Meeting on November 14th

Attendees:

• Meg Ford
• Nuritzi Sanchez
• Rosanna Yuen
• Marina Zhurakhinskaya
• Benjamin Berg
• Allan Day

Agenda:

• Phrasing for guidelines related to publicizing harrassment incidents

• Review codes of conduct - https://wiki.gnome.org/Diversity/CoCWorkingGroup/Resources/CoCs/Review

• Come up with the positive behaviors we want to encourage and what we want to prohibit

• Start a draft for our event CoC https://etherpad.gnome.org/p/Draft_GNOME_CoC_for_Events

• Topic of discussion: what happens if we have a speaker that has made racist comments?

Notes:

Re: Public Shaming Language

• Phrasing from PyCon: https://github.com/python/pycon-code-of-conduct/blob/master/Attendee%20Procedure%20for%20incident%20handling.md

• Marina: "This is as much for your safety and protection as it is the other attendees." Maybe we should rationalize it differently/not at all. It seems protectionist.
• Ben: The sentence seems odd and directly refers to the dongle incident

DECISION: We will skip including this ("This is as much for your safety and protection as it is the other attendees.") for now. After we finish drafting the CoC, we can revisit if needed.

Explicitly Mentioned Good Behavior

• We have a positive affirmation at the start of the short version

Long version

• 2011 long version also starts with affirmation, it defines the goal of the CoC, and gives some examples of harassment or unacceptable behavor, then if goes into how the organizing team can help
• The long version should be able to be read alone. We should have an affirmation at the beginning, setting the tone of the long version, but let's keep it to about 1 sentence in the effort to balance making it positive and making it concise.

Definition of the goal of the COC

Geek Feminism

"$CONFERENCE is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone [, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age or religion [insert any other specific concerns here]]. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. [Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks.] Conference participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the conference [without a refund] at the discretion of the conference organizers. Our anti-harassment policy can be found at:" - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy

PyCon

Harassment includes offensive communication related to gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion; sexual images in public spaces; deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording; sustained disruption of talks or other events; inappropriate physical contact; and unwelcome sexual attention. - http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy

• PyCon blends in both the goal of the CoC and the specific bad behavior. Nuritzi doesn't think that works well.

Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence

… without discrimination on any ground such as sex, gender, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, state of health, disability, marital status, migrant or refugee status, or other status.

GUADEC 2014

"GUADEC is dedicated to providing a safe and friendly conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, political or other opinion, or religion." - https://2014.guadec.org/conduct/index.html

• how can we add wording to make our list more inclusive?
• don't use the word "discrimination" only. There can be something different, like harassment, as opposed to just discrimination
• should we change it to "politcal opinion, technical opinion, ..." ? "political or other opinion" may be too broad.

DECISION: We want to use this paragraph, but may slightly tweak it.

Examples of what is prohibited

GUADEC 2014

We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to any of the above qualities, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention. - https://2014.guadec.org/conduct/index.html