On Thu, 26 Jan 2012, Ben Sturmfels <ben@stumbles.id.au> wrote:
On 14/01/12 02:11, George Patterson wrote:
Neither subtle nor overt harassment should not be tolerated. Name calling or stating that someone's argument doesn't matter is wrong, perhaps there is something in the person argument or some side of it that you haven't considered. In the recent past, I have found some people on this list to be obnoxious at worse or blunt at best.
George and I caught up at linux.conf.au and I gather that the obnoxious/blunt discussions he mentioned were actually on another group's mailing list.
It goes without saying Free Software Melbourne expects all members to be excellent to each other. If you ever feel uncomfortable about participating in this group, please get in touch with myself <ben at stumbles.id.au> or Alex Fraser <alex at phatcore.com>. We take harassment seriously and promise to handle any concerns promptly and discretely.
On most mailing lists related to free software there is a great culture of flaming. It seems to me that this is largely by design, it's widely regarded that "free speech" means saying whatever you want on a mailing list and therefore the enforcement of social standards is via flaming. Those ideas restrict freedom of speech to those who are comfortable with flaming. It seems that a policy of active intervention in discussions before they get too far out of hand is needed. Probably a code of conduct too, because almost everyone who joins this list will be used to all the other free software lists. The anti-harassment policies that are being adopted by almost all conferences nowadays are a good thing and they have been proven to work, maybe they can be used as inspiration for a mailing list policy. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/