On Thu, 26 Jan 2012, Ben Sturmfels <b...@stumbles.id.au> wrote: > On 14/01/12 02:11, George Patterson wrote: > > Neither subtle nor overt harassment should not be tolerated. Name > > calling or stating that someone's argument doesn't matter is wrong, > > perhaps there is something in the person argument or some side of it > > that you haven't considered. In the recent past, I have found some > > people on this list to be obnoxious at worse or blunt at best. > > George and I caught up at linux.conf.au and I gather that the > obnoxious/blunt discussions he mentioned were actually on another > group's mailing list. > > It goes without saying Free Software Melbourne expects all members to be > excellent to each other. If you ever feel uncomfortable about > participating in this group, please get in touch with myself <ben at > stumbles.id.au> or Alex Fraser <alex at phatcore.com>. We take > harassment seriously and promise to handle any concerns promptly and > discretely.
On most mailing lists related to free software there is a great culture of flaming. It seems to me that this is largely by design, it's widely regarded that "free speech" means saying whatever you want on a mailing list and therefore the enforcement of social standards is via flaming. Those ideas restrict freedom of speech to those who are comfortable with flaming. It seems that a policy of active intervention in discussions before they get too far out of hand is needed. Probably a code of conduct too, because almost everyone who joins this list will be used to all the other free software lists. The anti-harassment policies that are being adopted by almost all conferences nowadays are a good thing and they have been proven to work, maybe they can be used as inspiration for a mailing list policy. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
