On Saturday, 14 May 2016 at 08:24:32 UTC, Joakim wrote:
taken it to now. It just means, "Stick to the technical topics," particularly in this forum, which is mostly feasible, but people have other interests too and discussions wander to the connected world.
Without a clear moderation policy and a capable moderator it just means the «sensibilities and favouritism» of the moderator at hand. The D forums show symptoms of this. Being a good moderator is difficult though especially if you are emotionally invested in the topic. Ideally the moderator shouldn't be invested in the topic at hand.
So often the better solution is to have different forum sections and divert/direct different groups to the different sections. Telling people to move regular communication off to another community is counter productive and impractical. It is typically the opposite of what you should do to grow a stronger community.
Anyway, talking religion and politics in a work setting is perfectly fine in a sane working environment. It is very difficult to get to know people without talking beliefs and values. Getting to know people is what makes communities healthy and strong. Anxiety isn't good for growth, a culture with a relaxed and laid back attitude to different opinions is much better for growth.
Using your real name online is an artifact of the real world that doesn't work too well: I read a good analogy once that compared it to shouting out your real name every time you enter a real room, which nobody does. We're moving to a more anonymous virtual world where most everyone will be using nicknames, we're just not there yet, largely because the culture at large is just not used to it yet.
I don't know. Younger people often go with the anonymous "cool" handle, but as people get older they tend to go with their real name?
Besides, if you use the same handle you aren't really anonymous anyway. It is usually easy to track down people's real identities based on the information they share by systematic googling. If you really want to. Most people don't really want to, but anonymity is usually not easy to achieve if you want meaningful communication over time.
However, providing just date+time+identity can become a problem. Say, if an employee is on sick leave and is active on github in the same period. So even seemingly innocent information can be sensitive given the circumstances (depending on the nature of the employer-employee relationship).
