Re: Updated account policies document

[Yanko Kaneti <yaneti declera com>]

sorry owen, this is a duplicate because i forgot to cc

On Wed, 2001-10-03 at 16:02, Owen Taylor wrote:
> 
> Yanko Kaneti <yaneti declera com> writes:
> 
> > hi
> > 
> > (the following is a brief look from a total layman point of view)
> > 
> > looking at the mail aliases section of the policy
> > http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/docs/gnome-org-policies/mail.html
> > 
> > it seems to me that the whole section concerning revocation of an alias
> > does not fit in this document and should be part of the foundation
> > membership policies.
> > in other words: if you are a foundation member you get an alias,
> > engaging in an inappropriate action using this alias should be enough
> > ground for canceling your membership
> > 
> > the text i have in mind is
> > "The GNOME Board has the right to revoke aliases at any time for any
> > reason. Types of mail that it is inappropriate to use a gnome.org alias
> > in include:
> > 
> >     *      Mail sent for commercial purposes.
> >     *      Mail that reflects badly on the GNOME project, including, but
> > not limited to harassing mail, offensive mail, personal attacks, and
> > attacks on competing projects.
> >     *      Mail that misleadingly attempts to portray the official
> > positions of the GNOME project."
> > 
> > considering the "innapropriate" action that might lead to canceling the
> > membership i believe the part "Mail that reflects badly on the GNOME
> > project" should be removed because it is too vague. Instead of that the
> > board should have a policy of looking at specific cases of misconduct
> > brought to its attention by the foundation members.
> > 
> > i am sorry for jumping late into this.
> > i might be on crack ;) beg for your pardon if that is the case
> 
> I don't think you are on crack, however, I don't really agree with you.
> (since I wrote that section, I guess that's not a suprise)
> 
>  * I think guidelines for using a gnome.org email account will be
>    _useful_ to people. This language is not meant to say "fall in line
>    our your alias will be executed", it is to give people ideas of
>    what is appropriate to do with such an alias.
> 
>  * The language is deliberately vague because I really don't think it
>    would make sense to go on for 4 pages trying to list every possible
>    thing someone could say in a email that would be inappropriate. And
>    that would be inviting people to find the things we left out. But I
>    think it _is_ useful to list general categories of things that are
>    inappropriate, because we all know people do get into nasty
>    personal flamewars and so forth, and giving some general guidelines
>    will hopefully make somebody think "Hmm, I'm about to call this
>    guy's mother an aardvark sympathizer, maybe I should tone down my
>    language or do it from my hotmail.com account."
> 
>  * If we ever have to revoke an alias, there will no doubt be
>    differences of opinion on whether it was appropriate or not. For
>    this reason, I like the smaller step of revoking an alias rather
>    than revoking membership ...  revoking only the alias gives the
>    party a chance to get the policy or the people who decided the
>    issue changed - by voting in the next election, running for the
>    board, etc.
> 
>  * I believe that we should have "guidelines for using your email
>    alias" not "guidelines for responsible conduct for GNOME foundation
>    members" because I find the latter much more problematical. In one
>    case, we are asking people to use a resource owned by the GNOME
>    project in a certain manner.  In the other case, we are saying "you
>    aren't a contributor to GNOME unless you behave as we like".
> 
>    That is not to say that it would be inappropriate to refuse to
>    renew someone's membership if they had been going around giving
>    GNOME a bad name, but I don't think we would want to do that
>    unless it was an absolutely clear-cut case. 

thanks for your answer

i understand your desire not get directly involved in issues dealing
with what may or may not be considered responsible conduct by a
foundation member, yet in essence the "guidelines for using your email
alias" appear to me to be very much guidelines for the former.
- dont spam
- dont harrass, offend , attack 
- have the courtesy of speaking for yourself rather than hiding behind
an organisation name
and all this while your email address has the word gnome in it.
or we will execute (your mail account;)

because its clear that its not that resource whats important but its
rather the name "gnome" thats at stake

why not relay the same message with just two of your sentences
"gnome.org email aliases are provided for the convenience of GNOME
Foundation members and as a means to facilitate the operation of the
GNOME Project, please use them as such.
  If your mail might be mistakenly interpreted as an official statement
about GNOME positions, include a disclaimer."

you could leave the rest to the intelligence of the average gnome
contributor and spare yourself and others the veiled moral guidelines
and ambiguities like "Mail that reflects badly on the GNOME project"

regards
yanko

p.s. the language of the letter might propmpt you to think that i feel
very strongly about those issues, believe me i dont :) i am just
nitpicking to the extent my brain can handle. Would have been 10 times
happier to get an answer to the my cvs mirroring request on
gnome-sysadmin ;)