Arthus, members of the PMC, random onlookers, Over the several years of contributions to Habari, you [Arthus] managed to contribute a lot, and I think we all deserve to give you thanks for that. However, for better or for worse, I'm sure you'll be remembered more by many for your outbursts at time in IRC.
It is those outbursts I wish to focus upon now, primarily as they have more relevance to your departure. The cause of the outbursts, more often than not, was taking any sort of criticism of your work highly personally, and lashing out at the person who gave it: that sort of behaviour I must condemn. But I do not hold those critiques in the clear either: they often responded to your fury with more fury, adding fire to fire, setting both people off into an unstoppable, vicious, circle. This resulted in yourself being banned more than once, and although you may have originally started it, I do not hold the other person any less responsible than you, and I believe that they were just as deserving of a ban as you. As it often happened the other person was in the PMC (and it was not a single member of the PMC, but quite a number of members of the PMC), and they went without punishment. This led to, in my eyes at least, and quite possibly others, an appearance of bias towards members of the PMC. Whether or not that bias was deliberate is out of scope for this purpose, but it makes the PMC look bad enough even if it were accidental. It is no secret, and I have posted it before, that I believe members of the PMC whose actions work against what the PMC should be working for (in this case, nourishing the community) should be asked to leave the PMC. This is no different to members of the community being asked to leave, as far as I can tell. Just because someone has done something in the past deserving of merit doesn't mitigate them from the qualities that were expected so that they became members of the PMC (or at least should've been, according to our wiki page). It shouldn't just be a requirement that you must have had these qualities when you became a member of a PMC, it should also be a requirement you don't work against them while a member. The PMC is looked to by many newcomers as to how to behave, and if they see members of the PMC getting into flamewars full of ad hominem attacks, it does not reflect well on either the PMC or the project as a whole. If we are to hold members of the community to certain levels of etiquette, and ask them to leave if they do not, we should treat the PMC the same. To return to the specific case of Arthus: in June I was asked by several members of the PMC to try and be a mentor (of sorts) for Arthus, as it was seen that he appeared to believe what I said more than most of the other members of the PMC (although there had been times where it seemed like he doubted me too as a result of being a PMC membership), in part because I have quite frequently spoken out about several aspects of the PMC. I reluctantly accepted, knowing that due to a mixture of travelling and being in Sweden (and employed) my participation in Habari would likely decrease, and not wanting to thrust myself into the middle of Arthus's disputes. It's fair to say at the time that a fair proportion of the PMC thought he was beyond redemption, though I personally did not. As I suspected, my life took the cause I somewhat expected, being away for a week, then having a fairly busy time getting used to where I was then living, and going out with various people, and I managed to only speak to Arthus once or twice. As far as I could see, the primary problems were paranoia about there being some sort of conspiracy working against him and a short temper, fuelled by the former. If there's one thing I think we, as a community, should try to learn from both Arthus and Owen leaving (at least temporarily: I don't believe in never forgiving them for their actions, as I think that would be extremely detrimental for the community, and I think both can redeem themselves) and that is that we should treat everybody within the community as equal, regardless of our past relations with them. If you hold something against someone forever, you will likely be detrimental to both yourself and the community as a whole. All the best, g --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-users -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
