Listing protected classes

[chrisgraham]

regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation

I think it's great that the Contributor Covenant is listing protected classes. However, I would make it more clear that these are examples. This is for a few reasons:

1. Being seen as completely explicit does make it look to at least some readers that this is a closed list Bullies will always find more ways to bully. For example, they may bully based on people's lack of personal style (e.g. choice of PC vs Mac).
2. Being completely explicit gives too much power to things in the list when counter-examples come up. For example, if someone comes to an event with swastika neck tattoos, that would be seen as protected under "personal appearance" - but it would also make things very uncomfortable for a lot of people, and we'd expect them to try and cover up those tattoos.

I recognize it does say "everyone", but I think people will de-emphasize that that given the way the following list is written.

Additionally, the lead sentence is really long, which may be a problem to some people who have trouble reading long sentences for various reasons.

I would suggest:

We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone. This includes, but is not limited to, people of any age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

I know this is tricky, and my own wording is imperfect, but IMO it's clearer to our intent.

[chrisgraham]

My colleague also points out that writing a long list that seems it is trying to be exhaustive may present problems when considering things globally, as different cultures have different issues when it comes to discrimination. For example, 'caste' in India (which is distinct from socio-economic status).

[emmairwin]

Mozilla added caste last year for the reason it was not captured properly. I don't think this list is exhaustive, but is high enough level to capture categories beneath it. Protected classes represent those who have been historically marginalized, and not nothing at all like choice of PC v Mac.

[CoralineAda]

Hey everyone, I'm on a break this week but will be back next week to work this out. Thanks for your patience!

[amanjeev]

Reviving this as I was pointed here by someone.

@chrisgraham @emmairwin - To add to your points and to clarify a couple of things

Caste and casteism are not merely "in India". They are part of South Asian diaspora outside of India as well and given that South Asian population is dominant in tech, it is critical to add this imo. Needless to say the dominant caste background in tech in the diaspora is upper caste.

I urge you to add that in the CoC. I can provide more details about the caste system and casteism if you want.

I learned that version 2.1 lists "caste" https://github.com/EthicalSource/contributor_covenant/blob/release/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Thank you!