Re: Social Committee proposal
On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 01:07:30AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> > Why don't I think it is a good idea? Well, because, unlike
> > technical issues, social issues are very subjective. Also, social
> > and cultural norms differ widely from culture to culture; which
> > culture shall be represented in, and whose norms shall be enforced
> > by this social/cultural committee?
>
> That's easy: we should enforce (assuming that is not too strong a word)
> the social and cultural norms that we, as a community, agree on. The
> comparison to technical policy is not entirely invalid: we make up our
> technical policy ourselves, too.
>
> We can determine social policy by discussion and, if necessary, by
> voting. I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
> soc-ctte spell out the social norms and if the developer body disagrees
> with it, and can't convince the soc-ctte via discussion, they can force
> a change via a GR.
Thanks for saving me from having to say all that. :)
The developer's reference, for example, includes several social norms
already - anything that isn't a strict technical obligation but instead a
matter of procedure and/or courtesy. A code of conduct, if you will. The
mailing lists have an explicit code of conduct which is generally not
enforced by any technical measure but maintained by consensus (or at least
diligence of those who care, for the cynics among us ;).
Those are some existing documented topics that a social committee could
keep an eye on; there are also numerous matters relating to our day-to-day
interaction that go unnoticed because they're so "normal" to us, but are
indeed something that we would be wise to take care of.
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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