Behavioral standards and power [LWN.net]

Behavioral standards and power

Posted Jun 8, 2006 15:41 UTC (Thu) by wilck (subscriber, #29844)
Parent article: Behavioral standards in the free software community

There is a relation between behavior and "social power" in the community. In all social systems, people at the bottom of the hierarchy are more likely to misbehave than people at the top. Reasons for this are (among others)

lack of education (in the community terms: lack of netiquette experience),
the feeling not to be heard unless you shout,
the fact that an action by a well-respected person is less likely to be regarded as misbehavior than the same action by a "nobody".

The free software community has a pretty strong social divide, although the criteria by which people are discriminated are different than in the normal society.

I think that the feeling of being oppressed by someone ranked higher is a frequent reason for misbehavior. From this viewpoint, the attempt to establish general Rules of Conduct can be interpreted as a potential repressive measure against those on the bottom side of the hierarchy. Care should be taken that this impression is avoided.

A bit out of context, I'd like to add that killfiles and filters already offer effective measures against cases of strong misconduct. The question must be asked why these aren't considered good enough any more.

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Behavioral standards and power

Posted Jun 8, 2006 18:56 UTC (Thu) by wilck (subscriber, #29844) [Link]

Certainly. This is a self-enforcing process.

OTOH, frequent violation of explicit or implicit rules of conduct is not prohibitive for getting "powerful".

The community is no different from real life in both respects.

Behavioral standards and power

Posted Jun 9, 2006 4:01 UTC (Fri) by dang (subscriber, #310) [Link]

There is a flip side here, too, I think. You see a lot of flamage coming from people on top when you get the following mix:

- the person on top is a heavy lifter and plays a gatekeeper role
- the flamee is a newbie who hasn't done her or his homework
- about basic design or style
- about how work flows

You get frustration on both sides here. The gatekeeper wants to help but is frustrated because the submitter didn't do homework which makes it difficult to help and also eats up precious time ( because skilled people willing to do grunt work are in hot demand in open source projects ), and the submitter doesn't know initially what the just got themselves in to.

Typically everything shakes out quickly and you see a good working relationship, but it can be rocky at first. Which ain't none of it about a code of conduct, really, but about setting new contributors expectations well before they submit...and maybe about overloaded gatekeepers.