I have looked around the documentation section for some expression of the conduct and behavior norms of the Drupal community, and the best I have found are here:

(general and not exclusively about conduct) http://drupal.org/node/314178
(specific) http://drupal.org/irc/courtesy

These are OK policies and the fact of it being Freenode's policy too means it needs to be explicitly stated.

I'm wondering if we have or should have explicitly documented policies and guidelines that apply across the board: forums, issue queues, conferences, IRC, etc.

What I do not propose is an enumeration of prohibitions: no sexism, no racism, no this, no that. These are fine red lines to draw, but they don't tell me anything positive about how I should act.

Wikipedia is a community with more-or-less FOSS-values where there's no shared assumptions about specific politics or culture. They have an exhaustive set of well-documented conduct policies that address actual conduct instead of beliefs or views.

Some of the more clever examples of wikipedia conduct policy:

Of course, Wikipedia has a policies about how to resolve conflict and discuss new policies. We have issue queues.

Does the Drupal community have documented policies that I've overlooked?

Is there any value to developing policies and guidelines that explain how to positively interact for the good of the community in the same level of detail as we document how to implement hooks or override themes?

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Argh. I'm a bad proofreader:

Of course, Wikipedia also has policies about how to resolve conflict and discuss new policies. We have issue queues.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

I'm digging up examples of how the community has expressed standards of conduct. I'll only update this comment with more examples I find to avoid cluttering the issue any more than I already do.

On Drupal.org

IRC Guidelines
http://drupal.org/irc/courtesy

Help Other Users
http://drupal.org/node/317293

How to report bugs effectively
http://drupal.org/node/19279

How to enact change within the Drupal community
http://drupal.org/node/36602

Tips for posting to the Drupal forums
http://drupal.org/forum-posting

Off Drupal.org:

Addison Berry's presentation "It's the people, stupid." (notes here are important.)
http://www.slideshare.net/add1sun/its-the-people-stupid-presentation

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

The only page I know of is the courtesy one and I like this idea alot. I would be really helpful to have a more general page, much like http://drupal.org/forum-posting, to which we can point people when necessary. I like the wikipedia etiquette page you linked above. The irc and forum specific pages could be children of the main one.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

What reported for forum posts is generically valid for other posts; maybe that page could be made more generic (it could also contain a section about forum posts).

chachasikes’s picture

chachasikes commented

Thanks for starting this thread. The wikipedia civility guidelines are awesome.

Related: What do we do 'in the case of an emergency?' (An emergency being someone posting something so offensive that it needs swift action, usually to prevent a hurtful argument. drupal.org & groups.drupal.org)

Don't know if we have community mediators, and we definitely don't seem to have a link in a visible place. I looked at drupal.org & groups.drupal.org and didn't see anything obvious. The pages you pointed to could possibly be reached by going to 'documentation > get involved' -- but then i didn't see anything even still.

Wikipedia has a 'community portal' link on the left side of their pages. From 'community portal' there is a bold link that says 'content dispute guidelines' -- pretty clear path to get where you are going.

Doesn't make sense to put it under 'Get Involved' as the only instance. By the time you go looking for content dispute resolution, you are probably already very involved in drupal.org & might not reread the basic handbook pages. I would definitely look for some sort of 'community' button & expect to see a 'dealing with abusive situations' button.

In the event of an emergency I would:
if only mildly offensive i would ignore
if publicly wrong, i would probably say something publicly if it threatened a community's ability to contribute to drupal in a safe & supportive climate

if content totally inappropriate (leaning towards needing to be removed/blocked)
*look around on drupal to see what i am supposed to do (don't think i would find anything...)
*ask someone to please take it down (depending on what it is...if the bad thing fits some sort of 'incivility' features list)
*googling 'drupal report abuse' or other common phrases on other websites
*say something to friends on IRC, asking what to do
*if it occurred to me, contact administrators of the forum (but i probably wouldn't think of that if i were new)

what i could do (i think)
* contact designated 'facilitator/mediators' to ask for help (being encouraged to do so by using the 'contact' form) it would be important to know that those people were committed to responding in a timely manner. those people could have a 'community mediation training' where they learn about online dispute handling.
* look at a civility guideline & repost a link to that
* read something about not taking what people say online too much to heart. online forums can get very dramatic & unless those are carefully mediated so as to produce a positive, change inducing, community strengthening outcome -- it's usually a waste of time. people say mean things to get attention sometimes.

arianek’s picture

arianek commented

susbcribe

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
commented

My feelings about codes of conduct are summarized here: http://drupal.org/node/515722#comment-1799188

The gist: Our community governs by common sense, and we don't need guidelines for common sense. In my experience, troublemakers get penalized, good people who screw up get talked to, and everyone else gets left alone. In every community I've ever been a part of where common sense has attempted to be codified, troublemakers go out of their way to find loopholes in the rules, or to trick generally good people into entrapment. No, thanks.

Even in severe cases (such as sexism, death threats, etc.) this "common sense" approach seems to have worked for our community. I'm not sure what the catalyst is behind the request for further formalizing this, but unless there's an extremely compelling need, I'd be -1, personally.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

@chachasikes: The Wikipedia documents are interesting to me because of the novel ways they express the concepts and fit the context of that community's activities and tools. Everything in Wikipedia is documented and logged, so the processes are built around the inherent availability of evidence and the automatic rejection of off-wiki stuff. Things that are discussed off-wiki are always irrelevant to any discussion of user/editor behavior unless it deals specifically with attempts to violate the basic policies of Wikipedia (e.g. the three revert rule, violating another user's anonymity, etc.).

@webchick: I agree that codifying common sense is not possible or desirable. However, there are small declarations here and there that certain modes of operating are positive or helpful and others are negative or harmful. (I've assembled some of these mentions in this issue.)

We have a lingo and we take for granted that it's comprehensible. "Bike-shedding" is a fine example. People use it all the time, but it's not documented on drupal.org. I had to look it up the first time I read it. It's an esoteric notion, but the definition reflects the real challenges of working collaboratively online.

I already said that I don't think a list of prohibitions and rules is appropriate. I'm secure knowing that we're governed by "common sense," but perhaps what I'm searching for is a way to name common sense. If we could put names to the common sense governing principles (like bike-shedding is a name for a pattern of community behavior), would there be more transparency in the community's work and less time spent explaining why we do things this way?

@everyone:

Heather has shared http://meatballwiki.org/ with me. It looks relevant, too.

webchick’s picture

webchick
she/they
Primary language English
Location Vancouver 🇨🇦
commented

Right, I read those, and was directly answering this:

I'm wondering if we have or should have explicitly documented policies and guidelines that apply across the board: forums, issue queues, conferences, IRC, etc.

...since that also matches the topic of this issue. And my answer to both is a resounding no.

It sounds like you're asking a different question altogether, though. Something along the lines of "Should we write a user manual for the Drupal community?"

Um. Maybe? Again, I'm totally lacking context around this issue. What are the specific problems we're trying to solve?

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

@webchick:

I realize that the words "policies … that apply" imply other things like enforcement, order, and maybe even hierarchy. I was mostly looking for norms and standards, so "policy" was a poor choice of word. This also expresses my intent: "I'm wondering if we have or should have a single set of clear explanations of 'good ways to operate/behave/conduct oneself' that are linked to forums, issue queues, conferences, IRC, etc."

The problems we're trying to solve? [sigh] I don't know anymore. The context is gender field, NYC, and the problems of needing to have some authority and status just to deploy "common sense" in these situations.

silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented

Just came across the Arch Linux Forum Etiquette page http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Forum_Etiquette - quite lengthy but covers a lot (too much)

arianek’s picture

arianek commented
Status: Active » Closed (duplicate)

there's a massive discussion on this http://groups.drupal.org/dcoc probably best to comment there if you want those who were following to see it. marking this as duplicate in light of the g.d.o thread