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Behavioral standards in the free software community
Behavioral standards in the free software community
Posted Jun 8, 2006 12:26 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458)In reply to: Behavioral standards in the free software community by ekj
Parent article: Behavioral standards in the free software community
I strongly disagree. I think there are rules of conduct that are reasonably clear and concrete that would help a lot in these things.
The most important one would be this:
* Praise people in public, flame them privately.
If you subject someone to public flaming, then he will feel much more assaulted and will be much more likely to hold a grudge or even strike back in an irrational way. There are of course exceptions, mostly if repeated private mails do not yield any result.
Other rules that I think are reasonably clear and easy to follow include:
* Try not to treat people differently based on on name, gender or ethnicity.
* Don't repeat yourself. Specifically, don't spam a list with rehashes of your previous messages.
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Behavioral standards in the free software community
Posted Jun 8, 2006 13:33 UTC (Thu) by csamuel (subscriber, #2624) [Link]
I've always liked "Focus on the issue, not the person".
Chris
Behavioral standards in the free software community
Posted Jun 8, 2006 15:14 UTC (Thu) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link]
Try not to treat people differently based on on name, gender or ethnicity.
Another thing that comes to mind is language. For non-native English speakers, it's more difficult to get heard (and easier to offend) than for "natives".
It's hard, but I wish we all would try not to discriminate by English language abilities.
Behavioral standards in the free software community
Posted Jun 8, 2006 16:17 UTC (Thu) by liljencrantz (subscriber, #28458) [Link]
Oh, right.
That's a pretty hard issue. I've seen a lot of witty, subtle and ironic responses to messages from people who are obviously struggling with their english. The result is generally that the true intent of the response is completetly misunderstood.
But on the other hand a code of conduct that says "don't try to be funny" won't really help in building a community.
A related issue is that a lot of the time, attacks are disguised as irony. On mailing lists you'll see all kinds of 'Ha ha, just seriously' statements.