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Recently, in the context of a small dispute and clear violation of both established policy and Code of Conduct, hparker raised the question, "why don't we treat all violators the same?" (This in the context of the ciaranm hearing a year ago.) This is a reasonable question, and I'd like to make a few observations, perhaps relevant to it. 1. The vast majority of our developers and users are unfailingly polite and respectful in their correspondence. (Well, most of our developers are silent. If you pick any given thread (on -dev), I doubt if more that 20 people contribute, and I think for each thread, it's pretty much the same 20.) 2. Occasionally, any one of us (developers or users collectively) will temporarily "lose it." I think at most such an event should trigger a (perhaps private) warning "Please don't do that --- you know better." I also think such a note along with an opportunity for the offender to cool off will solve the problem. This sort of event is normal now and then in a community our size, and generally there is no real harm. 3. Some times, however, the offender will not "cool off", and there will be a complaint filed to devrel. This is when devrel steps in in a more formal capacity. In the normal course of events, the complaint is sent to the ombudsmen to try to effect a reconciliation, and they are usually successful. When they are not, then Homer's observation kicks in, and we have to process it. This is not a pleasant task. So I think the answer to hparker's question is that we try very hard to treat all violators the same way; fundamental fairness demands it. If you step back a bit from the ciaranm hearing, you will see that the entire stage 2, 3 process was active in that case. Hope this is at least marginally useful, Regards, Ferris - -- Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Developer, Gentoo Linux (Sparc, Devrel) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6-ecc01.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFGIjhDQa6M3+I///cRAraFAKCEz7U7cDI1SRBKjReeVotg4gWQ0wCgw35x 8tyQkRuCX4x5z/uaMYlS1k4= =zd85 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
