Thanks for your thoughtful words, Alan. Yes, I and Alyssa are the moderators.
I’m afraid I’m still getting caught up. (Haven’t even had coffee yet!) I saw the first couple of e-mails in the thread last night, but no more until this morning, and I’m afraid I don’t know what “other thread” people are referring to. Hopefully everyone can take a deep breath, and step away from the keyboard for a bit. If necessary, I can enforce that by fiat (at least for this list), but I’d rather not have to do that. I agree that “something” needs to be done, but I’m not sure what the right “something” is. I hope you will all forgive me if I take a bit of time this morning to read the stream of emails carefully and think about it (and drink my coffee!). I would welcome off-list comments. Darrell On Dec 2, 2014, at 03:55, Alan McConchie <alan.mcconc...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks to Tom, Mele, and Kai (in the parallel thread) for your very reasoned > and calming words here. Normally I try to keep my mouth shut when things get > heated on the mailing lists, since yet another voice usually doesn't help > things. But on the other hand, if all of us who are repelled by the tone of > the mailing lists keep our mouths shut, then nothing will improve. > > I will try not to weigh in too much on the content of the debate regarding > neurodiversity. I already know a quite a bit about the topic, but I am > educating myself further, especially WRT how people with traumatic brain > injuries (TBIs) are included (or not) under the umbrella of the > neurodivergent. To a lay person, it certainly sounds like people coping with > TBIs would be included in a term like "neurodiverse" or "neurodivergent", but > as I read up on the topic, it appears that those terms have a clear and > specific meaning among the individuals who identify as such, and that this > specific meaning does not include TBIs. If I imagine things from the point of > view of someone who identifies as neurodivergent, I can understand why that > is the case, and I can see how misuse of that term could be offensive. But I > think Alyssa's comment was an honest mistake. > > It's not my job to tell someone else that they shouldn't be offended, and I > am wary of going too far into "tone policing", but on the other hand the very > first point in our proposed CoC is "be nice". I wish that Alyssa's > well-meaning but incorrect use of the term "neurodiverse" had been used as a > teachable moment to help us make this forum more welcoming, instead of being > met with an angry response from Serge that has now alienated many more people > than Alyssa's original email did (at least judging from public responses here > and on twitter). > > I hope we can all agree that we want our community to be welcoming to people > with TBIs, as well as to the neurodivergent, and we need to figure out the > correct terminology to welcome both these groups without offending anyone. > Perhaps that's another issue for the CoC? > > However, I think the tone of the emails on this list still need to be dealt > with. If we can't create a welcoming space on this mailing list, then how can > we have any hope of success in the rest of OSM? However, I see a few > complications dealing with this particular incident: > > 1. Is this a first offense, or worse? Here I'm speaking both about Alyssa's > offensive comment and Serge's excessive response. I'm not a part of the local > New York City OSM community, but I am aware that there have been long-running > disagreements between Alyssa and Serge, thus making it hard to determine what > constitutes a first offense here. In fact, the very first month of this list > included a couple of threads regarding some unspecified incident in the NYC > community [1]. I don't know enough details, but it seems we are beyond the > first offense for one or both parties. > > 2. Another complication: Randal made a plea to the list administrators to > remove Serge from the list because of his email. It appears that Alyssa > herself is one of the list administrators, along with Darrell Fuhriman > (please correct me if I'm wrong). What do we do in the case where one of the > list administrators is one of the people involved in a flame war? Can Alyssa > recuse herself from any administrative tasks regarding this event, so we can > be sure that any decisions (such as formal warnings or ejection from the > list) are made as impartially as possible by Darrell only? I think it's > important we (as a list) handle this as transparently and impersonally as > possible. > > Alan > > [1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/diversity-talk/2013-June/
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