Re: Code of Conduct final draft?

[Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>]

On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 11:38 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 10:08 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> >> I'm fairly happy with the Code Of Conduct draft now:
> >> http://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct
> >>
> >> So, now for some process. I'd like the Foundation Board to consider this
> >> and, all being well, declare it as official.
> >>
> >> I leave it up to the board to rename it to "GNOME Ethics" or similar,
> >> though I personally find that a bit arbitrary while unnecessarily
> >> broadening its scope. It wouldn't bother me much though.
> >
> > I don't really understand who/what is supposed to come out of this.
> > Do we want to put stamps on people's behaviours?
> > Do we want to shun someone because he had a bad day and called a user a
> > nitwit?
> 
> Sorry, I probably should have summarized the previous discussion.
> 
> The idea is to state what we consider acceptable behaviour, in order to
> advertize to newcomers what they can expect when getting involved in
> GNOME, and to reinforce this existing behaviour, so that bad behaviour is
> more clearly unacceptable when it does happen. It says who we are and who
> we want to be and how we'd like people to think of us.
> 
> It contains no official means of enforcement and there is no plan to use
> this as a weapon. However, I wouldn't be surprised if, for instance,
> mailing list maintainers referred to it sometimes when dealing with
> unpleasant situations, just to save them writing a lot of text themselves.
> 
> This, by the way, is why it's not something that would be forced on
> anyone. It's not new. It's just a tidy statement of an existing consensus.
> In this way, it's a little similar to the release team documents.

Fair enough. It would be nice to also point to existing etiquette guides
that might be available, and mention the purpose of the code as you just
did.

> > I can understand Ethics code, but I wouldn't sign this, knowing full
> > well that I'll have bad days, and I call people things worse than nitwit
> > even on a good day.
> 
> As do I. And people should know that's not how we are in general.

Agreed.

-- 
Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net> 
"He should guide Posh in the direction of a singing coach because she's
nowhere near as good at her job as her husband" - Brian Clough, advice
for David Beckham.