On 24/05/2019 19:42, Nick Bolten wrote:
I'd like that to be the case. What is the plan for making this an
inclusive community that doesn't devolve into negative, personal
accusations so easily? It hasn't happened on its own.
What I'd suggest is that (much as I suggested before) everyone tries to
understand how points of view can be misunderstood and how conversations
can go downhill, when each side believes that there is malice on the
other. This thread is actually a pretty good example of it ...
Firstly, it helps if everyone tries to understand how "community" works
both within and without OSM. People attach themselves to communities
both electronic and physical, and when you attack the place where the
community is based to some extent you attack the community itself and
the people in it. For example, if I talk about the town down the road
in a derogatory way people from that town are going to think I'm talking
about them and think that they are somehow bad people. The initial "OSM
needs an alternative for community tagging discussions" message in the
other thread said a number of things that surely were not intended as
personal attacks but were directed at a place with which people felt a
sense of community, and therefore _were_ interpreted as direct personal
attacks. I'd suggest everyone asks themselves "If I write this, how
will it be interpreted? How will it make other people feel?".
The next thing that I'd suggest is when someone has said something out
of order (or that seems at first glance to be out of order) to wait a
bit before replying. An initial retort will be be unlikely to contain
the clearest thought out response. If you've managed to get into an
argument with someone and the other person behaves in a particularly
childish way, you can rely on someone else to tell them that what they
are saying is silly (as happened in this thread when Clifford Snow
intervened).
If you've said something, and someone interprets it as "you are/believe
X [bad thing]" then a flat denial "I didn't call you X" is probably not
the best way to respond (it invites "oh yes you did" as an unhelpful
response). Take a step back, try and understand how they could have
misunderstood what you were trying to say, and reply along the lines of
"Sorry about the misunderstanding. What I was trying to say was ...".
It also helps to try and depersonalise the language (as I tried to 2
paragraphs up ^^) - don't say "you"; talk about "the problem", for example.
Finally, (and this is one for British politicians as well) if it feels
like everyone's ganging up on you and no-one seems to agree, stop, take
a step back and try and draw a thread between what "everyone" seems to
be saying. Maybe you've misunderstood how the status quo came to be and
you haven't presented a practical way of getting to a solution to the
problem. Rather than keep trying to push the same boulder up the hill,
ask others to help trying to reframe the problem in a way that might
allow another solution to emerge. Sometimes just sitting back and
listening is the key.
Best Regards,
Andy
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