Re: More polls and social pressure
ke, 2006-02-22 kello 10:36 +0100, Alexis Sukrieh kirjoitti:
> * Raphael Hertzog (hertzog@debian.org) disait :
> > Please take into account that the second part of my mail is only an idea,
> > that it's in no way perfect. I know it looks like public delation and so
> > on. I'm looking forward for ideas to improve this proposal.
>
> Hmmm, even if I'm sure Raphael wants to help the project, I dont think
> this idea is a good one, I'm telling you why.
I, too, don't think this idea will help. I suspect it will turn out to
be ignored by most people after a few initial weeks of excitement,
because it's repetitive work, and it is a fair amount of effort to
familiarize yourself with each polled case so that you can answer well.
Therefore, it's easier to just ignore the polls.
I do disagree with Alexis's reasoning, though.
> On high-trafic mailing-lists, you find flamewars, ever.
There are high-traffic mailing lists without many flamewars. For
example, the Python list was like that, some years ago, when I followed
it. Quite high volume, a large number of writers, and yet they managed
to keep it friendly and productive. That didn't mean they avoided
arguments and disagreements, they just had them without becoming
insulting.
More recently, the bazaar-ng development list is very high volume, and
yet low on flames. Relatively few writers, though, which helps.
I suspect that the reason both these lists have few flames is that they
have managed to stop flames, or other kinds of abusive behavior, from
ever becoming accepted. In Debian, replying to someone with a flame
message is perhaps not quite accepted as such, but it rarely leads into
any negative feedback about the behavior, so in effect it is accepted.
> Trying to stop that with an administrative procedure won't fix the
> problem and will waste a lot of time and energy.
>
> Moreover, I fear that such things can lead very easily to a very bad
> astmosphear within the project.
>
> The best way to deal with flamewars is just to ignore them.
I agree with Steve Langasek: telling people to ignore flames has not
worked for so far, because too many people just don't, and is unlikely
to work for us in the future, either.
--
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+paste.
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