish"

The Foundation is the central hub of all things Stacks. You can't disentangle the Foundation from the "community." The core problem with the Foundation is centralization. Please look at my comment above on my suggestions for decentralizing it.

[mrwagmibtc]

The fundamental confusions in this entire discussion boil down to these two false ideas:

• The community controls the foundation (false)
• The foundation controls the community (false)

I read Muneeb's statement as impliedly saying "if they so wish" -- i.e., "the Foundation should work on a CoC if they so wish"

The Foundation is the central hub of all things Stacks. You can't disentangle the Foundation from the "community." The core problem with the Foundation is centralization. Please look at my comment above on my suggestions for decentralizing it.

Excellent point, @RagnarLifthrasir. Agreed. #Decentralize

[njordhov]

@muneeb-ali The Stacks Foundation has already had their lawyers write a code of conduct, and CoCs are also in place in the Github repos. Since their place of operation is in New York, it is likely a legal requirement. As a private entity, they of course have the right to unilaterally set their own rules.

@RagnarLifthrasir questions whether it is a problem that a Code of Conduct has not "been reviewed or voted upon by the community at large." From a perspective of decentralization of power, it is preferable to have a broad participatory process behind a CoD rather than having it imposed by a central entity.

The Stacks community space on Discord is already moderated, with many members having moderator (CM) privileges. For several years, drafts of the proposal in this RfC have been in beta testing in the Stacks community discord as the de facto Code of Conduct guiding the moderators. The world has not come to an end.

For those who are opposed to having such a governance structure, we could as an experiment suspend all community moderation for a while to see how it works out. This would involve opening up the community space for a free-for-all with no rules, no moderation, and no bans. I'd be delighted to do my part in exploring where that may take us.

Edit: fix single letter typo.

[RagnarLifthrasir]

The world has not come to an end.

Then a top-down CoC isn't needed @njordhov

[RagnarLifthrasir]

The fundamental issue isn't a certain version or scope of a CoC. The fundamental issue is the Foundation is much too centralized. And the first priority should be to create a roadmap to decentralization.

Then each small community can decide FOR THEMSELVES how they want to be governed, rather than a small group of people deciding for the millions of Stacks users.

[RagnarLifthrasir]

The correct approach is opt-in, bottom-up, where people and organizations choose values for themselves and who they want or do not want to work with.

Rather than a small group of native-Engish speakers living in the US deciding how to govern Stacks people worldwide, imagine tens, even hundreds, of Stacks communities deciding for themselves. You'd have communities that reflect the interests and values of different geographical regions, religions, political leanings, gender, native language, tech and financial goals, etc.

Decentralization = Empowered diversity of people and thought.

Let's avoid Western hegemony. And centralized power in general.

[joberding]

Thank you everyone for all your feedback. I have never seen this much activity or interest in this code of conduct which has been in existence since 2021 and is available in the moderators Read Me on the Stacks Discord

First, I would like to clear up some confusion relative to this version that you have all been commenting on.

This document is not a SIP.

It is an RFC created for community input. It is a draft meant for revision.

This draft was created based on input from the community in 2021. Since then, there have been many discussions and feedback sessions in the governance working group, in other community forums, and with individuals.

This issue has been maintained in this repo to continuously gather feedback from the community.

The original purpose of this CoC

This Coc was created for the Stacks Discord and Telegram communities. It has been worded broadly to allow for community discussion and feedback.

Why a SIP?

The reason that a CoC is being put forward to become a SIP is that there has never been a formally recognized CoC . The SIP process enables the community to be actively involved in governance to oppose, reject and come to a consensus about proposals that are introduced by community members.

This is not a top-down CoC:

I have been a Stacks community member since 2019 and am the primary author of this CoC. I am a self-employed independent business owner. I have never been employed by the Stacks foundation although I have received a grant. In fact, I have directly opposed the Foundation on a number of issues on behalf of the community.

Saying this is a top-down CoC has absolutely zero substance and is laughable.

This is a community-based CoC. Everyone has a say in this CoC. It is up to the community to decide. Or would you prefer one that the Foundation's lawyers draft up, because that is essentially what you are driving this toward as the ultimate end goal.

[sjc5]

I realize that the COC can be applied much more broadly. It relates to bad actors within community groups and discussions and those acting in bad faith on the blockchain.

@joberding It's statements like the above that get everyone worked up. If you now are saying the above is no longer your position, and the whole point of this is just for Foundation-controlled discord and telegram spaces, then I don't think any of us really care all that much.

EDIT: Link to quote: https://github.com/stacksgov/pm/issues/132#issuecomment-1164742905

[owenstrevor]

First, I want to applaud @joberding on the effort that went into this and the thorough job she has done. It's great having experts like you in the community to spearhead this.

I understand the purpose of a Code of Conduct. We have a Code of Conduct for Stacks Accelerator program which is fairly straight forward for an educational program/professional networking community. At the end of the day though, in our program I am the final boss, so it's more centralized. Which is part of the point. The Code of Conduct serves more to warn people about the things myself and our team have decided are unacceptable. We also live and die by our decisions here: if we misgovern our community, the returns on our fund will suffer and people won't want to work with us.

But when it comes to a decentralized open source community, I think it's quite different. Also, I'm far from an expert here just to note. My thought is that the people governing behavior may not be accountable to the blowback from misgovernance. In addition, while I can understand the need in principle, I've also read blog posts on HackerNews about Code's of Conduct weaponized in open source communities specifically. Essentially, used as a political tool for a small group to oust key people they didn't like or agree with.

Furthmore, I've had several people reach out to me (including VCs) concerned about the Code of Conduct discussion distracting Stacks from a very important moment where it is breaking through the noise and riding a wave of interest in Bitcoin that is likely to continue growing in the coming months. I'm not an expert on Code of Conduct's, as I'm sure most people in the community are not either. The feeling I am getting is that this is a very important undertaking that needs attention and consensus built around it--it's not something that should be rushed.

My perception is that Stacks community today is overwhelming friendly and welcoming to new people. The only complaint I've heard about Stacks is the perception that it is cliquey with a lot of important conversations happening among "OGs" who have been in the ecosystem for 5+ years. I think the working groups initiative is helping to improve this by moving key conversations out of silos among people who are previous colleagues or friends into a more open forum.

Overall, it's not clear to me what problem the Code of Conduct actually solves today, other than that we need a Code of Conduct. I'm not sure this is strong enough of a problem considering the hesitation and opposition in the community. I could imagine that as Stacks gets 10x - 100x bigger than it is now, a Code of Conduct would be of much greater importance. In addition, it seems more apt to allow the Code of Conduct to develop out of specific problems the community experiences as it grows, rather than to try and predict those problems in advance. Especially considering that a mismatch among the problem and solution could hinder our growth.

All this is to say, I wonder if it's worth it to slow down and take more time to get buy in on this, but also to do so at a time when there is not a mad dash to participate in the once in a decade boom we're seeing happening on Bitcoin right now. Revisit in 6 months or so. I'm not hearing a lot of people asking for this yet, but I'm seeing a lot of people extremely opposed/concerned.

[njordhov]

@RagnarLifthrasir The fundamental issue is the Foundation is much too centralized. And the first priority should be to create a roadmap to decentralization.

Not disagreeing, but that's off-topic and a discussion that should be taken elsewhere.

The correct approach is opt-in, bottom-up, where people and organizations choose values for themselves and who they want or do not want to work with.

You're lecturing to the choir here, but this is again irrelevant to the topic of discussion. Anybody can spin up their own communities as they see fit, without permission. If you, I or others find the governance of the Stacks discord community too restrictive, we're free to start your own unmoderated one (as others have in the past). As you say, "imagine tens, even hundreds, of Stacks communities deciding for themselves." Let's do it.

[joberding]

@owenstrevor Agreed! Revisit at a later date.

[john-neoswap]

@owenstrevor good solution. Table for 6 months and assess whether such a CoC is even needed in the meantime.

[RagnarLifthrasir]

Hello @joberding.

I see the proposed approach as two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

Could you please directly address my points above regarding decentralizing Stacks? And how it empowers greater diversity of peoples and ideas?

[badonyx]

After spending significant time reviewing the SIP process . It appears that there is no type that fits a Stacks Code of Conduct SIP. The only thing close is Informational . However, the informational type states that it "does not require any action to be taken on the part of any user". A code of conduct most definitely requires action on the part of users by requiring conformity to the code. If I am correct, the first step is a Meta SIP to create a new type. Thoughts? Am I missing something? https://github.com/stacksgov/pm/issues/132#issuecomment-1072045459

@joberding yes, you are missing something. SIPs are for amendments to the core protocol OR to the SIP process itself. Your proposal does not fit into the existing SIP types because it is off-topic (read: spam).

Saying this is a top-down CoC has absolutely zero substance and is laughable.

This was precisely your problem statement.

Problem There is not an official code of conduct for the Stacks community that has been reviewed or voted upon by the community at large.

The proposal itself is self-contradictory and therefore untenable. I recommend starting over from scratch with an increased focus on clarity of language and scope.

Whatever is being proposed here: I vehemently oppose the creation of a SIP codifying a top-down COC for the entire stacks community at large.

[john-neoswap]

@RagnarLifthrasir, I think we now have six months to discuss that.

Given the huge opportunity that Ordinals presents Stacks at this time, I propose we put this discussion on hold altogether for three months and reopen discussion during the summer.

[RagnarLifthrasir]

@RagnarLifthrasir The fundamental issue is the Foundation is much too centralized. And the first priority should be to create a roadmap to decentralization.

Not disagreeing, but that's off-topic and a discussion that should be taken elsewhere.

The correct approach is opt-in, bottom-up, where people and organizations choose values for themselves and who they want or do not want to work with.

You're lecturing to the choir here, but this is again irrelevant to the topic of discussion. Anybody can spin up their own communities as they see fit, without permission. If you, I or others find the governance of the Stacks discord community too restrictive, we're free to start your own unmoderated one (as others have in the past). As you say, "imagine tens, even hundreds, of Stacks communities deciding for themselves." Let's do it.

The "If you don't like it you can leave" approach centralizes power by disenfranchising and intimidating dissent. We should ACTIVELY be decentralizing.. Otherwise, what's the purpose of Stacks?

[joberding]

@0xbabo SIP 000 has gone through multiple revisions since that comment. SIPs related to non-technical or informational matters are allowed and in some instances may be necessary. I think we as a community can decide on these matters going forward. For me, I need to get back to building. Discussions about the CoC/SIPs (as much as I love them) will not put food on my table. LFG!

[mrwagmibtc]

@RagnarLifthrasir The fundamental issue is the Foundation is much too centralized. And the first priority should be to create a roadmap to decentralization.

Not disagreeing, but that's off-topic and a discussion that should be taken elsewhere.

The correct approach is opt-in, bottom-up, where people and organizations choose values for themselves and who they want or do not want to work with.

You're lecturing to the choir here, but this is again irrelevant to the topic of discussion. Anybody can spin up their own communities as they see fit, without permission. If you, I or others find the governance of the Stacks discord community too restrictive, we're free to start your own unmoderated one (as others have in the past). As you say, "imagine tens, even hundreds, of Stacks communities deciding for themselves." Let's do it.

The "If you don't like it you can leave" approach centralizes power by disenfranchising and intimidating dissent. We should ACTIVELY be decentralizing.. Otherwise, what's the purpose of Stacks?

Hear, hear.