[OSM-talk] Code of Conduct Draft

Serge Wroclawski emacsen at gmail.com
Sat Oct 16 16:01:08 BST 2010


On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 10:42 AM, Kevin Peat <kevin at kevinpeat.com> wrote:
>
> On 16 October 2010 15:33, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Also, what's the scope - are we talking about a code of conduct for
>> the mailing lists? for contributors to the database? for contributors
>> to the wider OSM universe?
>>

My hope is that a CoC would be generally accepted project wide and
then applied appropriately in each area in a way that's appropriate.
For example, you could moderate someone on a mailing list, where you
can't "moderate" someone on the OSM DB itself. The decisions of
implementation can come later.

> This is a very good point. It is hard to see how a CoC could ever work on
> these lists which are completely separate from the accounts we use to
> contribute to the project itself. Anyone who really wanted to disrupt the
> lists could easily do so regardless of any rules used.

That's really a technical issue: synchronizing accounts. Let's not get
caught up in implementation details.

> Anybody who doesn't like readiing postings by ...
> just filter them.

The problem with disruptive people goes beyond the individual reading the post.

If I'm a newcommer to the project and I see widespread dissent,
untruthes, personal attacks, etc. this will turn me off. Even if I'm
not a newcommer, am I to now take this task on of filtering every
person?

The mailing lists aren't public in the sense of free speech. Anyone is
allowed to say what they want using their own soapbox, but this is a
communal space and as such, has communal rules.

- Serge



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