> There are good reasons why rules regulating human social behaviour (such as legislation) are written in this "vague" way, not attempting to be formal-verification-level complete but relying upon human interpretation
I wasn't arguing for formal verification, but you should notice that actual legislation is a lot less vague than the Django CoC.
>It follows that to work well it needs the people doing the interpretation (judges, committees, ombudsman, etc) to be competent, and be selected so that people can have faith in them.
And that's another problem with the Django CoC that I was mentioning, there's nothing there insuring that someone that's accused receives a due process, nor that all complaints are listened to equally.
Then, https://www.djangoproject.com/conduct/reporting/) describes an appeal process:
"Appealing: Only permanent resolutions (such as bans) may be appealed. To appeal a decision of the working group, contact the DSF Board at foundation@djangoproject.com with your appeal and the DSF board will review the case"
So it's a group of three appointed people, they can act without consensus as long as it's an "emergency", the accused has no right to defend themselves, to face the accuser or to see the evidence and almost none of the decisions can be appealed.
I have a hard time seeing this as bad compromise between expediency and process: "If the act is ongoing (such as someone engaging in harassment in #django), or involves a threat to anyone's safety (e.g. threats of violence), any working group member may act immediately (before reaching consensus) to end the situation."
Remember that there is still after the fact accountability, and that the system relies on the people in the WG being trusted community members and reasonable people.
BTW this is not far from how it works in the real world. Bob is not going to be able to litigate his side of the story and face his accusers in most situations where he is removed from premises for harassment or threats of violence. And people generally are fine with this.
It's not exactly unusual for an IRC channel op to /kb someone actively being obnoxious, without first consulting with two other people or interviewing the person in question.
I wasn't arguing for formal verification, but you should notice that actual legislation is a lot less vague than the Django CoC.
>It follows that to work well it needs the people doing the interpretation (judges, committees, ombudsman, etc) to be competent, and be selected so that people can have faith in them.
And that's another problem with the Django CoC that I was mentioning, there's nothing there insuring that someone that's accused receives a due process, nor that all complaints are listened to equally.