[Numpy-discussion] Adoption of a Code of Conduct

[Ralf Gommers]

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 2:04 AM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 9:35 AM, Stefan van der Walt
> <stefanv at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> > On August 3, 2018 09:50:38 Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 11:01 PM Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> <looks back> Nope, concision is definitely not my strength. But I hope
> I
> >>> made the argument clear, at least.
> >>
> >>
> >> No, wait. I got it:
> >>
> >> Bad actors use "diversity of political beliefs" in bad faith as cover
> for
> >> undermining the goals of the diversity statement. Marginalized groups
> want
> >> more assurance that our community (1) isn't one of those bad actors and
> (2)
> >> is willing and capable of resisting those bad actors when they come.
> >
> >
> > That's a very useful summary; thank you.
> >
> > I think we can fairly easily add a sentence that encourages participation
> > from a wide diversity of people, while making it clear that including
> > someone in the conversation does not give them free reigns in
> contradiction
> > with the rest of the guidelines.
> >
> > Ralf, if you agree, shall we do this for SciPy, and use the new version
> for
> > NumPy too?
>

If someone with good wordsmithing skills could draft 1-2 sentences and send
a PR to the SciPy repo, so we have something concrete to discuss/approve,
that would be great. If not, I can take a stab at it early next week.


> I must say, I disagree.  I think we're already treading close to the
> edge with the current document, and it's more likely we'd get closer
> still with virtually any addition on this line.   I'm in favor of
> keeping the political beliefs in there, on the basis


There's a much more straightforward basis one can think of. There are many
countries in the world that have dictatorships or one-party rule. This
includes countries that we get regular contributions from. Expressing
support for, e.g., democratic elections, can land you in all sorts of
trouble there.

For a US conference it may be okay to take a purely US perspective, and
even then the inclusion/removal of "political beliefs" can be argued (as
evidenced by this thread). For a project with a global reach like NumPy
it's really not very good to take into account only US/Western voices.

it's really not
> too hard to distinguish good-faith political beliefs, and the current
> atmosphere is so repellent to people who would not identify as
> progressive, that I would like them to feel they have some protection.
> If you will not allow me "no change"


I think "not allow" is too strong. Your opinion matters as well, so I'm
happy to have/facilitate a higher bandwidth discussion on this if you want
(after Monday).


> and you offered me a) paragraph
> by group of the not-discriminated trying to imagine something
> comforting to imagined extremely sensitive and progressive (name your
> other group here) or b) no stated defense for not-progressive persons,
> I'd take b).
>

Imho Robert made a very compelling argument here, so I don't completely
understand the choice.

Cheers,
Ralf
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