[SciPy-Dev] establishing a Code of Conduct for SciPy

[Stefan van der Walt]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2017, at 14:08, Pauli Virtanen wrote:
> It can of course be useful to think about writing such things down
> explicitly to produce a document explaining (1), and I think the Apache
> one gives good hints for keeping things productive. But it is less
> clear to me this is something for which formal moderator action would
> be necessary.
> 
> However, if I understand correctly, the reason why people want these
> things is more about (2). Indeed, this is standard stuff in the
> workplace and in moderation of internet forums (usually in "Rules" in
> the latter). It seems a good idea to structure this part so that it
> does not fail if someone acts in bad faith, and so that the moderation
> plan is reasonable to the reader and possible to implement.

I feel it is important to mix in a bit of (1) with (2), the reason being
that almost every person reading the CoC will not ever act in bad faith.
 You'd think that those people could simply ignore language related to
enforcement, but in previous discussions (e.g., around the Jupyter CoC)
that turned out not to be the case: it is all too easy to frighten
people into not speaking up.

So, I'd recommend focusing on a description of the kind of community we
want, instead of what we're trying to avoid; and postponing the
enforcement language until later in the document, making it clear that
enforcement only comes through (somewhat wide) deliberation of trusted
community members (and, preferably, also after engagement with the
offending party).  

This way, we can hopefully instill trust in our CoC as a process, rather
than a set of rules.

Best regards
Stéfan