<div dir="ltr">I normally lurk here, but I agree with Philippa, and am grateful to her for saying what I was thinking. <div><br></div><div>In particular, her suggestion about pairing guidelines for respectful communications with guidelines for what to do when things break down is an excellent one, and has worked well in other communities to help those on the fringes of a community feel welcome and able to contribute.<br><br>jml<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr">On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 10:00 PM Philippa Cowderoy <<a href="mailto:flippa@flippac.org">flippa@flippac.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p>I lack the energy to contribute to GHC directly, but these
guidelines are far too easy to abuse by someone acting in bad
faith and we know that bad faith actors have been adjacent to our
community and acted on things that have taken place within it.</p>
<p>From where I'm sitting, guidelines like this risk doing even more
damage than not having any. Not only do they lack the means to
handle incidents that have already occurred, they actively
discourage the community from finding those means.</p>
<p>As someone these guidelines have been drafted to help include, I
fear they increase the burden on my participation and that of
others like me. For a community to hold together without sinking
to the worst of behaviour, there needs to be some acceptance that
we will all fail to act in good fatih on occasion, that some
people will act in bad faith and that behaviour in bad faith may
take a great deal of explaining to anyone who is not the target of
it or familiar with its mechanisms.</p>
<p>I have spent a great deal of time running spaces within the wider
community and I have witnessed these things repeatedly. I also
lack the resources some people here have available to mitigate the
risks others have openly posed to members of the community
including myself and Simon.</p>
<p>One solution - whether GHC itself needs it or not - might be to
pair guidelines for respectful communication with guidelines for
when respectful communication is failing to occur.</p>
<p>Simon, I appreciate both the work you've put in and your love for
the communty. I hope you can appreciate that where I appear to be
cynical or even sowing discord here, I am acting out of love and
care for a community that at its best has done a great deal for
me. I apologise for being the one to open up what I see as a
somewhat inevitable discussion.</p>
<div class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-cite-prefix">On 06/12/2018 10:35, Simon Peyton Jones
via Haskell wrote:<br>
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<pre class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-quote-pre">Friends
As many of you will know, I have been concerned for several years about the standards of discourse in the Haskell community. I think things have improved since the period that drove me to write my Respect email<a class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2016-September/024995.html" target="_blank"><https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2016-September/024995.html></a>, but it's far from secure.
We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering Committee<a class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals" target="_blank"><https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals></a> at ICFP in September, and many of us have had related discussions since. Arising out of that conversation, the GHC Steering Committee has decided to adopt these
Guidelines for respectful communication<a class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/GRC.rst" target="_blank"><https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/GRC.rst></a>
We are not trying to impose these guidelines on members of the Haskell community generally. Rather, we are adopting them for ourselves, as a signal that we seek high standards of discourse in the Haskell community, and are willing to publicly hold ourselves to that standard, in the hope that others may choose to follow suit.
We are calling them "guidelines for respectful communication" rather than a "code of conduct", because we want to encourage good communication, rather than focus on bad behaviour. Richard Stallman's recent post<a class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/" target="_blank"><https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/></a> about the new GNU Kind Communication Guidelines<a class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html" target="_blank"><https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html></a> expresses the same idea.
Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar approach<a class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/11/proposal-stack-coc" target="_blank"><https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/11/proposal-stack-coc></a>.
Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment here<a class="m_-8649607355452035137moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/commit/373044b5a78519071b9a24b3681cfd1af06e57e0" target="_blank"><https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/commit/373044b5a78519071b9a24b3681cfd1af06e57e0></a>. Perhaps they can evolve so that other Haskell committees (or even individuals) feel able to adopt them.
The Haskell community is such a rich collection of intelligent, passionate, and committed people. Thank you -- I love you all!
Simon
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