+1. At some point we seem to have got the idea that civility enforcement was a Bad Thing - that we lost out when it was enforced. That we were no longer allowed to say whatever the heck we want and this was Bad.
The problem is that even absent civility enforcement, there have always been repercussions - the difference is that they fall on the audience rather than the actor. That's pretty unfair, and it doesn't create a good working environment (and yes, this is a working environment, in the sense that it is an environment dedicated to producing things from work). It drives people away. A community that drives people away is not a good community. A community where the base standard for admission is not technical skills, or enthusiasm, but the ability to tolerate anything that could plausibly be thrown, is not a good community. It is a place that will inevitably drive people away and we will /all/ be lesser for that, because fewer people means more work for each individual person. Civility enforcement means a wider community which means /less work/. Even if you see absolutely no point in these policies for you; even if you see absolutely no direct benefit to you - surely you can accept that there are some people who find it beneficial, who are more likely to participate with it present and enforced, and that more smart people inherently benefits you by reducing the workload? I don't see any conflict between having this policy and having the friendly spaces policy. The friendly spaces policy is a generalised, broad-strokes policy for real-world events; the code of conduct is a policy specific to the nature of technical environments. Is it a perfect code of conduct? No! Does it need changes? Absolutely! But it has the potential to be much improved on the default, which is /no/ consistent policy for anything that happens outside meatspace. On 9 August 2015 at 22:49, Brion Vibber <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, civility is important and should be enforced. > > -- brion > > On Sunday, August 9, 2015, MZMcBride <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Steven Walling wrote: >> >What kind of standards for behavior we want and think are acceptable is a >> >core concern of everyone in the Wikimedia and MediaWiki technical >> >communities. >> > >> >This kind of personally-directed and demeaning feedback ("This seems to be >> >a pet issue of yours") is, perhaps ironically, precisely an example of why >> >it would improve interaction in technical spaces to have some clearer >> >ground rules. >> >> Clearer ground rules for what? Is this proposed code of conduct intended >> to reiterate that stalking and harassment are bad or is the policy >> intended to be a tool of people intent on policing civility? >> >> From reading this mailing list and some of the talk page discussion, it >> seems I wasn't the only person who found the "we" language a bit strange. >> >> When discussing a feature request or a bug fix of almost any kind, I >> generally focus on the problems and use-cases that are relevant to the >> task. A code of conduct page on mediawiki.org is a particular >> implementation, but there has not been sufficient discussion of what >> problem(s) this proposed solution is intended to solve. >> >> Isarra asks on the talk page "What generally comes up now as problems, how >> do existing channels fail, and how will this resolve that?" >> >> Bawolff writes "I guess, the biggest question I have along the why is it >> needed lines, is why (concretely) is the friendly space policy not enough, >> and what is the intended relationship between this policy and that one." >> >> The responses to these posts has been incredibly unsatisfactory so far. >> >> Some of the comments on the talk page such as "Why? Why wait for something >> bad to happen to call it out instead of saying 'these kinds of things are >> bad, don't do them here'." seem to support the notion that what we're >> currently in a classic case of a solution searching for a problem. >> >> MZMcBride >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikitech-l mailing list >> [email protected] <javascript:;> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Oliver Keyes Count Logula Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
