Hi, Some of you might have seen that the "SWC for high school students" thread turning into a discussion of email etiquette and the code of conduct. Ted Hart kindly suggested we move that discussion over to it's own thread.
I think the overall question was whether the tone and language of the code of conduct was the right one to encourage an open and welcoming community. Here was the last email on that thread, where Spaced Girl was arguing that the code of conduct had no practical value for improving the actual atmosphere on the list, and I replied: On Thu, May 5, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Spaced Girl <[email protected]> wrote: > How about SC just do away with the whole code of conduct in general? It's a > theoretical piece of shit and has no practical value. I say this especially > after all the arguing that's transpired over the past 24 hours and my > general disgust with some of the posting of instructors here...[very few on > the planet but me would notice or care]. > > Overall, think going gentler on students/new individuals anywhere is the > only acceptable approach to teaching/living. The problem with things like > codes of conduct or talk of politeness or respect is how couched in highly > normative/exclusive/dominant social ideas they are. > > From what I've noticed; this is a very diverse group compared to most > academic related places and makes for all sorts of alien talk. Learning to > fight/discuss through our differences in a much more productive approach > than going fascist on everything....even if this is a company [authoritative > space]. Er ... I tend to agree with you about the code of conduct and I strongly agree that allowing space for vigorous discussion is essential. I would say though, that it appears that the "code of conduct" issue has become extremely sensitive, with very strong feelings from all sides. So, in order to avoid pressing buttons, I was hoping to divert away from whether the CoC is good or not, to writing another document that everyone can agree on, that states in simple language what kind of community we'd like to see, in positive rather than negative terms. Maybe then we wouldn't have to fight about the CoC. Cheers, Matthew _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
