Common Decency or Code of Conduct

By: daniel

Is it just me, or is the tone in the community getting rougher then it used to be?

While we (the community) always like to think of the us (the community) as a great resource to us (the users and developers) that seems to impose no barrier for using capital letters and other means that are only visually more subtle for flaming. May be this is a sign of myself getting old, but I find it increasingly hard to expose myself to a behaviour that I would otherwise not tolerate in my "real" life. That actually includes the notorious Oktoberfest.

The problem with this is, that it is a danger to participation and the free exchange of ideas (and i don't mean my own), because it will scare away potential contributors.

What can be done?

It is one possibility to hope for common decency or appeal for it, in words such as these. Another is to go one step further and excplicitely decribe what kind of spirit and consequently what kind of communicative style the mailing lists should ideally follow in words such as these.

Let's do both. Even more importantly, it will need people that defend and uphold these standards, while exercising them. That, admittedly, is the hardest part.

Don't get me wrong: I don't expect (and would not like) the company of choir boys, nor have I been innocent under all accounts, but the moment people can't be brought to post their ideas to the lists, the very same moment Open Source starts dying.

Let's stop this using both possibilities pointed out above.

 

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