Based on some emails I read in the " unpacking generalisations for list comprehension", I feel like I need to address this entire list about its general behaviour.
If you don't follow me on Twitter you may not be aware that I am taking the entire month of October off from volunteering any personal time on Python for my personal well-being (this reply is being done on work time for instance). This stems from my wife pointing out that I had been rather stressed in July and August outside of work in relation to my Python volunteering (having your weekends ruined is never fun). That stress stemmed primarily from two rather bad interactions I had to contend with on the issue track in July and August ... and this mailing list. When I have talked to people about this mailing list it's often referred to by others as the "wild west" of Python development discussions (if you're not familiar with US culture, that turn of phrase basically means "anything goes"). To me that is not a compliment. When I created this list with Titus the goal was to provide a safe place where people could bring up ideas for Python where people could quickly provide basic feedback so people could know whether there was any chance that python-dev would consider the proposal. This was meant to be a win for proposers by not feeling like they were wasting python-dev's time and a win for python-dev by keeping that list focused on the development of Python and not fielding every idea that people want to propose. And while this list has definitely helped with the cognitive load on python-dev, it has not always provided a safe place for people to express ideas. I have seen people completely dismiss people's expertise and opinion. There has been name calling and yelling at people (which is always unnecessary). There have been threads that have completely derailed itself and gone entirely off-topic. IOW I would not hold this mailing list up as an example of the general discourse that I experience elsewhere within the community. Now I realize that we are all human beings coming from different cultural backgrounds and lives. We all have bad days and may not take the time to stop and think about what we are typing before sending it, leading to emails that are worded in a way that can be hurtful to others. It's also easy to forget that various cultures views things differently and so that can lead to people "reading between the lines" a lot and picking up things that were never intended. There are 1,031 people on this mailing list from around the world and it's easy to forget that e.g. Canadian humour may not translate well to Ukrainian culture (or something). What this means is it's okay to *nicely* say that something bothered you, but also try to give people the benefit of the doubt as you don't know what their day had been like before they wrote that email (I personally don't like the "just mute the thread" approach to dealing with bad actors when the muting is silent as that doesn't help new people who join this mailing list and the first email they see is someone being rude that everyone else didn't see because they muted the thread days ago). As for the off-topic threads, please remember there are 1,031 people on this mailing list (this doesn't count people reading through gmane or Google Groups). Being extremely generous and assuming every person on this list only spends 10 seconds deciding if they care about your email, that's still nearly 3 hours of cumulative time spent on your email. So please be cognisant when you reply, and if you want to have an off-topic conversation, please take it off-list. And finally, as one of the list administrators I am in a position of power when it comes to the rules of this list and the CoC. While I'm one of the judges on when someone has violated the CoC, I purposefully try not to play the role of police to avoid bias and abuse of power. What that means is that I never personally lodge a CoC complaint against anyone. That means that if you feel someone is being abusive here you cannot rely on list admins noticing and doing something about it. If you feel someone has continuously been abusive on this list and violating the CoC then you must email the list admins about it if you wish to see action taken (all communications are kept private among the admins). Now I'm not asking people to email us on every small infraction (as I said above, try to give everyone a break knowing we all have bad days), but if you notice a pattern then you need to speak up if you would like to see something change. When I started my month off I thought that maybe if I only read this mailing list once a week that the frequency would be low enough that I could handle the stress of being both a participant and admin who is ultimately responsible for the behaviour here, but I'm afraid that isn't going to cut it. What I don't think people realize is that I don't take my responsibility as admin lightly; any time anyone acts rudely I take it personally like I somehow failed by letting the atmosphere and discourse on this list become what it is. Because of this I'm afraid I need to mute this mailing list for the rest of my vacation from volunteering in the Python community after I send this email. I personally hope people do take the time to read this email and reflect upon how they conduct themselves on this mailing list -- and maybe on other lists as well -- so that when I attempt to come back in November I don't have to permanent stop being a participant on this list and simply become an admin for this list to prevent complete burn-out for me in the Python community (and I know this last sentence sounds dramatic, but I'm being serious; the irony of receiving the Frank Willison award the same year I'm having to contemplate fundamentally shifting how I engage with the community to not burn out is not lost on me). -Brett
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