[Osmf-talk] Reaching out and diversity (Was: Re: AGM and board elections)

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 09/28/2014 07:09 PM, Randy Meech wrote:
> I don't see any other way to change the age-old, well-established
> toxicity here 

Frankly, I found this thread, and indeed *anything* said on this mailing
list in the last couple of months that I recall, to be far from "toxic".

Sometimes I get the opinion that some people count anything less than
"+1 OMG you're so right!!!!" as "toxic". And re-iterating, in passing,
time and time again how "toxic" things supposedly are might not be the
best way encourage new people to join.

I'm quite sure by now there must be a number of people out there who
only read Twitter and who will say "ah yes, the OSM mailing list, I've
heard of them, bad stuff, better not go there" and this is precisely the
fault of people who moan about OSM mailing lists on their Twitter
accounts and elsewhere.

Any healthy discussion will have people arguing for different ideas, or
against others. This is not toxic. Yes, some people might be more
passionate than than others and some might have different boundaries
than others but summarily discounting "the lists" for "the age-old,
well-established toxicity" is just not fair, and not helpful either.
There's hundreds of people who spend something like an hour a day or
more on the lists and the overwhelming majority of them are not there
just to hear themselves talk but because they participate in discussions
that form opinions, support newcomers, help the project move forward.

It is difficult for me to understand how people can make a case for
including more and different people in the project and at the very same
time be so inconsiderate to those that are already here it almost sounds
they'd like them gone.

Or did I misread your comment?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"