Hi all, I've been in discussion with a few people trying to troubleshoot the root cause of problems in recent discussions.
From my perspective, there are a couple of things that have really undermined my confidence in the community and keep things at a frosty level. The way that Matthias has used my first name in the minutes[1] of the previous GA meeting. Normally the full name of the person proposing a motion is presented in a regular font and placed under the motion, but I feel that putting my first name in the titles is intended to attract vilification. The minutes look unprofessional and bring the organization into disrepute. I'd kindly request that Matthias corrects the minutes. For example, the motions should look like this: Title of motion Text of motion. Proposed by: D. Pocock One of the worst things about leadership mistakes is that people emulate them. Subsequent to the way the president has prepared the minutes, other members of the community have emulated this behaviour, most recently Bernhard, putting my name into the subject line of an email[2] reply. Everything spiralled downwards from there with somebody else changing the subject to "Bernhard lectures". All those emails can be traced directly back to the way the minutes were prepared and I feel that Matthias needs to apologize. There have been frequent, almost always disparaging references to missing the 2017 meeting. This has usually happened in private but came up again in Reinhard's post[3] just last week. It is essential to show respect for volunteers when something goes wrong in their life and they have to miss an event. Reminding people about such things in such an ugly way is a guaranteed way to poison relationships. Furthermore, no volunteer should feel pressure to disclose the reason they had to miss a meeting or change their plans. I'd request that Matthias clarify where these comments originate from, for example, did the chair of the meeting say something disparaging or fail to stop disparaging discussions about the absence? Why does the chair not intervene to maintain respect for volunteers in such instances? Notice that these things also happen in private discussions and I feel that some of what is now appearing in public is a reflection of that. I sincerely hope that the president will clear these things up on behalf of the organization. Regards, Daniel 1. https://fsfe.org/about/legal/minutes/minutes-2017-10-15.en.pdf 2. https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2018-September/012543.html 3. https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2018-August/012473.html _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct