On 2014-12-15 9:35 AM, Gervase Markham wrote:
Hi Mike,
Hi, Gerv!
I've trimmed some of your text below for brevity's sake but I think I've
spoken to your core arguments.
On 12/12/14 16:48, Mike Hoye wrote:
As part of a Planet refresh [1] planned for the new year and aiming for
end-Q2, the Planet peers are going to be revising the somewhat-sparse
Planet documentation and policies [2].
A visual redesign is a fine thing, although those who consume via feed
readers (which may be many) probably don't care if the design is 80s,
90s, or 2020s. However, I would say that a policy review is a separate
thing to a visual redesign, and we should not tie the two together.
I wasn't clear about this, but yes. They're happening in parallel, it
would be nice to ship them in parallel, but there's nothing tying them
together.
Also, yay RSS and open syndication standards.
I'm all for Mozilla being an inclusive, diverse community. However, the
fact must be faced that _in_a_Mozilla_context_, the pressures to make
this community less diverse (by ostracising or silencing those with
views of which they disapprove) have all come from those areas of our
community which claim to champion diversity. How is this contradiction
to be resolved?
This is not a thing that's either "broken" or "fixed". I think we have a
lot of trust to rebuild in the idea that many voices make Mozilla
stronger, and what we're proposing here isn't a "solution", but a
process by which that trust can be rebuilt. My personal hope is that we
can get there from here by have the difficult, nuanced discussions in
forums better suited to nuance and discussion than Planet, and perhaps
bring the results of those discussions back.
This is the basis of my argument that "by taking an active role in this,
we can do better". We want - bluntly, Mozilla needs - intensely
passionate people, and this is an an attempt at a framework for Planet
that helps people find and support each other while mitigating the
"crossing the streams"-style hazards that having a community full of
intensely passionate people involves.
To that end, we are going to propose that Planet have a participation
policy including words to the effect that "in discussing contentious or
personal topics outside of Mozilla's mission, please consider
invitations to conversation welcome, position statements not, and
exercise your judgement with the growth of a kind and inclusive
community in mind."
The difficulty with this is that either it's meaningless, or it's code
for something else.
I disagree; we are informed by history here, know that some topics are
particularly divisive or inflammatory, and can speak to each other about
new ones as they come up.
So, code... maybe? But this is inevitably going to be a delicate
context, and the reason that diplomacy exists as a field is that in a
delicate context, carefully chosen words matter a lot.
Further, that we ask Planet's participating authors to:
- add a "mozilla" tag to posts that are relevant to Mozilla, so that
it's explicit that their inclusion in Planet is deliberate, and
- when addressing the community on a topic others may find challenging,
that there be a brief disclaimer at the top of those posts outlining the
contents. We intend to provide boilerplate text and HTML snippets people
can paste into posts to make that as painless as possible, though people
can always roll their own.
The problem with this second requirement is that it presupposes that
there is a distinction.
This is a valid point, but I still think there's room for a nuanced
distinction here. Nobody disputes that ones' religion shapes one's
decision, but an invitation to participate in one's religion is
different than an invitation to participate in your decision making process.
Frankly, if we're going to make this work at all then caring about
nuanced distinctions is the name of this game.
So that leaves me wondering: how would this work in practice? Are we
going to have a policy that any post which mentions the name of Jesus
must come with a trigger warning?
Maybe my mistake here is in calling it a policy, when what I'm proposing
is a request for courtesy.
If you know you're about to say a thing that may be distressing or
confrontational to fellow Mozillians - whether you think they're
justified in their reaction or not - a heads-up for what's coming seems
like a fine and reasonable thing to do.
You and I would have very little common ground on theological matters,
I'm sure, but I feel strongly that a world where you've put a small note
up-front and then said what you have to say is a better one for everyone
than a world in which you - or any Mozillians - feel compelled to stay
silent.
That's what I'm aiming for.
- mhoye
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