Re: What do you think of the foundation?

[Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org>]

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 07:33:07AM -0600, Stormy Peters wrote:
> Sometimes people say inappropriate things in inappropriate tones on GNOME
> forums, irc, mailing lists, blogs, etc. Right now, the community just lets
> them. We don't enforce our Standards of Conduct.

That is somewhat overstated:
1. I don't allow some types of behaviour on GNOME Bugzilla
2. Every once in a while I do the same on GNOME mailing lists
3. Not aware of a GNOME forum that is under direct control of GNOME
4. IRC is basically GimpNet, can only do things if you have ops in a
channel. But it is still GimpNet, not GnomeNet. Anyway, the channels I'm
in seem pretty much ok. The amount of unanswered questions in #gnome is
IMO a bigger worry.

> Dave was pointing out what we do have the power to do something about it. If
> we decide to enforce our own Standards of Conduct, I expect there would be

http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct already states it applies to GNOME
Bugzilla and the mailing lists.

> discussion about what steps to take. I don't think you should ignore the
> fact that we have a problem by attacking a proposed solution.

This is true. Sometimes someone does behave badly and you get the whole
'freedom of speech! my right!' etc going on. Also difficult if you
should respond in the mailing list or not. Usually you get 5 people
after that who disagree with you.

BTW behaviour I don't like are things like some new person who is either
really enthusiastic over some product he's working on (to the point of
it basically being nothing more than spamming multiple mailing lists),
aggressive behaviour on bugreports (demanding work to be done) and
sometimes getting personal (mailing lists). But overall, it doesn't
happen too often.
Overall, I was more annoyed by people threatening legal action against
me personally (as responses to sysadmin ticket). Those people weren't
part of the GNOME community as I define/see it.

> As far as I know is Luis among the very few people in our community who
> has had a legal training. Appointing judges is not something countries
> do without said lawyer having a lot of field experience.

IMO it is pretty easy to spot when someone crosses the line. But maybe
the difference is that I'm ok with someone behaving badly. Everyone has
a bad day/week/whatever.
Thing is, if you don't like some behaviour, why not just respond nicely
and say you didn't like it? Various times you do get an reaction saying
it wasn't meant that way. No need to begin with reading up on whole
procedures, CoC, etc.

> We (the GNOME community) already have a lot of responsibility. We decide
> what goes into GNOME products, what's on our website, who can make
> contributions, who's on Planet GNOME, who's a member of the Foundation, who
> can have a gnome.org email address, who's on the board, ... We can't get out
> of our responsibility by saying we don't have the training.

I don't get your point here.

You mean how someone should behave? What is socially acceptable
somewhere is totally not acceptable elsewhere (eating with mouth open
and making noises).
Or to spot unacceptable behaviour? I'm ok with political posts etc on
Planet GNOME. As long as the person posting it does understand that
other people will feel different about it.


and regarding Planet GNOME itself (IIRC it was brought up in this
thread.. or maybe some other GNOME mailing lists.. anyway.. always a
nice long topic, so here goes): discussing the useless posts on Planet
GNOME is a reoccurring and nice thing to do at GUADEC. I dislike the
advertisement/sales posts (sorry Miguel) and almost everything that has
a date in the title (sorry Meeks). For others e.g. the Meeks posts are
one of the few posts they read.
Oh, and various people reading it seem to think it should only be
strictly about GNOME. IMO that would be boring. Plus for that we have
news.gnome.org.

-- 
Regards,
Olav