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<p>There is a wide spectrum of bad faith behaviour. It may be simply
not caring if one causes harm ("recklessness", if you like),
through attempts to undermine the culture of a space or community,
to attempts to cause people material harm.</p>
<p>The wider Haskell community has witnessed all of these, even if
not everyone is sufficiently aware of it. On the "material harm"
end of the spectrum, an incident in 2016 grew sufficiently
infamous that friends with no connections to the FP community in
general, computer science or the computing industry were sending
me messages of sympathy and support - and I was forced to take
some "opsec" measures to safeguard both myself and others.</p>
<p>The nature of both this spectrum and of bad faith makes this a
difficult problem to deal with and one that mustn't be
oversimplified - not all acts are equal and the cultural impacts
are complex. But people acting in bad faith - some of them
persistently and possibly even with a degree of coordination - is
indeed the root problem I'm highlighting.</p>
<p>Thanks for your time and effort on this,</p>
<p>Philippa<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 09/12/2018 18:03, Richard Eisenberg
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:7640426B-CE65-4B54-B1DC-36B833F99F12@cs.brynmawr.edu">
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<div class="">What this email seems to suggest to me is that our
guidelines assume good faith, and yet some participants act in
bad faith. I agree this is not well accounted-for in the
guidelines. (However, the guidelines were designed with the GHC
Steering Committee in mind, where members join by way of a
nomination and selection process and can be removed -- quite
unlike the broader Haskell community.)</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Before thinking about specific words / documents
that solve the problem, I want to be sure I understand the
problem you're highlighting. Is it the presence of bad faith
actors, specifically?</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Thanks for coming forward with these concerns.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Richard<br class="">
<div class="">
<div class="">
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On Dec 6, 2018, at 4:59 PM, Philippa
Cowderoy <<a href="mailto:flippa@flippac.org"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">flippa@flippac.org</a>>
wrote:</div>
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<p class="">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 class="">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 class="">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 class="">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 class="">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 class="">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="moz-cite-prefix">On 06/12/2018 10:35,
Simon Peyton Jones via Haskell wrote:<br class="">
</div>
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cite="mid:AM0PR83MB0308B54B3A04B3A15EAB30D2ADA90@AM0PR83MB0308.EURPRD83.prod.outlook.com"
class="">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">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="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2016-September/024995.html" moz-do-not-send="true"><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="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals" moz-do-not-send="true"><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="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/GRC.rst" moz-do-not-send="true"><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="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/" moz-do-not-send="true"><https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/></a> about the new GNU Kind Communication Guidelines<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html" moz-do-not-send="true"><https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html></a> expresses the same idea.
Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar approach<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/11/proposal-stack-coc" moz-do-not-send="true"><https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/11/proposal-stack-coc></a>.
Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment here<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/commit/373044b5a78519071b9a24b3681cfd1af06e57e0" moz-do-not-send="true"><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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