Determining whether action should be taken on harassment should not be 
based on a popularity contest.  That would be a fail, and that's what 
Karen is right to point out.

No one is suggesting that Code4Lib needs to develop a governance system 
or that there need to be any future rules.  We just need to determine 
that there is agreement that this one policy is something we can all 
abide by in this "nonexistent" space to make sure it's "safe" and 
"non-threatening" non-space -- it's on us to make sure it goes far 
enough, but not too far that it changes things for the worse.

Otherwise, there will continue to be ambiguity and people will spend 
time in continuous debate when we could be playing and creating cool 
stuff instead.

-Shaun


On 1/24/13 3:17 PM, Cary Gordon wrote:
> The bottom line is that, technically, code4lib does not, AKAIK, exist.
> It's one piece of property, the domain name is in your name.
> Everything else is donated or lent.
>
> Code4lib has no formal governance. It is more like a clique than an
> organization. The question of whether we want to adopt formal
> organization and governance has been raised often over the years, and
> it seems to be as effective in emptying rooms as craft beers are for
> filling them.
>
> Since we don't exist, we can't do anything. We can collectively come
> up with a policy, but we have no status to enforce that policy. Like a
> clique, it really comes down to convincing everyone that you are a
> cool kid, and you are committing to a policy, so everyone else who
> wants to be cool should do so as well. This can work, except for the
> goths.
>
> Cary
>
> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Ed Summers <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 10:01 AM, Mark A. Matienzo
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> More to the point, no other decision about code4lib in terms of
>>> "action" or "policy" has been made ever. This is new territory for us.
>>
>> It's not really that new. We've voted on tshirts, logos, and whether
>> or not to have jobs.code4lib.org post here--perhaps other things that
>> I'm forgetting. I'm not saying we need to vote on the anti-harassment
>> policy to make it real--it's already real. Not everyone may respect
>> it, but hopefully we'll all continue being nice people and won't have
>> to worry about enforcing it. It's hard to imagine anyone being against
>> it. Personally, I find it regrettable that it's even necessary, but it
>> is what it is.
>>
>> Voting can be a nice way of testing the waters for something. I found
>> the survey on the jobs.code4lib.org email posting very helpful. But
>> voting on everything would get very tedious, and boring very quickly I
>> imagine. code4lib has always seemed much more freeform than that to
>> me. I really liked Bethany's description of lazy consensus [1] at the
>> last conference.
>>
>> //Ed
>>
>> [1] http://nowviskie.org/2012/lazy-consensus/
>
>
>


-- 
Shaun Ellis
User Interace Developer, Digital Initiatives
Princeton University Library