Re: Revising the Code of Conduct
On 21-05-13 11:37, Norbert Preining wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> On Di, 21 Mai 2013, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
>> 1. Do not flame, use foul language, or in general be abusive or
>> disrespectful towards other people on the mailinglists or elsewhere
>
> And who defines that?
The community as a whole.
> If you can give me a definition of "foul language" or "abusive"
> or "disrespectful" I would be happy.
>
> The old code of conduct was only containing "foul", which also
> was already too much. Nobody can be declared authorative in
> deciding what is foul/abusive language.
Actually, if you read it carefully, you'll find that the first item in
our current code of conduct reads as follows:
The mailing lists exist to foster the development and use of Debian.
Non-constructive or off-topic messages, along with other abuses, are
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
not welcome.
I've simply merged it with some other items into one "be polite"
guideline.
Yes, it's hard to spot; the current code of conduct doesn't read very
well. It's part of the reason why I want to revise it ;-)
> Short example: People from Siena (Italy) have a tendency for strong
> words, very strong words. And between friends it is very common.
> What is foul/abusive here?
It is certainly true that it is very hard to define "foul" or "abusive"
language, which is why I'm not attempting to do that. There's a fairly
large gray area between "polite behaviour" and "abusive behaviour",
which includes things like late-night emotional messages that one
regrets the day after, cultural differences, and unwanted puns that
could be construed to be offensive.
I think any code of conduct should be interpreted to allow people to
make mistakes. This is why I added another paragraph explaining what to
do when people fail to adhere to the CoC, stressing that they may have a
bad day or may be unaware of any offensive intent. Do you think I should
clarify that some more?
--
This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space.
If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you
will not go to space today.
-- http://xkcd.com/1133/
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