Who made the law?

['lesleyb']

On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 12:55:44PM +0100, Pedro Figueiredo wrote:
> 
> On 31 Aug 2012, at 11:54, Mark Fowler wrote:
> 
> > Q. Do people really need to be told this?
> > 
> > The vast majority of people don't.  However, the two groups of people that do are:
> > 
> > a) People who are worried that they might be victims of harassment.  They need to be reassured - especially when they've only just joined the community and haven't had time to completely integrate and have full knowledge of it - that harassment won't be tolerated and they need to know the procedure to follow if they do have any problem.
> 
> Exactly. As for b) I don't have any sympathy for people who are kicked out and then go "oooh, no one told me about the rules" - there shouldn't be any rules telling you how to be a decent person, jerk. Note I have no idea about what happened yesterday on IRC, and that's not what I'm going on about here.
> 
> >From a non-ex-leader and mostly lurker, I think Mark's proposed Code of Conduct is excellent.
> 
> See also
> 
> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment
> https://adainitiative.org/2012/08/defcon-why-conference-harassment-matters/
> 

Thanks for posting those links Pedro.
I believe Debian has also implemented a similar code of conduct - particularly
for conferences.  

I support the proposal that london.pm have a reasonable Code of Conduct.  

1. I believe it *is* reasonable to expect a level of reasonable behaviour, for some
values of reasonable, level and behaviour within the Perl community.  

2. As was said by an earlier poster, a code of conduct is something that says - if
you are getting some kind of harassment or discrimination there are people to talk
to and let them know. The code of conduct implies any such matters will at
least be heard, and may be acted upon in a prescribed manner.   Plaintiff and
defendant know what to expect. 

3. I haven't seen the logs for the event that sparked this conversation, but
someone coming into channel and encountering the drivel that can exist on IRC,
will go away with a particular view of that channel which, in the case of a
Perl channel, might reflect on the whole Perl community. 

4. The rule of benevolent dictatorship did win out.
A benevolent dictator decided to kick someone for whatever reason, - no
dictator need declare that - and then someone questioned said dictator and
then got kicked themselves.  In a dictatorship, this is a surprise how exactly?

5. I'm not overly fond of dictators, unless they are *spectacularly* benevolent
or they are me.

Kind Regards

Lesley