Many of us talk/think a lot about how to reduce conflict in our projects. For those who're interested, I was recently pointed towards two relevant videos -- I'm posting them here in hopes they might be useful for others.
So, for whoever's interested, here is: * Donnie Berkholz's recent talk at Open Source Bridge, titled "Assholes are killing your project." Donnie, a council member at Gentoo Linux, advocates establishment of a friendly culture including a code of conduct, and maintenance of that culture via simple mechanisms for problem reporting and resolution, plus a clear focus on mission. Unfortunately the audio here isn't terrific, so it's not super-easy to follow. http://blip.tv/file/2444432 * Two open source engineers at Google, Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick, with a talk called "How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People" Upshot: Preserve your project's attention and focus, build a healthy community and fortify it with good community practices, be on the lookout for problems, and disinfect where necessary, including marginalization/ignoring of difficult people, and booting them out if you need to. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSFDm3UYkeE Personally, I have also gotten some good value out of Bill Eddy's book High-Conflict People in Legal Disputes. Bill is a mediator, lawyer and former social worker who found himself repeatedly encountering destructive people in his work, and not knowing how to disarm them or disengage from them. He wrote High Conflict People to help other mental health and legal professionals recognize, understand and work productively with various types of conflict-seeking personalities -- but IMO its usefulness extends way beyond the legal system; it's relevant for our work too. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0981509053/ref=cm_li_v_cr_self?tag=linkedin-20 Thanks, Sue -- Sue Gardner Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 415 839 6885 office Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
