Re: Proposed Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC) (Call for Review)

Thanks Nick!

Sent from my mobile, please excuse typos and brevity

________________________________
From: Tantek Çelik <tantek@cs.stanford.edu>
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2020 9:20:40 AM
To: xueyuan <xueyuan@w3.org>
Cc: w3c-ac-forum <w3c-ac-forum@w3.org>; team-social-chairs@w3.org <chairs@w3.org>; w3t-archive <w3t-archive@w3.org>; public-new-work@w3.org <public-new-work@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Proposed Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC) (Call for Review)

Dear AC Reps and editors of the CEPC,

I tried to submit the following answer on behalf of Mozilla to
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/CEPC2020/ but apparently got an
error upon submitting, so am submitting via text instead.

Please include our response in the archive of official responses.
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/33280/CEPC2020/results

I hope you are able to consider the suggested changes.

Thanks,

Tantek Çelik
Mozilla AC Representative.

===================

I, Tantek Çelik
W3C Advisory Committee representative for Mozilla

>
> ---------------------------------
> Decision for adopting updated W3C Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
>
> ----
> Regarding the proposal to supersede the 2015 CEPC, my organization:
>
>

 * ( ) supports adoption as the W3C CEPC as is.
 * (*) suggests changes, but supports adoption as the W3C CEPC whether or
not the changes are adopted (your details below).
 * ( ) suggests changes, and only supports adoption as the W3C CEPC if the
changes are adopted [Formal Objection] (your details below).
 * ( ) suggests the document not be adopted as the W3C CEPC [Formal
Objection] (your details below).
 * ( ) abstains from this review.



>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Other Comments
>
> ----
> Please add here any other comments you have.
>
>
Comments:

The proposed revision to the CEPC is a significant improvement over
the 2015 CEPC.

We suggest the following brief changes, and will file issues (or pull
requests where the changes are clear) accordingly.

1. In section 4 (https://www.w3.org/2020/05/CEPC#Reporting), change
all occurrences of "law enforcement" to "emergency services". There is
a long history of incidents where contacting law enforcement
inevitably results in physical harm up to and including death directly
due to the actions of law enforcement, especially towards minorities.
In the past two months there has been increasing awareness of these
incidents, especially in the United States
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality_in_the_United_States),
and other countries as well
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_brutality#Examples).

As a code that seeks to minimize and reduce harms, it behooves us as
W3C to acknowledge these ongoing harms and strike all mentions of "law
enforcement" from our code of conduct, with the possible exception of
adding an explicit mention of the unacceptability of contacting (or
threatening to contact) law enforcement as a method of causing harm
(AKA weaponizing, e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_birdwatching_incident),
bullying, or even just expressing discomfort about an individual
acting "suspiciously" (e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain).

2. In section 3.2
(https://www.w3.org/2020/05/CEPC#unacceptablebehavior), add "caste" to
the first list item, perhaps between "ethnicity, nationality", e.g.
replace that with "ethnicity, caste, nationality". We explicitly list
"caste" in a similar list in the Mozilla Community Participation
Guidelines (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/governance/policies/participation/)
and believe the CEPC would also benefit from this explicit addition.

3. In section 6. (https://www.w3.org/2020/05/CEPC#glossary), the
definition of "Sexual harassment" seems oddly narrowly scoped to
"employment", "work performance", or "working environment". This
narrowness in scope seems to be in conflict with the much broader
contexts of W3C related interactions, e.g. as listed in section 1
(https://www.w3.org/2020/05/CEPC#introduction). For example,
interactions in W3C contexts between individuals who have no
employment or direct work or work environment relationship should
still be covered. In addition this definition (with
id="dfn-sexually-harass") does not appear to be linked or referenced
from elsewhere in the document. We don't have a specific suggestion
for how to improve this definition and leave it up to the editors to
do so.

Thank you again for a greatly improved CEPC. We hope you consider our
suggested changes as minor enough to be made as part of this update.
Thanks for your consideration.

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