[Haskell] Guidelines for respectful communication

Sun Dec 9 18:03:44 UTC 2018

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.)

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?

Thanks for coming forward with these concerns.

Richard

> On Dec 6, 2018, at 4:59 PM, Philippa Cowderoy <flippa at flippac.org> wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> On 06/12/2018 10:35, Simon Peyton Jones via Haskell wrote:
>> 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<https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2016-September/024995.html> <https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2016-September/024995.html>, but it's far from secure.
>> We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering Committee<https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals> <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals> 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<https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/GRC.rst> <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/GRC.rst>
>> 
>> 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<https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/> <https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/> about the new GNU Kind Communication Guidelines<https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html> <https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html> expresses the same idea.
>> Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar approach<https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/11/proposal-stack-coc> <https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/11/proposal-stack-coc>.
>> Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment here<https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/commit/373044b5a78519071b9a24b3681cfd1af06e57e0> <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/commit/373044b5a78519071b9a24b3681cfd1af06e57e0>.   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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