Re: [O] posting guide?
Just a short comment: There is one incident caused by one user - this is an outlier in all statistical measures. I don't think it is reasonable to react with new rules - by discussing the issue caused by one user, we are playing by their rules! Ignore the one user but keep your eyes and ears open - but don't overreact. Cheers, Rainer On Thursday, March 14, 2013, Bastien wrote: Hi Jay, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com javascript:; writes: As promised, I added a sentence to that paragraph: Ad hominem comments are out of place and will not be tolerated by the community. If one of you feels this is inconsistent with Org's spirit, feel free to delete my change (it is a wiki, after all). No hard feelings. Honest. I'm fine with the sentence you added --- and will take care not to curse after myself when I make a mistake ;) -- Bastien -- Rainer M. Krug, PhD (Conservation Ecology, SUN), MSc (Conservation Biology, UCT), Dipl. Phys. (Germany) Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology Stellenbosch University South Africa Tel : +33 - (0)9 53 10 27 44 Cell: +33 - (0)6 85 62 59 98 Fax (F): +33 - (0)9 58 10 27 44 Fax (D):+49 - (0)3 21 21 25 22 44 email: rai...@krugs.de Skype: RMkrug
Re: [O] posting guide?
On 13 mrt. 2013, at 22:07, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com wrote: Dear Bastien, On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Bastien b...@altern.org wrote: Hi Jay, Well, I would not invest too much time on this, personally. No, you don't seem to be bothered at all; those attacks seem to wash off you like water off a duck's back, or scandals off of Bill Clinton's resume. ;-) From experience, such a drafting process takes a lot of time. And at the end, you're not always sure that the whole community comes: to an agreement... only the ones who care, who are obviously not the ones the guidelines want to reach. Drafting takes about five seconds. In fact, let me do one right now: Please note that messages to the emacs-orgmode list are expected to be civil and focused toward our mutual interest of Org mode. /Ad hominem/ or other attacks of a personal nature will not be tolerated by the community. Any strenuous objections? Hi, it seems to me that this is entirely superfluous. I have not seen a mailing lit with better behavior anywhere. We should not be distracted by a lone user. Why not trying another approach and have a hall of fame for great posts sent on this lists? Examples of good/thorough explanations, example of detailed bug reports, etc. It would be both encouraging and educating, maybe. What do you think? A great idea. - Carsten I think that's a great idea!, actually. My mental catalogue of excellent posts probably isn't as extensive as yours, but even just last night I got a great response that fits a Hall of Fame in my book. Surely there must be other people who got a great response to some question they asked at some point in their past. -- Jay
Re: [O] posting guide?
it seems to me that this is entirely superfluous. I have not seen a mailing lit with better behavior anywhere. We should not be distracted by a lone user. FWIW, +1
Re: [O] posting guide?
Memnon Anon gegendosenflei...@googlemail.com writes: it seems to me that this is entirely superfluous. I have not seen a mailing lit with better behavior anywhere. We should not be distracted by a lone user. FWIW, +1 +2 :) Bernt
Re: [O] posting guide?
[snip] FWIW, +1 +2 :) Fair enough. I agree that time shouldn't be wasted on lone users, and that includes me: http://orgmode.org/w/?p=worg.git;a=commitdiff;h=933d17d268a1618d9244c12014403a05c05c5a25 Cheers, -- Jay
Re: [O] posting guide?
Reading my message again, it doesn't say what I wanted it to say, and it sounds in my head not in the way I wanted it to sound. Let me try again, with more words: That's totally fine by me, I meant it when I said OK if you don't want to do that, and I don't want a silly thing like a posting guide idea of mine to be wasting people's time any more than I want malicious comments from hostile lone users to be wasting people's time. I hope that sounds better; it is closer to what I meant. Sorry for the noise, -- Jay
Re: [O] posting guide?
On 14.3.2013, at 20:53, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com wrote: Reading my message again, it doesn't say what I wanted it to say, and it sounds in my head not in the way I wanted it to sound. Let me try again, with more words: That's totally fine by me, I meant it when I said OK if you don't want to do that, and I don't want a silly thing like a posting guide idea of mine to be wasting people's time any more than I want malicious comments from hostile lone users to be wasting people's time. I hope that sounds better; it is closer to what I meant. Sure! However, the idea in the thread to collect a few exemplary post with great questions or great answers could be fun... Cheers - Carsten Sorry for the noise, -- Jay
[O] posting guide?
The past few days have reminded me of something somebody famous once said [1]. I can already see work being done to protect the community for the future, yet I believe there is more we might do to be even stronger. I understand and appreciate Bastien's stated position regarding moderator controls [2], and in that particular case I think he did the right thing. At the same time, I do not possess his seemingly superhuman level of patience, temperance, and couth. Yes, I can add people to my SPAM filter (which I did, BTW), but that action protects only *me*. It does not protect the community. Further, my later blissful ignorance means I am unavailable to respond to future threats, so malicious individuals are left to run rampant and destroy everybody else still hanging around. Of course, if *everybody* agrees to divert to SPAM then we're all set. That's my point: I propose that we, as a community, come to some sort of consensus as to what un/acceptable behavior is and an accepted mechanism of response. One way to accomplish this is with a posting guide. I have some thoughts about this: 1. It should be written and maintained by the community. On Worg, for instance. 2. It should be minimal. Posting guides sometimes go overboard, to the extent that they can be (and sometimes are) used as a weapon. I do *not* propose that. If we insist on 1) then I trust the community to handle it with care. 3. It should contain things which help new users draft messages that are informative and targeted to whatever problem they're having, things they might not have known otherwise (things like M-x org-version, M-x toggle-debug-on-error, etc.). 4. I think we can all agree that messages like this [3] should not be tolerated, ever, under any circumstances. If a person resorts to ad hominem attacks of this sort (or similar) then (s)he should promptly be shown the door. Period. As far as I am concerned, that's pretty much the only thing I can't stomach, but maybe the larger community considers other subjects to be off-topic or unwelcome on the list. That would be for the community to decide. All the above is a long-winded way to say that every community has some /minimum/ standards and expectations of conduct, otherwise we're just a bunch of people standing around in the same (virtual) place. To date, these expectations have lived unspoken or scattered around in emails here or there. I propose that we come together in a community-driven way to define when it's time to say Welcome! and when it's time to say, Get lost. I understand that there are valid arguments against posting guides, not the least of which including what I said above in 2). Maybe this community doesn't want a posting guide. OK. But even in that case we've at least agreed that we don't want a posting guide and can get back to work. If we *do* decide that a minimal posting guide makes sense, then it wouldn't be of much use unless there are those among us willing to enforce it when individuals maliciously disregard the agreement of the community. I would probably have been one of those people had I known there was some consensus about what is OK and what isn't. Now is the time to decide. I have a mental first draft of things that could go in one, but there's no point moving forward if there isn't a general feeling that this would be something good to do. And, I'd like the Org old-timers to feel free to take the reins and run with it if they so choose. Cheers, -- Jay [1] http://www.quotes.net/quote/2101 [2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-03/msg00449.html [3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-03/msg00747.html -- G. Jay Kerns, Ph.D. Youngstown State University http://people.ysu.edu/~gkerns/
Re: [O] posting guide?
+1 On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 3:13 PM, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com wrote: The past few days have reminded me of something somebody famous once said [1]. I can already see work being done to protect the community for the future, yet I believe there is more we might do to be even stronger. I understand and appreciate Bastien's stated position regarding moderator controls [2], and in that particular case I think he did the right thing. At the same time, I do not possess his seemingly superhuman level of patience, temperance, and couth. Yes, I can add people to my SPAM filter (which I did, BTW), but that action protects only *me*. It does not protect the community. Further, my later blissful ignorance means I am unavailable to respond to future threats, so malicious individuals are left to run rampant and destroy everybody else still hanging around. Of course, if *everybody* agrees to divert to SPAM then we're all set. That's my point: I propose that we, as a community, come to some sort of consensus as to what un/acceptable behavior is and an accepted mechanism of response. One way to accomplish this is with a posting guide. I have some thoughts about this: 1. It should be written and maintained by the community. On Worg, for instance. 2. It should be minimal. Posting guides sometimes go overboard, to the extent that they can be (and sometimes are) used as a weapon. I do *not* propose that. If we insist on 1) then I trust the community to handle it with care. 3. It should contain things which help new users draft messages that are informative and targeted to whatever problem they're having, things they might not have known otherwise (things like M-x org-version, M-x toggle-debug-on-error, etc.). 4. I think we can all agree that messages like this [3] should not be tolerated, ever, under any circumstances. If a person resorts to ad hominem attacks of this sort (or similar) then (s)he should promptly be shown the door. Period. As far as I am concerned, that's pretty much the only thing I can't stomach, but maybe the larger community considers other subjects to be off-topic or unwelcome on the list. That would be for the community to decide. All the above is a long-winded way to say that every community has some /minimum/ standards and expectations of conduct, otherwise we're just a bunch of people standing around in the same (virtual) place. To date, these expectations have lived unspoken or scattered around in emails here or there. I propose that we come together in a community-driven way to define when it's time to say Welcome! and when it's time to say, Get lost. I understand that there are valid arguments against posting guides, not the least of which including what I said above in 2). Maybe this community doesn't want a posting guide. OK. But even in that case we've at least agreed that we don't want a posting guide and can get back to work. If we *do* decide that a minimal posting guide makes sense, then it wouldn't be of much use unless there are those among us willing to enforce it when individuals maliciously disregard the agreement of the community. I would probably have been one of those people had I known there was some consensus about what is OK and what isn't. Now is the time to decide. I have a mental first draft of things that could go in one, but there's no point moving forward if there isn't a general feeling that this would be something good to do. And, I'd like the Org old-timers to feel free to take the reins and run with it if they so choose. Cheers, -- Jay [1] http://www.quotes.net/quote/2101 [2] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-03/msg00449.html [3] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2013-03/msg00747.html -- G. Jay Kerns, Ph.D. Youngstown State University http://people.ysu.edu/~gkerns/
Re: [O] posting guide?
Am 13.03.2013 20:13, schrieb Jay Kerns: The past few days have reminded me of something somebody famous once said [1]. I can already see work being done to protect the community for the future, yet I believe there is more we might do to be even stronger. I understand and appreciate Bastien's stated position regarding moderator controls [2], and in that particular case I think he did the right thing. At the same time, I do not possess his seemingly superhuman level of patience, temperance, and couth. Yes, I can add people to my SPAM filter (which I did, BTW), but that action protects only *me*. It does not protect the community. Further, my later blissful ignorance means I am unavailable to respond to future threats, so malicious individuals are left to run rampant and destroy everybody else still hanging around. Of course, if *everybody* agrees to divert to SPAM then we're all set. That's my point: I propose that we, as a community, come to some sort of consensus as to what un/acceptable behavior is and an accepted mechanism of response. One way to accomplish this is with a posting guide. I have some thoughts about this: [ ... ] Hi Jay, if you permit my opinion as a kind of guest-reader for years: don't think it's needed. IMO it was an accident. Hopefully the person will recover and present it's excuses some weeks or month later. Expect org-mode users being decent people by virtue of these fine thing themselves. Really don't assume that might happen next years again. Best, Andreas
Re: [O] posting guide?
Hi Jay, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com writes: I have a mental first draft of things that could go in one, but there's no point moving forward if there isn't a general feeling that this would be something good to do. Well, I would not invest too much time on this, personally. From experience, such a drafting process takes a lot of time. And at the end, you're not always sure that the whole community comes: to an agreement... only the ones who care, who are obviously not the ones the guidelines want to reach. Why not trying another approach and have a hall of fame for great posts sent on this lists? Examples of good/thorough explanations, example of detailed bug reports, etc. It would be both encouraging and educating, maybe. What do you think? -- Bastien
Re: [O] posting guide?
Dear Andreas, On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Andreas Röhler andreas.roeh...@easy-emacs.de wrote: Hi Jay, if you permit my opinion as a kind of guest-reader for years: don't think it's needed. IMO it was an accident. Hopefully the person will recover and present it's excuses some weeks or month later. Expect org-mode users being decent people by virtue of these fine thing themselves. Really don't assume that might happen next years again. Of course, I permit your opinion, and thanks for chiming in. I personally do not believe that Jambunathan's recent behavior was an accident, but that is just my opinion. And I do not hold any ill will toward the man: I wish him the very best - some place far, far away (for a while). As Org grows there will be additional newbies (hopefully hundreds!) and additional hostile individuals (hopefully epsilon). Those are the two categories targeted by this proposal. -- Jay
Re: [O] posting guide?
Dear Bastien, On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Bastien b...@altern.org wrote: Hi Jay, Well, I would not invest too much time on this, personally. No, you don't seem to be bothered at all; those attacks seem to wash off you like water off a duck's back, or scandals off of Bill Clinton's resume. ;-) From experience, such a drafting process takes a lot of time. And at the end, you're not always sure that the whole community comes: to an agreement... only the ones who care, who are obviously not the ones the guidelines want to reach. Drafting takes about five seconds. In fact, let me do one right now: Please note that messages to the emacs-orgmode list are expected to be civil and focused toward our mutual interest of Org mode. /Ad hominem/ or other attacks of a personal nature will not be tolerated by the community. Any strenuous objections? Why not trying another approach and have a hall of fame for great posts sent on this lists? Examples of good/thorough explanations, example of detailed bug reports, etc. It would be both encouraging and educating, maybe. What do you think? I think that's a great idea!, actually. My mental catalogue of excellent posts probably isn't as extensive as yours, but even just last night I got a great response that fits a Hall of Fame in my book. Surely there must be other people who got a great response to some question they asked at some point in their past. -- Jay
Re: [O] posting guide?
Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com writes: As Org grows there will be additional newbies (hopefully hundreds!) and additional hostile individuals (hopefully epsilon). Those are the two categories targeted by this proposal. I sadly have to agree somehow. The Perl crowd, for example, was warm and interesting when it began, long ago, before later turning in a boiling riot and a place to run away from. The Python crowd is still not so bad, but it is not anymore the cozy place it was in its beginnings. Popularity seemingly comes with a price. Sigh! For Org mode, maybe it is a bit premature, as it is not an urgent matter yet. Maybe energies could be best invested elsewhere for the time being. François
Re: [O] posting guide?
Aloha Jay, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com writes: That's my point: I propose that we, as a community, come to some sort of consensus as to what un/acceptable behavior is and an accepted mechanism of response. One way to accomplish this is with a posting guide. I have some thoughts about this: 1. It should be written and maintained by the community. On Worg, for instance. Worg has a brief description of the mailing list, including list etiquette: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-mailing-list.html It tries to stay away from prescription, and it deliberately avoids mentioning all the bad behaviors that can be found on mailing lists. Please feel free to edit so it suits! All the best, Tom -- Thomas S. Dye http://www.tsdye.com
Re: [O] posting guide?
Dear Tom, Perfect - that's just what I'm looking for. And that's exactly what I'll do. Cheers, Jay On Mar 13, 2013 6:16 PM, Thomas S. Dye t...@tsdye.com wrote: Aloha Jay, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com writes: That's my point: I propose that we, as a community, come to some sort of consensus as to what un/acceptable behavior is and an accepted mechanism of response. One way to accomplish this is with a posting guide. I have some thoughts about this: 1. It should be written and maintained by the community. On Worg, for instance. Worg has a brief description of the mailing list, including list etiquette: http://orgmode.org/worg/org-mailing-list.html It tries to stay away from prescription, and it deliberately avoids mentioning all the bad behaviors that can be found on mailing lists. Please feel free to edit so it suits! All the best, Tom -- Thomas S. Dye http://www.tsdye.com
Re: [O] posting guide?
t...@tsdye.com (Thomas S. Dye) writes: It tries to stay away from prescription, and it deliberately avoids mentioning all the bad behaviors that can be found on mailing lists. Please feel free to edit so it suits! +1! -- Bastien
Re: [O] posting guide?
Hi Jay, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com writes: Please note that messages to the emacs-orgmode list are expected to be civil and focused toward our mutual interest of Org mode. /Ad hominem/ or other attacks of a personal nature will not be tolerated by the community. Any strenuous objections? No objection of course, but it feels both formal and empty to me. I think that's a great idea!, actually. My mental catalogue of excellent posts probably isn't as extensive as yours, but even just last night I got a great response that fits a Hall of Fame in my book. Surely there must be other people who got a great response to some question they asked at some point in their past. My memory is called the Org FAQ :) http://orgmode.org/worg/org-faq.html -- Bastien
Re: [O] posting guide?
Jay Kerns gjkernsysu at gmail.com writes: Yes, I can add people to my SPAM filter (which I did, BTW), but that action protects only *me*. It does not protect the community. It also doesn't protect digest readers such as myself. I was quite annoyed by Jambunathan's suggestion that individual spam filters were the way to deal with his misbehavior, for this reason. hjh
Re: [O] posting guide?
Bastien writes: No objection of course, but it feels both formal and empty to me. I share Bastien's opinion. My experience with community building is that describing and rewarding exemplary behavior is much more useful than attempting to set strict rules of behavior. You need some basic rules, but then emphasize describing excellence. It's much better for people trying be be like her, because everyone respects and honors her, rather than following some set of detailed rules. R Horn rjh...@alum.mit.edu
Re: [O] posting guide?
Robert Horn rjh...@alum.mit.edu writes: It's much better for people trying be be like her, because everyone respects and honors her, rather than following some set of detailed rules. Her??? Who is she? Never met her on this list -- cheers, Thorsten
Re: [O] posting guide?
On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 8:34 PM, Robert Horn rjh...@alum.mit.edu wrote: I share Bastien's opinion. My experience with community building is that describing and rewarding exemplary behavior is much more useful than attempting to set strict rules of behavior. You need some basic rules, but then emphasize describing excellence. It's much better for people trying be be like her, because everyone respects and honors her, rather than following some set of detailed rules. R Horn rjh...@alum.mit.edu You know, I don't disagree with any of that. Re: empty words, in my view, the measure of any statement is the veracity of the person who says it, or in this case, the resolve of the community who lives by it. Or not. :-) After having reviewed the paragraph on the Worg page that Tom mentioned, it is clear that there already exists a community-driven place to give guidance about what is considered (un)acceptable behavior on this list. As promised, I added a sentence to that paragraph: Ad hominem comments are out of place and will not be tolerated by the community. If one of you feels this is inconsistent with Org's spirit, feel free to delete my change (it is a wiki, after all). No hard feelings. Honest. Time to get back to work. Thanks to all who contributed to the discussion. -- Jay
Re: [O] posting guide?
Hi Jay, Jay Kerns gjkerns...@gmail.com writes: As promised, I added a sentence to that paragraph: Ad hominem comments are out of place and will not be tolerated by the community. If one of you feels this is inconsistent with Org's spirit, feel free to delete my change (it is a wiki, after all). No hard feelings. Honest. I'm fine with the sentence you added --- and will take care not to curse after myself when I make a mistake ;) -- Bastien
