[Osmf-talk] Proposal - OSMF Should Adopt a Code of Conduct

nebulon42 nebulon42 at mailbox.org
Mon Dec 18 19:45:37 UTC 2017


Sorry for the late answer but your mail was just now brought to my
attention by
http://blog.openstreetmap.de/blog/2017/12/die-code-of-conduct-diskussion/
(in German).

Am 2017-12-04 um 10:21 schrieb Paul Norman:
> With OpenStreetMap Carto, this involved talking to the major
> contributors/maintainers in advance about the idea [..]
I might have missed it, forgotten, (accidentally) deleted the mails, I
honestly don't remember, so this is not meant as accusation, but I don't
remember being consulted besides being the top contributor to
openstreetmap-carto after the maintainers at that time.

That PR got merged before I became maintainer and I haven't commented on
it because I remember I didn't care so much about it at that time. I
don't have any particular problem with the CoC, but I guess I wouldn't
have deemed it necessary to have one albeit Github nudges you towards
having one. That said I think Paul had good reasons for proposing one
and if I would have been consulted I would have said something along the
lines of "if you think that this is necessary go ahead" depending on the
formulations.

The specific CoC is also very explicit and well-written not like the
rather complex document that is the CoC of SOTM. There are a few points
I would have left out of the CoC of openstreetmap-carto and I'm glad
that nothing like "Harassment includes verbal comments that reinforce
social structures of domination related to [..]" is in it which invites
to being accused of CoC violations for pretty much anything you might
say even if it might not be enforced that way.

I think vague sentences like that in a CoC might make OSM an even more
unwelcoming place than today. A place where everybody has a free ticket
to suppress unwelcome opinions based on (maybe false) accusations of CoC
violations. I don't want to participate in a place like that.

On the other hand, I think it is important that the basic "be nice to
each other" is respected and that OSM is a not-so-unwelcome place for
most, so having a CoC that is explicit about what is welcome and what
not and is not vague might be an improvement. But basically I think it
would be unnecessary and basic etiquette or netiquette should suffice.

In addition to what Christoph wrote I can second that I don't know about
any CoC complaints on openstreetmap-carto. If someone wrote something
that was deemed out of place s/he got rebuked by a maintainer or another
participant and that was sufficient up until now.

Michael

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/attachments/20171218/a3ef498a/attachment.sig>


More information about the osmf-talk mailing list