[OSM-talk] OSM user diary etiquette

Oleksiy Muzalyev oleksiy.muzalyev at bluewin.ch
Tue Jun 25 06:45:21 UTC 2019


Hi,

Socrates,  a Greek philosopher, wrote still more than two thousand years 
ago  "When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser".

That is, soft words if presented in hard arguments can convey the 
message more efficiently. One more person had to learn this precious 
lesson the hard way.

Best regards,
Oleksiy

On 6/25/19 01:14, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am writing this with my DWG hat on.
>
> The OSM user diaries are not routinely moderated but the DWG has the
> technical means to hide comments or whole posts, and will make use of
> these in extreme situations.
>
> I am writing to inform you that there as been one such situation, where
> a contributor time and time again over recent months used various
> expletives and insults to belittle the work of others in the project.
> He's been told to stop it numerous times; at one point when told that
> insults don't get him anywhere he said that he disagreed, because he had
> actually got a reaction to an insult. In another situation where he was
> told that his message could be heard better if he weren't wrapping it in
> so much bile, he responded "don't tell me what to do".
>
> We first tried to only hide those comments that were absolutely
> inacceptable ("viciuos brat", "violent little shit" etc.) but even those
> messages that were factual were always seasoned with a sentence
> explaining how this and that other person was an idiot, amateur, etc.,
> so in the end we just hid a handful of blog entries altogether. We
> wouldn't normally moderate someone for calling someone else an "amateur"
> but if it's framed by constant, stronger abuse then that lowers the bar
> considerably.
>
> It is unfortunate because this means that quite a few useful comments
> written by some of you - the main subject was ways of fighting diary
> spam - were dropped too.
>
> As I said, it's a rare exception for us to have to do this; these
> messages, especially because they weren't one-off heat-of-the-moment
> posts but a sustained onslaught, far surpassed in offensiveness anything
> I've seen on this or any other OSM mailing list in recent years.
>
> I won't say who the user is - those of you who were involved will
> recognize it, and those who weren't probably shouldn't waste any time
> with it.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>




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