@malte For me this declaration marks some sort ot "hell freezes over" moment. Most people totally didn't expect this to be resolved in any kind of amicable fashion.
I don't expect previously warring parties to come up with very concrete solutions in the matter of one day. To me, the declaration os not empty, but says a lot.

@natanji They told Buzzfeed that they did what they did to "provoke a discussion". I'm done 😒

@malte It totally worked. Not in the way they intended originally, but it did.

The provocation was intended against protectourspaces.org though, not other participants of congress, as they said today at the discussion.

@natanji Okay... I'll stay done with this still until there are legitimate reasons not to be done with it, like if they ask for help writing their own code of conduct for example 🤷

@natanji ...and thank you, and probably lots of others, for having the conversation regardless of my state of done 😂 ❤

@marsxyz
Mainly transparency. It makes it clear which behavior is okay and which isn't - but without the fuzziness and subjectivity of formulations such as "be excellent to each other" that can be interpreted either way.

Also, it defines clear processes for handling some situations. So the people who e.g. want to report something already know what they can expect.

Lastly, it allows to hold organisators/deciders accountable to their own rules.

@marsxyz Without a CoC, some people will believe behavior X is okay and others will believe it isn't - creating conflict.

Without a CoC, people need to have trust in complete strangers to handle their case well, which isn't realistic and can lead to bad situations. For instance, some CoCs define that if you report harassment or violence, the alleged abuser will NOT be notified about this (or who made the complaint) unless the complaining party gives explicit permission.

@marsxyz This obviously makes it dangerous to report abuse, since an abuser can use this information to get back at the person who reported them. A clearly defined process gives reporters a guarantee of safety from this kind of information leak.

Lastly, without a CoC one often gets an event that is in essence a benevolent dictatorship of some few orga people. You often don't even get told which person(s) called the shots on a decision. So no accountability.

@marsxyz I understand that there are many upsides to having a benevolent dictatorship. I don't say this as a way of personal mistrust in a specific orga, especially not the #34c3 orga.

But we do need to make transparent if it IS a dictatorship, and if we as a community want this kind of governing model or something different. A CoC doesn't mean we need to have a different model, but just that we openly and transparently state which model we use.

@StuC I don't think so. To my knowledge, the initial escalation happened after Andy Müller-Maguhn didn't want to discuss the topic of a CoC when some activists tried to talk to them at the Wau assembly, prompting the activists to their sit-in. Sometimes, escalation can help.

@Wolf480pl Not to my knowledge