I'm pretty surprised by the "adoption" of the proposed Code of Conduct. I read
the thread where it was proposed as "some people support it, but in general
people think that it doesn't solve anything". So I had expected that the idea
was dropped or at least a revised version would have been presented before
declaring adoption.
We had the discussion about how concrete to formulate our requirements
for "decent behavior" when we wrote the Guiding Principles. Our conclusion at
that time was that it's sufficient to state a general direction and let
common sense, existing concrete guidelines (like for the mailing lists and
IRC) and exemplary behavior by leading people let do the rest.
I think this still applies and the proposed Code of Conduct doesn't add much
value, especially as it is as vague as what is stated in the Guiding
Principles (the fact that it is a literal copy of the Code of Conduct of
another project shows that it doesn't contain anything openSUSE specific). So
in my opinion we are better off without it.
What is needed is that people live what is stated in the Code of Conduct. We
need to lead by example here. The SUSE community is special and conversations
which are rude or might be perceived as rude are not uncommon (ironically the
thread about the Code of Conduct illustrates that). So I think it needs a bit
of time to change that. The board can help by moderating, empowering
moderators where needed, by supporting people who are good examples,
etc. "Adoption" of a set of rules which only exist on paper (or in a Wiki),
but isn't lived won't help.
--
Cornelius Schumacher