[noise] Community Council / Code of Conduct

[Trevor Perrin]

Hi all,

I think it's time for our small community to have some policies for
dealing with concerns around safety and civility that will inevitably
increase as we become a larger, more prominent community, and have
more real-world meetings.  Jason and I have been discussing various
ways to address this.

We’re working on putting in place:

 * A Code of Conduct specifying expectations for participants in our
online and offline environments.

 * A Community Council charged with enforcing the Code of Conduct.

For the former, we would look to other projects that have adopted a
Code of Conduct, and most likely adapt an existing document.

For the latter we would like a council of 3-5 people, ideally
representing a diversity of perspectives, and possessing wisdom and
careful judgment.


Schedule and Plan
------------------
It seems feasible that we could have these things in place by mid-September.

To achieve that, Jason and I would serve as the "nucleus" of an
eventual council, and work together to decide on the Code of Conduct
and enlist additional council members.

In August sometime (middle or end) we would provide an update on our
progress, including the proposed CoC and council members, and then
make things official on September 15.

Unless there's some mass outburst of opposition, we will follow this plan.


Community involvement
----------------------
We've discussed this with a few prominent Noise community members,
without objection. We're hoping to get this done without much more
public discussion.

If you have any critical feedback, sending it to myself or Jason is
better than sending it to this list.  We've seen other communities
embarrass themselves with over-heated debate on these things, please
don't do that here.


Call for council members
-------------------------
We would greatly appreciate nominations (of someone else or yourself!)
for the Community Council.  Send Jason or I an email, and we'll
consider reaching out.

We welcome nomination of people who haven't been associated with the
project in the past.  The council would deal with issues that aren't
specific to the technical aspects of Noise, so casting a wider net
will help us find better people.  We also welcome nominations of
people who could bring more diverse perspectives and experiences to
the council.


If you've read this far, thanks for bearing with this (hopefully
rare!) non-technical email.  Most likely the next I'll post about this
is in second half of August, once things have taken a clearer shape.

Trevor