Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On 11/25/2009 02:33 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote:

> I understand your point but I do think it would have made Jeff feel a
> little better, even if it were someone else that referred the event to
> the MC.
>
> In any case, I think we are straying slight from what we actually want:
> to prevent such attacks from happening in the first place; by explicitly
> stating that all GNOME communication forums come with this implicit
> terms of use, we decrease the probability of bad behaviour before it
> ever happens.

Well, what we want is really:

  1. Our communication channels maintaining a upbeat tune and high 
signal-to-noise,

  2. Attract people and not lose many.

Now one way to achieve this is policing, but that's hardly the only way.

What I want to propose / see instead is to make it more clear that:

  1. People speak on their own behalf, not on behalf of GNOME.  Unless they 
ARE talking on behalf of GNOME (say, board, release team, etc),

  2. Like it or not, there exist people out there who are rude, can be 
offensive, etc.  They are out there in real life, and they are there in 
cyberspace.  Just know who they are and ignore them.

  3. Most of the time, a vocal minority does not speak for the majority.

  4. In any kind of discussion and/or medium, one should learn who's words 
matter.  "Is he the maintainer of the module?  Is he a developer?  Does he 
generally offer useful insight?  Does he know what he's talking about?  Do 
others take this person seriously?"  When you learn to ignore the noise, life 
is beautiful again.


I also like to see two more ideas added to CoC:

  - Learn to agree to disagree.

  - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them.


Back to the Murray case, with my recommendation, everything would have 
happened the way it did.  Only that we'd try to make it more clear (on PGO in 
this case) that his views do not represent GNOME's or the majority of GNOME 
contributors.  Just need to accept that it sometimes happens.  What I found 
more disappointing in that particular incident was the flow of "+1" and 
"Thanks you" messages Murray received on PGO.  If that's really who we are, 
well, why police it?  Like what I read once: "Please be a dick if that's who 
you are".


Anyway, that's my feeling about the subject.

behdad



> That's not to mention never having to have this thread come up again. :)