To address your point about: "My subjective estimation is that discussing this a bit further is more constructive than working on a CoC. What parts of the discussion were unfortunate, exactly, and why?"
The problem with just discussing it further here is that: a) Nothing specific needs to get explicitly agreed upon, so we can all leave with our own interpretations and conclusions of what was decided b) We're 20-something emails into an email chain. All of us discussing will have developed more nuanced views, but for example a new person coming to the community will have no idea about what was discussed here. A CoC, on the other hand, is a big neon sign at the front door of the community, summarizing the basic bullet points of what we can agree we want our community to be. (By the way, I agreed with much of what you talked about but I think your points could have been made without calling anyone else out by name. Just my 2c.) Tom On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 5:49 AM, lennart spitzner < l...@informatik.uni-kiel.de> wrote: > A couple weeks earlier there was a discussion on tuple instances on this > list > that got somewhat out of hand, leading to a meta-discussion on civility. > There was the suggestion to create and endorse a CoC for this community. > > Now both topics have not received much further contribution, an indication > that > not much more can be gained from these discussions. Yet I have a bad > feeling about leaving them in such a manner, because: There is no real > conclusion, there is no agreement, and I do not see much advancement of how > we, as a community, cope with negative situations. And while I can > understand > that there is little incentive/motivation to continue due to negative > emotions involved, I also fear that ending discussions on such negative > emotions will discourage contributions in general not only now, but in the > future as well. > > So I will dare to continue, ask a couple of questions, and make some > suggestions: > > 1. At which point of the particular tuple instance discussion would it have > helped to have some CoC, and in what way? Is the hope that the > participants > had considered this CoC and not said something in the way that they did? > Or would it have allowed us to quickly point out the CoC at some > specific > point in response to some mail? Or something else? > > I _can_ see a couple of instances where a CoC could have been pointed > out, > but these don't convince me, because > a) in those cases giving clear, respectful negative feedback (for > example > regarding "joking") (would/should) have worked just as well if not > better > and > b) because simply pointing out the CoC during a discussion is rather > non-constructive because it is a vague form of criticism and the > receiving party will most likely consider it inappropriate, and so > it has > the opposite effect. > > 2. on a related note, I have a hard time pinpointing the moment in the > discussion where things transitioned from cool to flaming. I'd perhaps > name > as important factors the useless rhetoric (go and ask those > mathematicians) > and the case of hiding behind "it was a dumb joke" followed by what in > my > eyes reads like a dishonest apology. But I am not certain and perhaps > unfair. > > My subjective estimation is that discussing this a bit further is more > constructive than working on a CoC. What parts of the discussion were > unfortunate, exactly, and why? The general opinion here seems to be to > ask for civility without naming names. I disagree: I have little hope > that > giving the vague feedback to all participants that some parts of the > discussion were non-constructive/disrespectful will improve things in > the > future. > > As an example, we might take the following advice from this: > "Humour is important and generally welcome, but it is necessary to be > especially careful to make it clear when exactly we talk in jest, and to > not let slip phrases that can easily interpreted as offensive if not > interpreted as a joke. We will not accept retroactively hiding behind > 'it was a joke'." > > (perhaps some people think such a statement belonged in a CoC, but then > this is a different/more specific kind of advice than what I can see in > existing/proposed CoCs.) > > 3. And back to first discussion: I refuse to vote -1 or +1, because the > topic > is more nuanced than that. Instead, I vote for the following: > "Additional tuple instances shall be added after such a point in time > where > either the methods have been renamed as to avoid confusion, or after the > generic versions are no longer exposed in the default Prelude. > (and whether this point will come is intentionally left open.)" > > 4. And reflecting on the previous point, I encourage all participants to > try to > not make pure -1/+1 votes, but to include conditions under which they > may > switch, especially for controversial subjects. I have hopes that this > will > help finding a majority-backed compromise. > > 5. It would help to have the discussion and the arguments made by both > sides > archived somewhere other than on the mailing list. In one of the last > mails I wrote to this list I implicitly complained about the > signal-to-noise, and to be clear, I don't mean that any messages consist > of noise. But it can easily take a couple of mails back-and-forth to get > some point across, and these threads can grow to over a hundred mails > quickly. > I realize that the main issue here of course is the amount of work it > would > mean to somewhat objectively summarize an (often heated) debate. But > then > the alternative is the reiteration of the same topics in an almost > predicable frequency. > Thoughts? > > (Sorry, Tony, for somewhat singling out the "joking" as the negative > example. > This might be unfair. You have a valid point, but conveyed it rather poorly > especially to the end of the discussion.) > > -- lennart >
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