[OSM-talk] Code of Conduct: civil discussion, lists etc.

Steve Bennett stevagewp at gmail.com
Sat Oct 16 13:12:24 BST 2010


On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 8:06 PM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
> As an alternative, consider email filters.  Filters can be per sender
> or per keyword, depending on your email system.

I guess these are two totally different schools of thought:
1) There is one community, one pool of messages, and we all do what we
can to make that pool as productive and pleasant as possible.
2) Each member of the community decides what he/she wants to see, and
uses tools to filter as appropriate.

Having experienced both types of community, I have a strong preference
for 1). There are all kinds of problems with the second type: people
end up filtering stuff out that they just don't agree with (ie,
they're wrong, but don't have to listen to anyone tell them so),
cliques form, and overall the community is weaker.

Quite honestly, I'm very surprised that the idea of a set of behaviour
rules for the mailing list, with moderators, is at all controversial.
Mailing lists have been around, what 30, maybe 40 years now?

Steve



More information about the talk mailing list