On Sat, Jul 19, 2014 at 11:38 PM, Noah Slater <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am +1 on including empathy and -1 on removing it. > > Empathy is difficult (perhaps one of the most difficult things to do > as a human, behind perhaps forgiveness) but it's also the most > important thing that we're looking for on the project. Doubly so > because we're a loose, distributed team. > > Empathy is just the feeling that you understand the other and then be able to share with other. Ie something prone to conflict. You can't be empathic with someone you don't know. For example you will have hard time to be empathic with me since you don't know what I did today, what I do, if i had hard time, If I am in the middle of a crisis, badly slept, etc. You don't know nothing about the other, only what he wants you to know about him and his public appearance. And that's really true over mail/irc/im. The more important thing for the project is to feel the best about the other and that (s)he has the best intention for the project. What is generally defined as trust. I don't want to have someone taking all the precautions possibles, hiding his frustration just because eventually a critic can be badly taken. Until a critic is about the code, the documentation, the project, there is nothing bad to say that a change is really bad, eventually stupid. If you trust the other you know it's not about you. The other way, because eventually the other think he could be empathetic, you don't know. And the frustration will stay around eventually. And again who is the more empathetic in a discussion? How lack of empathy will be defined? Anyway I don't want to discuss about psychology. I don't think we should base a code of conduct on a psychology term prone to conflict. It should be neutral and precise. Let's not introduce another concept then (even if I don't think honesty is a concept...) . I would simply replace the whole paragraph by: Be welcoming, friendly, and patient: We work together to resolve conflict, > assume good intentions of each others. We may all experience some > frustration from time to time, but we do not allow frustration to turn into > a personal attack. A community where people feel uncomfortable or > threatened is not a productive one. We should be respectful when dealing > with other community members as well as with people outside our > community. I don't see any reason to use the word empathetic at all. For those who think that term has any sense, the whole sentence includes it. I don''t see any reason to use a sensitive term in a Code Of Conduct that advocates openness and diversity. - benoit.
