Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Stormy Peters <stormy peters gmail com>]

So I'm hearing Dave say we need more policing and Philip saying everything is ok. What do others think?

Does the community think everything is ok? Or if not, do they want to self police or delegate taking action to the board? (Or both.)


Philip, I agree that your blog is yours, but supposedly you write blog posts, emails, IRC chats
to tell people something. So if you are offending them and
responding angrily, are you communicating what you want to be saying to
them? For example, if you think people are too politically correct, the way to
persuade them of that is probably not to swear at them. 

I think you have the right to freedom of speech. I even think you have
the right to say it any tone and with any words you want to. But if you
want people to listen, you need to speak to them in a way *they* don't
find offensive.

And this is often really hard to do. I dread some conversation topics, like politics, because people are so emotionally involved they end up "yelling" at each other and neither side convinces the other of anything. 

Hopefully in the GNOME community we can stick to the topic and keep out offensive language or behaviors so that we can have productive conversations. Often that means making your behavior match a social norm, even if it's more "politically correct" than you'd normally be.

For example, some of my SO's friends tend to swear a lot more than I'm used to. It doesn't offend me, but I don't do it. I've noticed that they don't swear when they talk directly to me. They're socially aware and they've adapted to my social norm. 

I suppose the question is what is our social norm? That's what Dave and Philip seem to be debating.

Stormy

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Philip Van Hoof <pvanhoof gnome org> wrote:

On Fri, 2009-05-29 at 16:46 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:

> Philip Van Hoof wrote:

> <snip aggressive rant>

As every opinion of me is looked as being aggressive, it's no longer
possible for me to have this discussion in a constructive kind of way.

--
Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org
http://pvanhoof.be/blog
http://codeminded.be

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