Re: abandoning the rules of discourse
On Wed 22 Oct 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:
> We recently had some conversation on rules of discourse for the mailing
> lists. At that time, discussion by most developers was strongly against
> them. Only myself and two other people spoke out for them at all.
>
> I want to check for opinions one more time before abandoning them.
> If we do that, disrespectful language will be allowed, and obscentity
> will be allowed. Is this really what people want?
rules don't work very well, because you have no punishment, if someone
breaks the rules. the whole free software comunity has this problems.
of course we can kick someone out of the project in the worst case, but
thats neither a good solution, nor something we want.
so we need to find a way, that will work without punishment.
and the only way i know is talking honest to people, explaining the
mistakes someone makes.
you will see that there is a larger and older community, that has the
same problems : usenet. there is no way to force someone to behave, so
news.newusers and related texts give similiar advices (be honest,
explain to people if they make mistakes etc.).
maybe we need texts like news.newusers (but a pointer could do the
same).
andreas
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