"Brian M. Sperlongano" <zelonew...@gmail.com> writes: > I would caution against hyper-simplifying the combativeness of the mailing > lists as "cultural differences". I can think of several German participants > on Slack and Discord that dispel this stereotype. Similarly, I can think > of several American commenters who are notoriously abrasive on the mailing > lists.
+1 to Brian's comment. Going further, I think a "we are having problems from cultural differences" is more than an over-simplification -- I think it is basically an incorrect conclusion. I lived in a dorm that had about 25% people from US/Canada (which I know aren't the same place but they aren't so far off culturally :-) and 75% from a very large number of other countries. For a year I served as dorm president and thus had a clearer view of conflicts. My experience was that people mostly got along, and when they didn't, it was almost always because some individuals were just fundamentally unkind and unreasonable. It didn't matter what country they came from; I knew nice people and jerks from many countries (although nice or nice-enough people were the overwhelming majority). Yes, there were some obvious differences in degree of directness, but those were not the problems. I have seen this same pattern in the online world -- it is 90%+ about individuals and how they approach others, not about national culture. I have also participated in NetBSD, and there too most people try to work together to achieve project goals despite differences. I can think of several problematic people over the years -- surely the same as any other project if you knew the details -- and for obvious reasons I won't give any details. But I will say that I know which countries they are from, that I also know many people from those same countries that are courteous and constructive, and that I don't think the problems are about national culture -- they are firmly individual. So I would say that the biggest issue is that some people are just not trying to be collaborative and are the kind of basically unkind people that I would avoid entirely in offline life. The second biggest issue is a practice of giving a very short blunt opinion with no willingness to try to communicate the subtleties -- and I mean this over the medium term, rather than condemning anyone for a single short email where they say what they think succinctly. As for strongly-held beliefs about licensing, I think that's perfectly ok. (IMHO we believe in open data, and a lot flows from that ethically, but I realize not everybody sees it that way.) I also don't see that as the core cause of uncivility. What we really need is for people to be at least civil if not courteous. That can't really be done with rules; it can only be done in my experience by shunning a few individuals, and trying to lead by example. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
