Comment 29 for bug 272826

[This response would have been shorter if I'd had more coffee. Apologies. The emailed response also appears to have disappeared into the ether. Reposting because I'm impatient. Apologies (again) if this ends up getting posted twice.]

Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> > I'm -1 on asking folks their gender, and can happily consider a more
> > obviously neutral term. Ubuntero wasn't supposed to be gender-specific,
> > but for many people it will feel that way, and it seems silly to keep
> > ourselves in a position where we have to explain that all the time.

I don't mind being asked my gender, but I don't think it should be a requirement. Including the option to note gender does introduce a social pressure that is not currently present. It's only on very rare occasions that I get a/s/l-ed (and we all know the correct response to that is f/r/o). I have no idea if asking for gender would encourage inappropriate behaviour, so I'm just as happy to maintain the status quo on this one. Those of us who want to self-identify as female through names and photos may continue to do so and those who don't want to may continue to be gender-neutral with no social pressure to be otherwise.

I've read through the IRC logs. Apart from wanting a word to mean "I've signed the CoC", I don't really understand the advantage of the word. The word doesn't really mean anything to me (regardless of gender tones). It definitely doesn't mean, "I've signed the CoC." I think part of this is because we don't seem to have adopted the word into our
written documentation. I just flipped through some of the marketing material on Ubuntu.com and I can't find the word in use. I know that when I've looked at the badge on my own LP account and I can never
remember what it's for.

I personally vote for "if it's not in use, drop the term for one that is." The term that is in use is a very simple, "Has signed the Code of Conduct." If it needs to be shorter, people also seem to know both CoC and CC (although Creative Commons may also pop to mind for the latter).

> > I think the "Ubuntero" designation is given to people who've signed the
> > Ubuntu Code of Conduct in LP. There have been some suggestions, with
> > the number of upstreams adopting LP (and other distros) that we should
> > move to a General Code of Conduct which is more relevant for a broad
> > cross-section of communities. Membership in Ubuntu-related teams is
> > already conveyed through the use of team badges on a person's page. What
> > do folks think of that idea?

+1 A few months ago there were one or two projects that had the idea of a Code of Conduct at the top of their list. I had some interesting off-list conversations with people regarding a generic code of conduct. I personally like the idea of having something that is not Ubuntu-branded and can be easily adopted and modified by other FOSS communities. I've forwarded this bug response to a few people to see if the interest still exists.