Re: Code of Conduct final draft?

["Murray Cumming" <murrayc murrayc com>]

>> No-one is suggesting that you are banned from being rude
>> (unfortunately).
>
> It's your "unfortunately" that is now making me think: this might not be
> a good idea. If I want to be rude, it's my freedom to do so. It's the
> freedom of somebody else to think of that that I'm an idiot.
>
> "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the
> death, your right to say it. â?? Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire"
>
>> That list says "Advice" at the top. And the idea is that those are the
>> behaviour that Gnome people think we should be following. It doesn't
>> say everyone will always be perfect. It's more about setting a standard.
>
> I dislike standards for persons, behaviour or personalities. There's no
> such thing as a standard for personalities, behaviour and persons.

We as a community have a right to set standards for behaviour. And anyone
who doesn't like those standards has a right not to take part in that
community. These standards exist informally already and have been applied
informally before now.

For instance, in any mailing lists that I administer, there a higher
standard of behaviour is demanded. I will not tolerate personal abuse and
some aggressive behaviour, for instance. I imagine that most people
generally feel that's not a right that they are willing to surrender in
order to have a functioning and pleasant group.

Anarchies don't function very well. Try Rousseau's social contract if you
want to get philisophical about it. Groups of people just choose different
contracts, with differing tradeoffs of liberty versus freedom, usually
with checks and balances to tradeoff at a sensible point.

Abuse and aggression is also incredibly ineffective even if you think you
might (theoretically, and maybe I've misunderstood you) think that it's
useful sometimes.

I, and many others, do not take part in communities which are clearly
unpleasant or ineffective. I have a theory that if GNOME gets even better
and let's the world know that it's better, then we'll get more people
involved. It's not much good saying that we as individuals have no
problem, so nothing needs to be done, and nothing can be gained, because
we are obviously not that set of people who are not yet involved. It
ignores the other set, who we can't of course ask directly, that being the
whole point.

In the meantime we have a report plus annecdotal evidence that says that
there's people who would like to get involved in a welcoming community.
Much of the anecdotal evidence unfortunately stays off-list, so you'll
have to trust me on that. If you can go as far as trusting me that it
exists, you might consider that it's off-list precisely because those
people do not feel fully welcome in our community. I'd like to make it
clear that they are welcome and that occasional unpleasant behaviour,
while unavoidable, is not representative.

| have overemailed. I apologise.

Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com