Re: Meeting Minutes Published - November 12, 2009
Hi, Brian Cameron wrote: * Need to find a new time for the meeting since the current time is not good for Srinivasa Ragavan. Stormy will set up a new Doodle meeting. Everyone: enter your times in Doodle, be flexible! Can I repeat my suggestion of the start of the term? Rotate the time of the meeting so that it is at the same local time for a different attendee every meeting. That way, the pain is shared, and every board member ends up being inconvenienced from time to time. Since there are more European and American (continents, not country) board members staff, they will be proportionately less inconvenienced than Srini, but at least once in every 10 meetings, everyone else will be getting up at 6 in the morning too. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - October 29, 2009
On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 23:53 +0100, Andy Wingo wrote: Hi Andy, On Fri 13 Nov 2009 22:27, Brian Cameron brian.came...@sun.com writes: Minutes for Meeting of October 29th, 2009 [...] More generally, we need to make sure that GNOME Foundation members sign the GNOME Code of Conduct, and perhaps make it a requirement for new members to sign. Also need to update the GNOME blog and planet so that it is more clear that people should follow the GNOME Code of Conduct. A couple of thoughts: First, the planet has always been under editorial control; it has a maintainer, like any other module -- actually a few of them. Therefore, what is or is not on the planet may fairly be seen to be under the purview of the maintainer(s), who are there due to their respected position in the field of their module, in this case in the public discourse of GNOME. So they can promote or censure certain kinds of speech as they see fit. I'm glad that you write this, Andy. This is how I see it too. I often still get told that this is not the case and that each individual blogger is himself responsible. That way it's chaotic and very hard to manage, enforce. I agree that each individual blogger should consider that each article, that he puts in a category that he gave the planet maintainers, can appear on the planet. He's responsible for his own blog and reputation. but I too think that in the end the planet is a project like any other GNOME-one, with its own maintainers and, thus, editorial control. What is or is not on the planet may indeed be seen to be under the purview of those maintainers (in my opinion). Furthermore I don't think it's censorship or wrong to skip blog posts, if a planet maintainer doesn't want it on the planet. Maybe it should be possible to ask the project members why a blog article got skipped? Maybe some guidelines need to be set up? Sure (is a maintainer decision) Secondly, binding or pseudo-binding resolutions on the Foundation membership should probably be ratified by the Foundation membership itself via some more formal process. As it is I don't think a majority have signed the CoC. (FWIW, I have.) Before committing ourselves to require it, I think we'd first need to convince all current members to sign the CoC themselves. Else it'll be a quagmire of people who have and people don't have to, and people who had to sign it. (FWIW, I have.) I'm not against requiring this. I'm against public punishments for people who violate it. I'm not against telling somebody in private to chill: Assume people mean well is an important advice in the Coc. Greetings, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi all, The Board has recently received some complaints from members of the community about certain the inappropriate behaviors. In the context of GNOME Foundation, it's really hard to argue about how we expect our members to behave if there is no official guidelines that members are supposed to comply with. The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. This way we'll have a common ground for dealing with certain conflict situations and avoid trying to base our discussions on guidelines that certain members haven't explicitly agreed on. Before deciding on this, we thought it would be useful to get some feedback from the community. Thanks, --lucasr on behalf of the GNOME Foundation Board of Directors [1] http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct [2] http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct/Signatures ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - October 29, 2009
Hi, 2009/11/24 Vincent Untz vu...@gnome.org: Le mardi 24 novembre 2009, à 23:53 +0100, Andy Wingo a écrit : Hi Brian, Thanks for the detailed and readable notes! On Fri 13 Nov 2009 22:27, Brian Cameron brian.came...@sun.com writes: Minutes for Meeting of October 29th, 2009 [...] More generally, we need to make sure that GNOME Foundation members sign the GNOME Code of Conduct, and perhaps make it a requirement for new members to sign. Also need to update the GNOME blog and planet so that it is more clear that people should follow the GNOME Code of Conduct. A couple of thoughts: First, the planet has always been under editorial control; it has a maintainer, like any other module -- actually a few of them. Therefore, what is or is not on the planet may fairly be seen to be under the purview of the maintainer(s), who are there due to their respected position in the field of their module, in this case in the public discourse of GNOME. So they can promote or censure certain kinds of speech as they see fit. Yep. And it is expected by the current editors that blog posts that appear on Planet GNOME respect the Code of Conduct :-) It's mentioned in the guidelines for Planet GNOME in the wiki, but it's not mentioned in the current footer. Secondly, binding or pseudo-binding resolutions on the Foundation membership should probably be ratified by the Foundation membership itself via some more formal process. As it is I don't think a majority have signed the CoC. (FWIW, I have.) Nod. Actually, I think there was an action item about starting a discussion here on this topic... I guess the mail is in the draft folder somewhere, it should hopefully arrive soon ;-) I've just created a new thread for the official discussion on this topic. Please, continue there. --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Meeting Minutes Published - October 29, 2009
On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 21:01 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote: On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Emmanuele Bassi eba...@gmail.com wrote: There is no official enforcement of these principles unless the CoC gets an official enforcement (and this paragraph is removed) any requirement on having members sign the CoC page is a pointless exercise. What kind of enforcement would you like to see? A public shaming? Temporarily suspension of Planet privileges? Would the membership committee be a good place to do this? I'm not interested in public shaming; what I'm interested in is that there is a well-defined, possibly quick way for foundation members (and non-members as well) to report and have addressed CoC violations. currently it's all over the place: bugzilla is policed by the bug masters, the planet is policed by its editors, the mailing lists are policed by the lists maintainers, IRC is policed by the people in #opers. I might happen to know this but it's not explicitly defined anywhere; and even if it were, the sentence up there makes reporting seem a moot point. if we want to have the CoC as a binding contract for foundation members then yes: I agree that the membership committee should be the official contact for requests of enforcement. ciao, Emmanuele. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Lucas Rocha wrote: The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. This way we'll have a common ground for dealing with certain conflict situations and avoid trying to base our discussions on guidelines that certain members haven't explicitly agreed on. My views on this are already well known: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2009-May/msg00066.html It seems like the issue isn't making people promise to be nice, it's what happens when they aren't. And once again the board has taken the easy way out, by not being judgemental about reported behaviour. In this case, I'd like to see the board clearly come out say we don't have a problem with this, or we have a problem with this (while saying what this is), instead of having a wishy-washy solution. Mostly I agree with Emmanuele Jason on this. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 7:48 AM, Lucas Rocha luc...@gnome.org wrote: it's really hard to argue about how we expect our members to behave if there is no official guidelines that members are supposed to comply with. That seems like a cop-out to me, at least as phrased. Does this mean if there's a codified set of guidelines in the future but it doesn't address something explicitly, then your hands are tied in addressing it? Inappropriate is inappropriate, whether it's pointed out ahead of time or not. Yes, a set of guidelines is a good idea, but this shouldn't hold up the board addressing behaviors that are clearly inappropriate, guidelines or no. Best, Zonker -- Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier j...@zonker.net openSUSE Community Manager Get openSUSE 11.2! http://bit.ly/EOV8a Twitter: jzb | Identica: jzb About: http://www.dissociatedpress.net/about/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi Lucas On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:48:45PM +, Lucas Rocha wrote: The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well as an informal guideline for the community but we'd like to make it an official document that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. The current code of document[1] has some incredible guidelines such as the advice against using RTFM, which arguably has nothing to do with bad behavior. Also, instructions such as Be patient and generous are vague by themselves. Your measure of patience may be quite different from mine. These are OK as guidelines, but not as policy. 1. http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct Mukund ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. I think the problem isn't the offending material but rather that people expect the board to take action when there is offending material. The board wants to represent the community and so would like to make sure there are clear guidelines on the behaviour the community expects and what we'd like to have happen when people don't follow those guidelines. Hopefully the guidelines will also make sure there is less offending material. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. You forget how much energy is lost forever to the community because good people walk away after an unpleasant experience? It is telling that the main reason departing editors give when signing off Wikipedia is: Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment, contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html They have concrete measurements of participation, we don't. So we don't know how many developers are inactive now, and were formerly active, or why they left. But we certainly have anecdotal evidence of people who have publicly left because they could no longer work in the GNOME environment. I can give you 10 names off the top of my head. You don't think that's a problem? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I'm against an enshrined code of conduct which suddenly kicks you out of GNOME, or gets you shunned. A Terms of Service for hosted sites which gets your account unsubscribed for that site might be better if it is very narrowly defined, e.g. no spamming, no porn, etc. However as we move into the realm of who offended who it gets dicey and predicated on the sentiments of who is making the final call. We've survived the oGalaxys and Bowie Poags of the past and I don't think I have seen any worse conduct. I'm defering to the board if they really feel they need an enshrined document but there should be a vote on the final draft if we go in this direction. On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
That is why the proposal that I just put on the table explicitly talks only of official GNOME forums of communication which is, incidentally, exactly like a terms of service. 2009/11/25 john palmieri john.j5.palmi...@gmail.com I'm against an enshrined code of conduct which suddenly kicks you out of GNOME, or gets you shunned. A Terms of Service for hosted sites which gets your account unsubscribed for that site might be better if it is very narrowly defined, e.g. no spamming, no porn, etc. However as we move into the realm of who offended who it gets dicey and predicated on the sentiments of who is making the final call. We've survived the oGalaxys and Bowie Poags of the past and I don't think I have seen any worse conduct. I'm defering to the board if they really feel they need an enshrined document but there should be a vote on the final draft if we go in this direction. On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:03:47 +0100, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. You forget how much energy is lost forever to the community because good people walk away after an unpleasant experience? It is telling that the main reason departing editors give when signing off Wikipedia is: Wikipedia is becoming a more hostile environment, contends Mr. Ortega, a project manager at Libresoft, a research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125893981183759969.html They have concrete measurements of participation, we don't. So we don't know how many developers are inactive now, and were formerly active, or why they left. But we certainly have anecdotal evidence of people who have publicly left because they could no longer work in the GNOME environment. I can give you 10 names off the top of my head. You don't think that's a problem? I had exactly the same problem with wikipedia : http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?222-why-i-don-t-contribute-to-wikipedia-anymore And you know what? The problem is that there is too much rules. So people feel empowered and don't think anymore about the situation, they stick to the rule. The more you add rules, the more you will increase hostility against newcomers. Do you think that many people were turned out of the GNOME community because of an hostile experience? I don't think so. (I might be wrong, I just never met anybody that has a bad experience). Wikipedia is probably the project with the most rules and you see what happens. Lionel ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 12:05 -0500, john palmieri wrote: I'm against an enshrined code of conduct which suddenly kicks you out of GNOME, or gets you shunned. A Terms of Service for hosted sites which gets your account unsubscribed for that site might be better if it is very narrowly defined, e.g. no spamming, no porn, etc. However as we move into the realm of who offended who it gets dicey and predicated on the sentiments of who is making the final call. We've survived the oGalaxys and Bowie Poags of the past and I don't think I have seen any worse conduct. I'm defering to the board if they really feel they need an enshrined document but there should be a vote on the final draft if we go in this direction. I (fully) agree with John here. The lawyer-talk proposal of Jason is a no for me personally. It's also not the document that I've put my name under when I signed the Code of Conduct any longer if that amendment is indeed added. On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Lionel Dricot pl...@ploum.net wrote: I believe that this discussion is becoming far too bloated. How often do we have to deal with offended people? What energy will we spend to deal with each case on a case by case basis? Answer is A. How much energy will we spend to try to design a law/rule that might fit every use case and will be discussed each time we have a case? Answer is B. I expect A B by at least one order of magnitude. What is exactly the problem here? Sometimes some people are offended by the content of planet GNOME? OK, it has always be the case but it's a problem. A rare one but still a problem. What effect will have deciding of rules, CoC or punishment on that particular problem? I don't see how it could have an effect. There will still be offending stuff from time to time on pgo. This was never a problem in the past as it was handled on a case by case basis. Anyway, there are always people offended by everything. When you have to type a command once a year, you don't start developing a framework that will handle every possible situation. (it has already been done, it's called J2EE) Cheers, Lionel On Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:36:41 -0700, Stormy Peters stormy.pet...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: I think this is taking it too far. The Code of Conduct being presented as a set of guidelines is OK, but it is not wise to make it policy. The GNOME project is not a sect, to control what I can and cannot say/do in public. We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi Stormy On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 09:36:41AM -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. Would you agree that things such as filtering for spam (on lists, IRC, etc.), and removal of badly behaving people already happen, and these are not specific to GNOME foundation members? It should be commonsense to anyone that bad signal/noise will be punished, when other peers don't like it. How does requiring GNOME foundation members to sign this document help? (Public does not mean you can do whatever you want. In most public places there are laws you have to follow.) Nod, but this is a bad analogy. In public places, one must behave according to the law, but (having not understood that this applies to only GNOME infrastructure) I didn't want GNOME to make these rules. Mukund ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Mukund Sivaraman m...@banu.com wrote: Hi Stormy On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 09:36:41AM -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: We are talking about GNOME hosted platforms. Planet GNOME, blogs.gnome.organd the GNOME mailing lists are all forums we host and I think we can (and do) expect a certain standard of conduct on them. For example, if someone started spamming the Foundation list, we would block them. Would you agree that things such as filtering for spam (on lists, IRC, etc.), and removal of badly behaving people already happen, and these are not specific to GNOME foundation members? It should be commonsense to anyone that bad signal/noise will be punished, when other peers don't like it. When bad behaviour happens we talk about it a lot but nothing happens. As Dave says, people (good contributors in many cases) just leave. How does requiring GNOME foundation members to sign this document help? Making it explicit the behaviour we want. Hopefully this would cause greater self policing and peer control and eliminate the unwanted behaviour. Stormy ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: Do you think that many people were turned out of the GNOME community because of an hostile experience? I don't think so. (I might be wrong, I just never met anybody that has a bad experience). Some names of good contributors who have drifted away from GNOME, at least partly because of the tone of discourse: Dave Camp Seth Nickell Alex Graveley Telsa Gwynne Jacob Berkmann Ross Golder Daniel Veillard Joe Shaw Jorge Castro Another bunch of people who are still around the free software world, but who no longer consider themselves GNOME community members - I can't speak to their motivations, of course: Nat Friedman Miguel de Icaza Glynn Foster Jeff Waugh Jody Goldberg Bill Hanneman Malcolm Tredinnick Mark McLoughlin George Lebl Some of these people are still members of the foundation, but none of them have been seen around for a long while. Acceptable collateral damage for having unfettered freedom of speech? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.orgwrote: I (fully) agree with John here. The lawyer-talk proposal of Jason is a no for me personally. It's also not the document that I've put my name under when I signed the Code of Conduct any longer if that amendment is indeed added. We would put any such official CoC up for a vote; that seems like the only reasonable course of action. So can you tell me what you don't like about it and propose some changes that make it better? Let's move this conversation forward. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 12:13 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org wrote: I (fully) agree with John here. The lawyer-talk proposal of Jason is a no for me personally. It's also not the document that I've put my name under when I signed the Code of Conduct any longer if that amendment is indeed added. We would put any such official CoC up for a vote; that seems like the only reasonable course of action. Yes So can you tell me what you don't like about it and propose some changes that make it better? Let's move this conversation forward. I don't like the entire intention of enforcement. Cheers, Philip -- Philip Van Hoof, freelance software developer home: me at pvanhoof dot be gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org http://pvanhoof.be/blog http://codeminded.be ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.orgwrote: I don't like the entire intention of enforcement. The intention is improving our community quality. The method is what you disagree with. What alternative method would you propose? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:49 PM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: Do you think that many people were turned out of the GNOME community because of an hostile experience? I don't think so. (I might be wrong, I just never met anybody that has a bad experience). Some names of good contributors who have drifted away from GNOME, at least partly because of the tone of discourse: Dave Camp Seth Nickell Alex Graveley Telsa Gwynne Jacob Berkmann Ross Golder Daniel Veillard Joe Shaw Jorge Castro Another bunch of people who are still around the free software world, but who no longer consider themselves GNOME community members - I can't speak to their motivations, of course: Nat Friedman Miguel de Icaza Glynn Foster Jeff Waugh Jody Goldberg Bill Hanneman Malcolm Tredinnick Mark McLoughlin George Lebl Some of these people are still members of the foundation, but none of them have been seen around for a long while. Acceptable collateral damage for having unfettered freedom of speech? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list We should look at what wikipedia is going through - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10403467-93.html I should also point out that we would have most likely lost just as many members from them just drifting to other projects, and you don't count how many we have gained from being an open project with a lack of rules. Let's be honest here, GNOME isn't a huge game changer, or at least in the last few years hasn't been. It is a success by many metrics but these days as we have become more formal it just doesn't hold the wild west excitement it once had. The shedding of some of the top contributors I see as a natural evolution of a project which allows new blood to rise without being constrained by old ideas. I think a bigger issue comes when having a larger community you get more differing views and it gets tiring to defend design decisions amongst a louder constituency of those who are not keen to your ideas. Signal to noise ratio isn't something you are going to solve with a code of conduct. I agree that some people tend to use words like idiotic, crap and other personal attacks when going to the negative but I just choose to see their views as invalid once they go there. I feel this is the real issue that is trying to be solved and I fear that it won't do anything positive, and may actually lead to being a club to quiet decedent which is why I call for narrow rules if we do feel it is necessary in the most egregious circumstances. -- John (J5) Palmieri ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le mercredi 25 nov. 2009 à 10:35:46 (-0700), Stormy Peters a écrit: When bad behaviour happens we talk about it a lot but nothing happens. I respectfully disagree. There have been cases on our lists where people did act like Dicks, in ebassi's words, and they have been frankly and openly said so. I would not qualify that as nothing especially on our public forums where everything is archived and searchable. I have at least one case in mind where the person in question did calm down after that :-) I'd rather encourage people to speak up when someone is clearly misbehaving instead of secretely going to ring the bell of the politburo police door. Dave says, people (good contributors in many cases) just leave. Well, that is very arguable. New good contributors join too. Moreover if you informally compare the tone of the discussions on our forum, I am not sure it's any worse than, say on the linux kernel mailing list. But at least on the lkml, if you misbehave, you are likely to feel the pressure quite directly. Are you sure they are loosing more contributors than us because of that? Dodji ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi, Dodji Seketeli wrote: Moreover if you informally compare the tone of the discussions on our forum, I am not sure it's any worse than, say on the linux kernel mailing list. But at least on the lkml, if you misbehave, you are likely to feel the pressure quite directly. Are you sure they are loosing more contributors than us because of that? If we're going to aim high, perhaps we could aim for something other than lkml? Maybe debian-legal or licence-discuss? Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
I'm trying to stay out of the discussion at least today. But: On 11/25/2009 12:49 PM, Dave Neary wrote: Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: Do you think that many people were turned out of the GNOME community because of an hostile experience? I don't think so. (I might be wrong, I just never met anybody that has a bad experience). Some names of good contributors who have drifted away from GNOME, at least partly because of the tone of discourse: This is entirely misleading. at least partly doesn't mean anything. Is this the ten people you said you can name off the top of your head? Other than Telsa and partially Ross, have any other ones expressed to you or publicly that they left GNOME at least partly because of the tone of discourse? And when did Jorge drifted away from GNOME? Last I checked he was around just fine. And Google blackhole had no part? Dave Camp Seth Nickell Alex Graveley Telsa Gwynne Jacob Berkmann Ross Golder Daniel Veillard Joe Shaw Jorge Castro Another bunch of people who are still around the free software world, but who no longer consider themselves GNOME community members - I can't speak to their motivations, of course: Nat Friedman Miguel de Icaza Glynn Foster Jeff Waugh Jody Goldberg Bill Hanneman Malcolm Tredinnick Mark McLoughlin George Lebl Some of these people are still members of the foundation, but none of them have been seen around for a long while. You have an assumption that when in, people are supposed to stay in for the rest of their life. That assumption is wrong. People come and go all the time. People move away and work on different things. Either because of their job changes or changing personal interest, or for a whole variety of other reasons. If you want to count all the hackers who once hacked on GNOME but don't anymore go ahead, but don't use that to wrongly justify your point. Cheers, behdad Acceptable collateral damage for having unfettered freedom of speech? Cheers, Dave. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 4:15 PM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org wrote: On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 12:13 -0600, Jason D. Clinton wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 11:20 AM, Philip Van Hoof pvanh...@gnome.org wrote: I (fully) agree with John here. The lawyer-talk proposal of Jason is a no for me personally. It's also not the document that I've put my name under when I signed the Code of Conduct any longer if that amendment is indeed added. We would put any such official CoC up for a vote; that seems like the only reasonable course of action. Yes Please dont make it go that far, from my short experience around here this topic comes up every time something offensive is said on planet. Its already very hard on all of us because alot of us have strong feelings about this subject. If we push it to a vote, sounds like a sure recipe to kick out the losing half of the bet, I think we should value more our potential to work as a team and deal with each others differences somehow specifically on this point, rather than risking pushing half of us away because of some silly consolidation of a policy. Alternative proposal: lets deal with the problem at hand and get our story straight about what is planet.gnome.org, what can be posted there (i.e. no porn and vulgar language etc.) and how we can help to enforce a reasonably exact policy on an exact resource which is planet.gnome.org. Cheers, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Le mercredi 25 nov. 2009 à 19:39:13 (+0100), Dave Neary a écrit: Hi, Dodji Seketeli wrote: Moreover if you informally compare the tone of the discussions on our forum, I am not sure it's any worse than, say on the linux kernel mailing list. But at least on the lkml, if you misbehave, you are likely to feel the pressure quite directly. Are you sure they are loosing more contributors than us because of that? If we're going to aim high, perhaps we could aim for something other than lkml? Maybe debian-legal or licence-discuss? Well, you can certainly always point to forums where bikeshedding and personal attacks are frequent. I don't necessarily consider that as aiming high. My point with the lkml is that although it can be seen as a tough place to be, the kernel people don't seem to be flying away crying. I guess there are other variables to consider in that mix than the easy one of building a new police or not. Dodji ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 10:35:46AM -0700, Stormy Peters wrote: When bad behaviour happens we talk about it a lot but nothing happens. As Dave says, people (good contributors in many cases) just leave. I know of this first hand in Dave's own case, where he left the GIMP project due to issues with a contributor. I was also badly harassed during that time by this person. My point is that the current way of handling things is sufficient, and making foundation members sign a document is not going to change anything. How does requiring GNOME foundation members to sign this document help? Making it explicit the behaviour we want. Hopefully this would cause greater self policing and peer control and eliminate the unwanted behaviour. This is where the guidelines are good enough. There is no need to sign documents. Such issues can be taken care of on a case-by-case basis locally (to the project) by the project developers, with caution and restraint. Also this policing is fine in theory, but I doubt you'd be able to remove a core contributor who sometimes behaves bluntly towards users. There are such GNOME committers (who cannot be removed, for the project will wither, or they are senior peers who the the developers will not agree to remove), who are otherwise fine and decent people. So if you are implementing this policing at top-level where the foundation decides, it can either be (1) without prejudice, or (2) skewed. I feel it's better to let the projects handle it censorship, ejection, etc. locally without policy documents. Dave, you left the GIMP project because of issues with a contributor. Do you really think that person would have been deterred from behaving so, if he/she had signed such a document? Mukund ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 11/25/2009 01:50 PM, Tristan Van Berkom wrote: Alternative proposal: lets deal with the problem at hand and get our story straight about what is planet.gnome.org, what can be posted there (i.e. no porn and vulgar language etc.) and how we can help to enforce a reasonably exact policy on an exact resource which is planet.gnome.org. Well, that misses the main issue. Spam and p0rn are easy, and need no writing down. Where it gets though is criticism, expression of frustration, those kind of stuff. Those have most impact on the community and have caused people leave the project for. To make the discussion more practical, lets take one real incident of the past: Murray's blog re Jeff. It did not include vulgar language. It did include exaggerations that turned into libel. Now how does any proposed solution deal with that? If you propose CoC should be enforceable (which I personally strictly oppose: when there *is* a law, someone will eventually abuse it.) how do you define what be nice means? Does it mean I shouldn't offend anyone? Or is it that the majority should not find my action was offensive? Or foundation members not find it offensive? Or general public? etc etc etc. I like specific answer to how would your proposed solution would address this past incident, if it happened again? from anyone proposing a solution. And for those who just keep saying again and again that there should be an enforcement without ever offering how to get there, well, thanks, we heard you many times :). behdad Cheers, -Tristan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: To make the discussion more practical, lets take one real incident of the past: Murray's blog re Jeff. It did not include vulgar language. It did include exaggerations that turned into libel. Now how does any proposed solution deal with that? ... I like specific answer to how would your proposed solution would address this past incident, if it happened again? from anyone proposing a solution. Action: Jeff refers his complaint to the membership committee, MC agrees it was out of bounds, and sends a warning to Murray (first offence). End result: Jeff feels vindicated in his belief that he was wronged and is feels that any further attacks are unlikely as the Foundation (via MC) makes it clear, publicly, that this attack was out of bounds and that any further attack of that time will result in actual suspension of privileges. How does this not improve on what we have now? ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 11/25/2009 02:18 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org mailto:beh...@behdad.org wrote: To make the discussion more practical, lets take one real incident of the past: Murray's blog re Jeff. It did not include vulgar language. It did include exaggerations that turned into libel. Now how does any proposed solution deal with that? ... I like specific answer to how would your proposed solution would address this past incident, if it happened again? from anyone proposing a solution. Action: Jeff refers his complaint to the membership committee, MC agrees it was out of bounds, and sends a warning to Murray (first offence). End result: Jeff feels vindicated in his belief that he was wronged and is feels that any further attacks are unlikely as the Foundation (via MC) makes it clear, publicly, that this attack was out of bounds and that any further attack of that time will result in actual suspension of privileges. How does this not improve on what we have now? I'm guessing that Jeff would not have bothered to play cop and the end result would have been as it is today, plus a first offence for Murray. I'm not sure the end result would have been much different. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 1:26 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: On 11/25/2009 02:18 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote: On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 1:07 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org mailto:beh...@behdad.org wrote: To make the discussion more practical, lets take one real incident of the past: Murray's blog re Jeff. It did not include vulgar language. It did include exaggerations that turned into libel. Now how does any proposed solution deal with that? ... I like specific answer to how would your proposed solution would address this past incident, if it happened again? from anyone proposing a solution. Action: Jeff refers his complaint to the membership committee, MC agrees it was out of bounds, and sends a warning to Murray (first offence). End result: Jeff feels vindicated in his belief that he was wronged and is feels that any further attacks are unlikely as the Foundation (via MC) makes it clear, publicly, that this attack was out of bounds and that any further attack of that time will result in actual suspension of privileges. How does this not improve on what we have now? I'm guessing that Jeff would not have bothered to play cop and the end result would have been as it is today, plus a first offence for Murray. I'm not sure the end result would have been much different. I understand your point but I do think it would have made Jeff feel a little better, even if it were someone else that referred the event to the MC. In any case, I think we are straying slight from what we actually want: to prevent such attacks from happening in the first place; by explicitly stating that all GNOME communication forums come with this implicit terms of use, we decrease the probability of bad behaviour before it ever happens. That's not to mention never having to have this thread come up again. :) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi Dave, I thought that those members evolved naturally. Life is changing, so are interests and priorities. I was a proud Ubuntu member myself before coming to GNOME. Not because of the Ubuntu community (au contraire) but because my interests have changed. It has to be added that, sometimes, some people are very rude themselves and seem to think that everyone is rude with themselves (it's only a natural reaction). Sometime, the lack of motivation make you angry and, as a consequence, you overreact to everything. The hostility of the community is rarely a cause, it's more a consequence (when it is not only a bad perception of a vocal minority). But if you are right and that even some of the names you are giving (all brilliants people) were turned away because of the hostility of the community, I'll agree with you that we really have to solve this problem. (my opinion is of course short-sighted by my lack of experience in this field) Lionel PS : that's bring an interesting point. Is keeping a relatively hostile community kind of a darwinian selection that allow the community to replace older people, famous for their achievement 5 years ago but now less motivated, more conservative, by fresh blood with new ideas? (that's of course a joke, I don't say that we must keep this kind of community at all!) Le mercredi 25 novembre 2009 à 18:49 +0100, Dave Neary a écrit : Hi, Lionel Dricot wrote: Do you think that many people were turned out of the GNOME community because of an hostile experience? I don't think so. (I might be wrong, I just never met anybody that has a bad experience). Some names of good contributors who have drifted away from GNOME, at least partly because of the tone of discourse: Dave Camp Seth Nickell Alex Graveley Telsa Gwynne Jacob Berkmann Ross Golder Daniel Veillard Joe Shaw Jorge Castro Another bunch of people who are still around the free software world, but who no longer consider themselves GNOME community members - I can't speak to their motivations, of course: Nat Friedman Miguel de Icaza Glynn Foster Jeff Waugh Jody Goldberg Bill Hanneman Malcolm Tredinnick Mark McLoughlin George Lebl Some of these people are still members of the foundation, but none of them have been seen around for a long while. Acceptable collateral damage for having unfettered freedom of speech? Cheers, Dave. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi Lucas, On Wed 25 Nov 2009 13:48, Lucas Rocha luc...@gnome.org writes: In the context of GNOME Foundation, it's really hard to argue about how we expect our members to behave if there is no official guidelines that members are supposed to comply with. The GNOME Code of Conduct[1] has been serving very well It's a very nice document, a lovely credo. we'd like to make it an official document Sounds like a good idea, to give it more moral authority. that new Foundation members are expected to explicitly agree[2] with before being accepted. This way we'll have a common ground for dealing with certain conflict situations and avoid trying to base our discussions on guidelines that certain members haven't explicitly agreed on. I realize you haven't really touched on punishment, but since it's come up in other parts of this thread: The board already has the power to expell or suspend a member who fails to observe the rules of conduct promulgated from time to time by the Board (Bylaws VI 7(c)). But that's a bit extreme of course. It's good that we are concerned about maintaining our high level of discourse, but I am surprised at the clamoring by some for teeth behind the code of conduct. There are teeth enough already. And in the case of any particular venue, there is typically a responsible party -- p.g.o. with its maintainers (as you know :), mailing lists with their respective maintainers, etc. Maintainers should communicate their expectations to their contributors and users. People who don't like that can find another project/venue. It's only IRC and DDL that are really the outliers, it seems, and there there is enough social pressure, combined with ignore/kill lists, that I don't really see all the fuss. Finally, a quote from the foundation charter: [T]he foundation can have no real powers of enforcement; compliance with foundation decision should be an act of good-faith. If we've lost consensus to the point where we're regularly forcibly ejecting people from the foundation and co-opting their projects, we're sunk anyway. Happy hacking, Andy -- http://wingolog.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 11/25/2009 05:13 PM, Andy Wingo wrote: It's only IRC and DDL that are really the outliers, it seems, and there there is enough social pressure, combined with ignore/kill lists, that I don't really see all the fuss. And foundation list? Just saying each maintainer should solve this on their own does not make the problem go away, it just puts the burden on multiple people. And then when those maintainers fail to react, the issue typically escalates to the board, and we're back to square 1 again. So, however we solve this, it's good to solve it on the foundation level once. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 11/25/2009 02:33 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote: I understand your point but I do think it would have made Jeff feel a little better, even if it were someone else that referred the event to the MC. In any case, I think we are straying slight from what we actually want: to prevent such attacks from happening in the first place; by explicitly stating that all GNOME communication forums come with this implicit terms of use, we decrease the probability of bad behaviour before it ever happens. Well, what we want is really: 1. Our communication channels maintaining a upbeat tune and high signal-to-noise, 2. Attract people and not lose many. Now one way to achieve this is policing, but that's hardly the only way. What I want to propose / see instead is to make it more clear that: 1. People speak on their own behalf, not on behalf of GNOME. Unless they ARE talking on behalf of GNOME (say, board, release team, etc), 2. Like it or not, there exist people out there who are rude, can be offensive, etc. They are out there in real life, and they are there in cyberspace. Just know who they are and ignore them. 3. Most of the time, a vocal minority does not speak for the majority. 4. In any kind of discussion and/or medium, one should learn who's words matter. Is he the maintainer of the module? Is he a developer? Does he generally offer useful insight? Does he know what he's talking about? Do others take this person seriously? When you learn to ignore the noise, life is beautiful again. I also like to see two more ideas added to CoC: - Learn to agree to disagree. - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them. Back to the Murray case, with my recommendation, everything would have happened the way it did. Only that we'd try to make it more clear (on PGO in this case) that his views do not represent GNOME's or the majority of GNOME contributors. Just need to accept that it sometimes happens. What I found more disappointing in that particular incident was the flow of +1 and Thanks you messages Murray received on PGO. If that's really who we are, well, why police it? Like what I read once: Please be a dick if that's who you are. Anyway, that's my feeling about the subject. behdad That's not to mention never having to have this thread come up again. :) ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
1. People speak on their own behalf, not on behalf of GNOME. Unless they ARE talking on behalf of GNOME (say, board, release team, etc), On things like the planet that can be addressed by suitable tags and styling (as could inappropriate content - if there is a 'rant filter' option or similar) 4. In any kind of discussion and/or medium, one should learn who's words matter. Is he the maintainer of the module? Is he a developer? Does he generally offer useful insight? Does he know what he's talking about? Do others take this person seriously? When you learn to ignore the noise, life is beautiful again. With the kernel hat on this is why LWN and Jon Masters summaries are so important. They distill the relevant material from the bloodbath that is linux-kernel (and which btw does put off a lot of people and cause big issues with some cultural groups). Please btw don't use Linux kernel as a shining example of why rules are not needed. The kernel works despite not because of the list attitude. Also there may be no code of conduct but certain people have at times been taken aside at conferences and educated on how they are coming across. - Learn to agree to disagree. - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them. And perhaps also - Remmeber that different cultures have different attitudes, styles and touchy subjects. Alan ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
Hi Behdad, On Wed 25 Nov 2009 23:19, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org writes: On 11/25/2009 05:13 PM, Andy Wingo wrote: It's only IRC and DDL that are really the outliers, it seems, and there there is enough social pressure, combined with ignore/kill lists, that I don't really see all the fuss. And foundation list? Just saying each maintainer should solve this on their own does not make the problem go away, it just puts the burden on multiple people. You're right that there's this case too, and I'm sure there's more. I do think that officially endorsing the CoC (ideally via some kind of referendum) would be nice as an overall statement of this is what we believe, for the reasons Lucas gave. But on the enforcement side, I guess what I'd like is for this feedback mechanism to be on a more human scale. In the end, maintaining a project is as much a social task as a technical one. Maintainers are there because they merit it; they are the heart of GNOME, much more so than the board. Their views don't need procedures to enforce themselves. I'm not sure what incidents are being discussed specifically here, but if they are about the planet, I don't think the maintainers need to exercise board power. Cheers, Andy -- http://wingolog.org/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Behdad Esfahbod beh...@behdad.org wrote: I also like to see two more ideas added to CoC: - Learn to agree to disagree. - Criticize ideas, not people presenting them. Back to the Murray case, with my recommendation, everything would have happened the way it did. Only that we'd try to make it more clear (on PGO in this case) that his views do not represent GNOME's or the majority of GNOME contributors. Just need to accept that it sometimes happens. What I found more disappointing in that particular incident was the flow of +1 and Thanks you messages Murray received on PGO. If that's really who we are, well, why police it? Like what I read once: Please be a dick if that's who you are. Well, I withdraw my proposed amendment to the CoC as there has been no support for it and I'm not entirely happy with it as written, either. But, while I agree that the above would be welcome additions to the CoC, I don't think this helps us answer what to do when the board is contacted. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: Code of Conduct and Foundation membership
On 11/25/2009 05:57 PM, Jason D. Clinton wrote: Well, I withdraw my proposed amendment to the CoC as there has been no support for it and I'm not entirely happy with it as written, either. But, while I agree that the above would be welcome additions to the CoC, I don't think this helps us answer what to do when the board is contacted. What I'm suggesting is that when the board is contacted, it would respond: Not our job. We won't intervene. behdad ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
