RFC: YAPC Code of conduct up on github?

[Jason Van Patten]

Pardon my impertinence, as this is my first year attending YAPC, but it 
seems to me that situations similar to to what happened at PYCON are not 
a new problem. Discrimination is a very old, albeit ugly, habit for 
humans. While we may not be able to control who attends or even who 
agrees with the CoC, even if we do have it on github, one thing is 
certain an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Recent studies have shown that focus on the punitive reactions to 
repugnant behavior is less effective at repressing that behavior than 
promotion of positive behavior. Perhaps it would behoove the community 
to establish a protocol for the recognition of admirable actions in a 
very public way. In effect create incentive for companies who send 
employees to conferences to encourage dignified behavior for a shot at 
getting their name promoted instead of the socially deplorable 
affiliation achieved by the employers of certain attendees of PYCON.

If nothing else a small trophy to extol the virtues of the wisdom 
conscious, out of the box thinking, that Perl embodies would be, i 
think, a welcome contrast to the relatively rigid and reactionary nature 
that has thus far been demonstrated by the Python advocates to the 
programming world in general.

It's not that we really need to remind people of Perl's superiority, but 
it is fun to do.


Jason Van Patten


On 03/24/2013 02:51 PM, Matt S Trout wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 01:30:15AM -0400, Denise Paolucci wrote:
>> As someone who *has* been harassed at conferences before -- though not YAPC, which I've found delightful -- it's always nice to hear efforts to make a particular space more welcoming come from people who are making those efforts because it's the right thing to do. :)
>>
>> I'll also drop in a link here to the Dreamwidth Diversity Statement, which contains the most exhaustive list of axes-of-diversity we (and our users) have been able to think of in four years or so:
>>
>>     http://www.dreamwidth.org/legal/diversity
>>
>> Likely not all applicable, but it's CC-BY-SA, so feel free to borrow liberally!
> http://shadow.cat/blog/matt-s-trout/on-not-being-a-problem/
>
> probably has some ideas as well. Feel free to take from that as CC-BY-SA
> or, honestly, under any reasonable license you can think of - I'll happily
> add a note to any text you want confirming that as it gets committed.
>