[COC-discuss] Changes (and proposed changes) regarding the Code of Conduct

[María Arias de Reyna]

Dear OSGeo community,

As you may already know, I have been working for the last months in
improving our community procedures[1] to make it a safer space. Recent
events in the community have shown that we have a lot of work ahead.

We all, as OSGeo, must remove the recent bullying and campaigning mentality
that is unfortunately gradually become a part of our culture. Disclosing
private data or hinting threats is not helpful and can only make our
community less comfortable for everyone. We will work on improving actions
on harmful behavior.

This has been a slow task, but there are some actions taking place:

CoC committee members have become inactive. I volunteered to pick up the
task and lead a new CoC committee. Right now I am the only CoC member, but
I am looking for more volunteers. If only, to make sure that if I am
involved in any CoC incident, someone else can take care of it properly as
mediator.

I want to change also the way incidents and violations of the CoC are
reported. I noticed there are reports being done on person and on private
email, but never through the official channels (which right now is a
mailing list).To improve this, I will ask the SAC to replace the mailing
list with an alias and a form on the website. Also, there will be a public
list of who receives those emails so people reporting incidents will have a
clear understanding of who is receiving the information and decide to
contact privately only a subset of the team. Replacing the mailing list by
an alias that sends the data directly to the inbox of the CoC team is
important, as sometimes incidents are not reported just because the person
reporting is scared to leave a trace of the report or is not sure who will
be reading the report.

Another action I am going to propose is a change on the CoC itself. Our
community has grown a lot both in diversity and in numbers, and we need a
strict code of conduct that makes sure marginalized or harrased people is
always covered by it. We can't rely anymore on just common sense and good
faith.

Once the new board is settled, I am going to propose to change the current
CoC for another like the Contributor Covenant[2]. As it is a CoC shared by
many communities, this has the advantage of receiving the upgrades and
experience from other communities. As you can see, it fixes some of the
bugs from our CoC, like the assuming good intent and good faith[3] part
that made the current CoC useless on most cases. I will propose to add some
foreword to adapt to specifities for our community, but in my opinion, the
latest version of the Contributor Covenant is easy to read, simple, and
cover most of what we need. My hope is that this new CoC can be adapted to
all OSGeo Projects and Events that don't already have a CoC, so we have
full OSGeo universe covered by default.

I hope this actions will prove useful in the medium term and we don't have
to see more members leaving the community. We should remember to be
empathic and kind. We are all seeking the same goals and we should
encourage cooperation, not hinder each other. I know that developer
communities are very used to these bad behaviours, but I'm confident we can
grow better.

Have a nice day!
María.


[1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/board/2018-August/011640.html
[2] https://www.contributor-covenant.org/
[3]
https://thebias.com/2017/09/26/how-good-intent-undermines-diversity-and-inclusion/
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