GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
Lest you think this is yet another CoC, the guidelines assure you that they are not a CoC.
Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
The GNU Kind Communication Guidelines, initial version, have been published in https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html. On behalf of the GNU Project, I ask all GNU contributors to make their best efforts to follow these guidelines in GNU Project discuaaions[sic].
[ . . . ] The difference between kind communication guidelines and a code of conduct is a matter of the basic overall approach.
A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them.
[...] The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding people towards kinder communication at a point well before one would even think of saying, "You are breaking the rules." The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind.
[ . . . . ] I disagree with making "diversity" a goal. If the developers in a specific free software project do not include demographic D, I don't think that the lack of them as a problem that requires action
The best way to avoid conflict and encourage diversity is to force everyone to voluntarily think alike.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Monday October 29 2018, @02:46PM
And let's not forget when an individual in a group not well-represented by diversity standards (transgendered people) suffered temporary insanity [freworld.info], in the opinion of this writer, to the detriment of both GNU and her specific project, libreboot, eventually resulting in some leadership adjustments and statements of unity [libreboot.org] on the part of the latter.
The fact that someone is a member of any minority group is not the story here, I don't think, but rather that people were not communicating kindly and the whole mess could have been avoided or orders-of-magnitude less problematic had all parties been doing so.
I am glad that 'I disagree with making "diversity" a goal' is their position here, because if someone *did* have a "goal" of increasing diversity for the sake of demographic diversity, this episode would serve as a cautionary tale. But since kind communication solves things like this, that's probably a better goal.