Re: [gentoo-council] CoC: informal enforcement

[Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>]

On 12:36 Thu 14 Feb     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-02-14 at 02:13 -0800, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > What I want to do is build a core culture of people who refuse to 
> > tolerate assholes. We can do this by getting together a small group 
> > who will reply to any gentoo-dev posts or #gentoo-dev comments by 
> > people who are being jerks, telling them that they're being a jerk 
> > and not replying to the substance of the jerk's post at all. Replies 
> > to the substance of a post would come separately or not at all. 
> > Having a group of people reply to hostile posters should begin 
> > rebuilding a culture that doesn't tolerate that type of action.
> > 
> > People who are consistently jerks are incompetent developers and 
> > should be treated as such.
> 
> Nice idea and worth a try.  I have one concern.  Since we are talking 
> CoC here, I'd like to emphasise that "assholeness" should be 
> determined within the guidelines of the CoC.  Not by some person's own 
> conception of "assholeness" --- I'd hate to see a flame war about just 
> who is being the asshole in any particular instance.

You make a good point. The CoC [1] is subject to some level of 
interpretation, and I think that these two provisions pretty much 
provide for what I'm suggesting:

  Be courteous. Though respect is earned, it must start somewhere. 
  Respect someones right for their own opinion and acknowledge that they 
  do deserve a measure of politeness in your response.

  Respectfully disagree with or challenge other members. The operative 
  word here is respectfully.

One thought I've had is that once we get this small group of people, we 
could talk in an IRC channel about whether a particular instance 
qualifies before responding.

Thanks,
Donnie

1. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/coc.xml
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