On 04/11/2017 05:22 PM, William L. Thomson Jr. wrote:
> When people make assumptions about others based on posts to a mailing
> list etc. It seems they may have a limited view of the world and lack
> of world experience. The more you travel, learn other cultures, etc.
> You learn not to assume about others. Cultures alone can be very
> different. You also learn respect is a VERY big thing. In the US in my
> area and others. Lack of showing respect can result in violence. In
> business lack of respect can really be costly just the same. In Asian
> cultures, respect is HUGE.

[finding a place in block of text to break in with a relative context]

Doesn't this argument go both ways? We have participants from a number
of cultures on the mailing list, and what you feel insulted for I
wouldn't even shrug about here in Norway. In certain other European
countries (or northern Norway), you'd be considered prude for not having
some expletives involved in the everyday discussion.

And doesn't the extension of that argument mean that we should all try
to consider the feedback from others in how we present ourselves? Given
that most of our discussions within this project happens via email, and
on IRC, but email would be the more dominant channel in terms of
substantive discussions, shouldn't we make an effort to increase the
signal to noise ratio and give it serious thought when multiple people
state that a specific behavior is unwanted?

I believe most of us want a more fruitful community within Gentoo, but I
do not believe the way to go ahead to get it is running around
complaining, adding to the negativity. If you really want change, try to
contribute code through the established channels, try to contribute
documentation patches, contributing with resourced bug reports, and say
thank you to developers once in a while instead of expecting some sense
of entitlement because others are contributing pro bono[i].

All I can say is, spending the amount of time reading the dominant
mailing lists is time I could've spent on other aspects of Gentoo, and
I'd much prefer the participants respecting the use of my time when
posting to one of the lists that'd be expected I read to begin with.

So if you know, and receive indication of, a misrepresentation of
persona in such information channels -- might I suggest considering
contributing through different channels and/or limiting the
communication to objective contributions (such as patches)?

Notes:
[i] granted I should quantify that with saying that pro bono argument
only goes so far, if picking up a responsibility it should be followed
up or dropped, the voluntary basis is whether to pick up the ball or not

-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
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