Re: Censorship in Debian
Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> writes:
> For clarification from me, I don't expect a consequence free
> free-for-all where anything at all can be said with no repercussions.
> There are absolutely things that are not acceptable, but on the other
> hand, I also don't think "someone was offended" is a reasonable standard
> (and I am not claiming that's what Debian is currently using - but there
> are places where things seem to me to be headed in that direction).
I think it's useful to think of offending someone as being like stepping
on someone's foot. Most of the time, it probably means you should
apologize. Apologizing doesn't mean that there was necessarily anything
you could have done differently. Perhaps you stumbled into someone's foot
through no fault of your own, but it's still normal to apologize.
Apologizing doesn't mean rending your garments and doing five years of
penance; it just means saying "whoops, I'm sorry!"
There are occasional instances where someone intentionally sticks their
foot in your way. But this is relatively rare, and the first time you
step on someone's foot, it usually doesn't make sense to assume this
happened.
If the same person's foot constantly ends up under your feet, but you
don't seem to be stepping on anyone else's foot, it may be time to start
reconsidering whether you should keep apologizing or if something else is
going on. If you keep stumbling over a variety of people's feet with some
regularity, it's probably time to figure out why this is happening and
what you need to do to stop stepping on people's feet, which might involve
some real work, unfortunately.
But most of the time, if you step on someone's foot, you can just
apologize and move on and everything is fine. It happens to all of us.
It doesn't have to be a big deal. (But refusing to apologize does very
quickly make it a big deal.)
And sometimes people stick their feet in the most irritating places, and
it can be a bit of a chore to step over their feet, and it can be
seriously tempting to tromp down on that foot that someone is sticking out
*right in the middle of the aisle*. And, just like we do in everyday
life, it's almost never a good idea to do that, as opposed to just
grumbling to yourself about it and maybe complaining to some friends about
that rude person who had their foot stuck out in the aisle.
Usually when I do give into temptation and stomp down on that
rudely-placed foot, it turns out that person had just broken their foot
and was on the way to the doctor's to get a cast put on it, and then I
feel awful.
> I am concerned about Debian becoming over-politicized (beyond the core
> issue of Free Software, which has an inherent political aspect). I like
> that the diversity statement isn't anti-anything.
Well, I'm in the camp that says that Debian is a political project at its
very core, and there's very little about Debian that has ever been *not*
political. But I realize this is an ongoing argument over what
"political" means. (I think a lot of people have an unreasonably narrow
definition.)
> My personal challenges with engaging constructively don't derive from
> any particular political perspective. They come more from having a
> strong temper over which my grasp is unfortunately not always adequate
> and being old enough that I worry about language shifting under me in
> ways I can't anticipate.
A sincere apology goes a very long way. No one wants to make life
unreasonably harder for other people. What gets people upset is not that
people make mistakes, or even that some people make mistakes more than
other people. This is normal, ordinary human community stuff. What gets
people upset is when people don't make any apparent attempt to not make
mistakes, or (particularly) when they vigorously defend their right to
tromp on someone else's foot because the foot shouldn't have been there in
the first place. Then everything gets heated.
As long as you're trying, even when it's hard, I think nearly everyone is
going to assume good faith. The hard feelings come when someone declares
that they should not have to try, and that being told to try to not step
on people's feet is an offense against their human rights.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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