Differences between Events Code of Conduct and the Contributor Covenant

GNOME's Code of Conduct for Events was written from scratch, based on many other CoCs, and it's intended for GNOME conferences, hackfests, and other social gatherings.

We are going to adopt the Contributor Covenant as as a project-wide CoC. This page documents the differences between the Contributor Covenant and GNOME's Code of Conduct for Events.

Differences

The GNOME event Code of Conduct contains some subtle differences from the original Contributor Covenant:

• "Using welcoming and inclusive language" -> "Using inclusive language" (welcoming language was dropped)

• "Gracefully accepting constructive criticism" -> "When cricitism is constructive, accepting it gracefully" (this essentially gives people a pass to be a jerk if someone doesn't frame their criticism in a constructive manner, which is problematic and can lead to escalating arguments)

• "Focusing on what is best for the community" is dropped (which is a key phrase in ensuring that people attempt to put aside personal conflicts in order to improve the community)

The "scary paragraph" is as follows:

GNOME Events Code of Conduct - Do not, under any circumstance, negatively discriminate or make derogatory statements about people based on their age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, language, race, sexual orientation, physical appearance, disability, place of residence or origin, political or religious views.

Contributor Covenant - In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

Both documents have lists of inappropriate behaviour as "examples ... include", i.e. they are not exhaustive. One that Contributor Covenant has that seemed notorious to me is:

• Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission

Also, it ends the list with this:

• Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

We don't have to make both documents identical, but we should be mindful of important differences.

We should especially get clarification on the sex/gender items in the "scary paragraph" to get the wording right.