Good manners, Good tone and welfare of DD's, NM and prospective developers

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

Hello Debian Women

I wasn't quite sure about the correct list / people to bring up my
small concern about current Debian's inter-personal relationships.

There are a few under-age (18 / 21 depends where you are) who are
possibly want to develop Debian [1]. In addition there are various
adult people with various moral and ethical standards (What's
acceptable for some might not be for the others).

In the past months I've started to contribute to Debian & Ubuntu and
I've started to be a bit concerned by some of the behavior and
etiquette on the mailing list. For example most are for plain-txt
emails, bottom-posting and etc. and politely point people to not do
that, while at the same time language at times is heated, rude and
offensive (well to me sometimes) especially in the threads that just
won't die.

Sometimes when I read some of the posts (debian-devel, debian-legal,
rants between mentors on debian-mentors a couple of bug reports) it
seems to me that some parent might be concerned what their children
are "developing" with that sort of people. The debian social contract
is such concise and beautiful statement which sets an amazing spirit
in Debian, unfortunately it does not set the tone.

I would love to see friendly, safe and respectful behavior towards
each other on mailing lists & other communication channel's within
debian. I don't know but maybe a code of conduct (e.g. [2]) is
something appropriate to be popularized in Debian?

What are your thought on this topic? Am I talking non-sense or is
debian development "not children save"?


[1] for example there is this kid who develops Zope, has commit access
and got sponsored by Google to go to Zope conf (or however it is
called) and he gave 2 or 3 presentations.
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct

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With best regards


Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima),
Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич


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[Kevin Mark-6]

On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 04:32:22AM +0100, Dmitrijs Ledkovs wrote:
> Hello Debian Women
>
> I wasn't quite sure about the correct list / people to bring up my
> small concern about current Debian's inter-personal relationships.
>
> There are a few under-age (18 / 21 depends where you are) who are
> possibly want to develop Debian [1]. In addition there are various
> adult people with various moral and ethical standards (What's
> acceptable for some might not be for the others).
....
I certainly think people who are not familar with the Code of Conduct that Mako
(who is both a DD and a founding member of Ubuntu) made should take the time to
read it. People who contribute on the internet get introduced to its social
norms, and Debian has its own -- like using text, bottom or in-line posting,
etc. Most of these can be learned by reading the 'code' and by the 'nudging' of
folks they interact with. But as you mention, development takes place between
folks who are not necessarily restrained by the same social graces as someone
growing up and in their teens and who is impressionable. That is not to suggest
that 'everyone' or a large percentage of folks behave badly. If someone is
joining Debian Via GSoc, then I'd expect someone to mentor them through this
initial period and help them adapt to the expected social norms. That should be
sufficient. If they try the NM or DM route, they also get someone to give them
pointers as to what to do and not do. So that just leaves random people on the
mailing lists or people who send in bugs, etc. Well I just thought about it and
realized that I left out IRC which is less formal than email and would account
for a larger percentage of what you may have been discussing.  FLOSS folks chat
on IRC is a rough, informal social setting. That is something that might bother
some parents as folks can say just about anything. Not sure what to do about
that as IRC is a social outlet for folks who send their free time on their.
just some thoughts,
K
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[Christian Perrier]

Quoting Dmitrijs Ledkovs (dmitrij.ledkov@...):

> Sometimes when I read some of the posts (debian-devel, debian-legal,
> rants between mentors on debian-mentors a couple of bug reports) it
> seems to me that some parent might be concerned what their children
> are "developing" with that sort of people. The debian social contract
> is such concise and beautiful statement which sets an amazing spirit
> in Debian, unfortunately it does not set the tone.
>
> I would love to see friendly, safe and respectful behavior towards
> each other on mailing lists & other communication channel's within
> debian. I don't know but maybe a code of conduct (e.g. [2]) is
> something appropriate to be popularized in Debian?
>
> What are your thought on this topic? Am I talking non-sense or is
> debian development "not children save"?

A few of us are parents of children who are or could be in the age you
describe (not that many, probably, but still). I would say that, from
my own experience of inter-personal relations inside Debian and if my
own kids were interested in such work (they actually aren't, shame on
me for being a bad parent...), I would not be worried about them
reading the mailing lists and be exposed to what happens there.

In short, this is not such a big deal that it can't be managed and,
believe me, I see my kids exposed to as rude relations in their
relations through the Internet, particularly in instant messaging
activites they seem to deeply love.

My only worry actually would more be the "danger" of them seeing how
silly their dad can be in mailing lists or on IRC, and thus to put my
own authority in danger..:-)

Really, improving the social relations inside these projects is
something we all try to do, both in Debian and other projects....and,
as we live in a real world, that sometimes fails but I wouldn't see
this as a big source of worry.

[Alexander Reichle-Schmehl-2]

Hi!

Dmitrijs Ledkovs schrieb:

> I would love to see friendly, safe and respectful behavior towards each
> other on mailing lists & other communication channel's within debian. I
> don't know but maybe a code of conduct (e.g. [2]) is something
> appropriate to be popularized in Debian?


Did you know, that Debian's mailing lists already have a code of conduct?
One could even argue, that it covers the very same as the one Ubuntu has
(just not written down in full length).

I don't think the problem is to have a code of conduct or to have not, but
what should be done with those who don't follow it, and who decides about
these things.  Haven't seen anything about these points in any discussion
about "discussion style" since I joined the project.

Links:
 1: http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/index#codeofconduct


Best regards,
  Alexander


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[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

2009/6/4 Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <alexander@...>:
> I don't think the problem is to have a code of conduct or to have not, but
> what should be done with those who don't follow it, and who decides about
> these things.  Haven't seen anything about these points in any discussion
> about "discussion style" since I joined the project.
>
> Links:
>  1: http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/index#codeofconduct

Re-read the mailing list code of conduct and the revelant points for
myself that I have found are:

14 Do not use foul language; besides, some people receive the lists
via packet radio, where swearing is illegal.
16 Use common sense all the time.

The first 13 points talk about net-etiquette......

So for example to analyze this email [1]
It meets mailing list code of conduct but I would consider this email
a bit rude for a public mailing list.

BTW a lot of bug-reports get send to mailing list so this
code-of-conduct should be used when replying to bug-mail.

Doing this [2] google search on lists.debian.org domain kind of does
prove that most people know mailing list code of conduct only up to
point 14 (excluding).....

Now compare the message [1] to the one of the ubuntu code of conduct
reminders [3] this is the point I guess I'm trying to make. Shall I
file a wishlist bug against mailing-list virtual package w.r.t. code
of conduct?


[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2009/05/msg00077.html

[2] http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=shit
site:lists.debian.org&hl=en&sa=N&output=search&tbs=rcnt:1&tbo=1

[3] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-June/008407.html

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With best regards


Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima),
Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич


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[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

2009/6/4 Dmitrijs Ledkovs <dmitrij.ledkov@...>:
> 2009/6/4 Alexander Reichle-Schmehl <alexander@...>:

> [2] http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=shit
> site:lists.debian.org&hl=en&sa=N&output=search&tbs=rcnt:1&tbo=1

My mailer is not that good =) it broke the above url into two lines
cause there is a space between last word of the first line and the
second line. So strange that google did not encode space with %20 (?).

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With best regards


Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima),
Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич


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[Christian Perrier-3]

Dmitrijs Ledkovs a écrit :

> So for example to analyze this email [1]
> It meets mailing list code of conduct but I would consider this email
> a bit rude for a public mailing list.

That email apparently happens in a quite "hot" discussion (some would
call this a flamewar) where, apparently the person who's answered by the
mail already obviously exxagerated in many ways.

Moreover, apart from a quite imperative "shut up" (which is obviously
what the other person *really should do*), I don't really consider the
mail that rude but more some direct style which most people in Debian
lists are used to. Moreover, when the person writing all this has the
credit Steve has in the project, I think that one can legitimately
assume that bringing him to such 'drastic' public statement proves that
things went quite far already earlier.

moreover, -legal is very prone to such hot discussions when hairy topics
are discussed.


> Now compare the message [1] to the one of the ubuntu code of conduct
> reminders [3] this is the point I guess I'm trying to make. Shall I

I don't really see the relation between [1] and [3]. Are you suggesting
that someone should send to the author of [1) a reminder such as [3]?
Believe me, that would trigger a giant laugh among the Debian community..:-)

> file a wishlist bug against mailing-list virtual package w.r.t. code
> of conduct?

I don't really see any point in doing this.

>
>
> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2009/05/msg00077.html
>
> [2] http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=shit
> site:lists.debian.org&hl=en&sa=N&output=search&tbs=rcnt:1&tbo=1

I'm note sure what this is meant to prove. That "shit" is often used in
Debian mailing lists? Well, I would just say that this is just a proof
that we're real people who are using real language...:-)

So, really, while I personnally try to avoid being rude and aggressive
in mailing lists (and sometimes miserably fail in this), I don't really
see what problem you're trying to solve, here.






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[Miriam Ruiz-4]

2009/6/4 Dmitrijs Ledkovs <dmitrij.ledkov@...>:

> I would love to see friendly, safe and respectful behavior towards
> each other on mailing lists & other communication channel's within
> debian. I don't know but maybe a code of conduct (e.g. [2]) is
> something appropriate to be popularized in Debian?
>
> What are your thought on this topic? Am I talking non-sense or is
> debian development "not children save"?

Retaking this thread, even though it's quite old, having thought about
it a bit and as a general question being thrown out there to the air,
would it make sense to have some kind of entry point for minors who
want to start developing stuff for Debian?

Greetings,
Miry


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