Mozilla Alum Christie Koehler just published a blog post in which she discusses the difficulties of adopting codes of conduct to create an environment that encourages diverse and inclusive participation within open source communities.
It’s a pretty great blog post worth sharing here on its own merits, but it’s especially important because she offers a critique of Mozilla’s current Participation Guidelines of which she had a role in establishing.
https://subfictional.com/2016/01/25/the-complex-reality-of-adopting-a-meaningful-code-of-conduct/
There’s a lot of great stuff to unpack in this post about governance and community leadership that’s worth exploring here, but I wanted to highlight the Participation Guidelines piece because even if we don’t revisit them anytime soon, its advice on conflict resolution is lackluster and turns the entire document into a symbolic gesture with no teeth.
At some point we’re going to have to put processes for conflict resolution in place that help us retain contributors, help contributors level up within the organization, and strengthen the overall community. Christie’s experience both in and out of Mozilla can be informative here, and I’m sure others within the community have similar as well as differing points of view that can productively push this conversation forwards.