To the extent that a code of conduct looks like an attempt to limit freedom of speech, it may be counterproductive. It is possible to legislate "politeness" by moderating newsgroups. I suppose it is possible to resolve disagreements about the course of open software development by (a) achieving consensus (b) force (imposition of some authority to make decisions) or (c) forking a project.
Is this a well-known negative of open source development (resolving disputes?) Has it been explored in journals? (I'm not well-read on whatever literature there is on open source pro/con recently.) RJF On Thursday, November 13, 2014 10:40:00 PM UTC-8, john_perry_usm wrote: > > On Friday, November 14, 2014 3:55:34 AM UTC+1, Travis Scrimshaw wrote: >> >> Bullying can get so bad that the teachers need to step in and enact the >> correct punishment. >> > > ...yet, in my experience, they usually don't, and often because the > bullies are likable, or socially influential (e.g., son of the > superintendent/major donor, comes from "a good family"), etc. Sometimes a > teacher can unintentionally make a student feel like s/he is bullying her > or him. "Speech codes" are sometimes used simply to shut down debate on > topics that become culturally unfashionable, and are often applied > unevenly. I personally prefer civilized discourse, but I've also noticed > that Western society seems to have adopted an undercurrent of thin-skinned > outrage. > > If someone wanted to add a patch that verifiably improved the performance > of Sage on [insert your favorite subsystem here], what would you do if her > or his comments were frequently abusive toward other contributors, or > previous contributions? i.e., profanity-laced, derogatory, etc. Not the > code itself, mind, just the comments in the trac ticket and/or discussion > in sage-devel. Presumably, someone would take her/ him aside & talk to him, > but what if (as often happens) that person ignored the intervention & > continued to heap abuse on you? Would you reject the patch? > > If not, what's the point of the proposed code? Again, I like civilized > discourse, but a code without consequences strikes me as worse than no code > at all. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
