Craig Russell wrote: > To get very specific, I understand that posting insults on Apache > mailing lists is forbidden.
Correct.
> But are you also saying that we expect him to:
> no longer post insults regarding any topic on bileblog, or
No, I am not saying that. Personally, I am not "narcissistic enough" to
bother to blog, but you certainly don't want to get me started on the
current Administration (or "Regime", as I might refer to it in a more
charitable moment), for example.
> no longer post insults regarding any Apache project on bileblog, or
Nope, not saying that, either. For example, I have commented about
certain clueless behavior regarding NIO and Tomcat, and was happy to hear
at ApacheCon EU that the Tomcat PMC has finally gotten a clue for Tomcat
6. Ok, that's a bit snippy, but not personal, and technically oriented.
And I have been highly critical of Maven's irresponsibly naive use of
automatically downloaded artifacts. But I have also justified the
comments, and made concrete suggestions for resolving the concerns.
Again, without calling into question the integrity or intelligence of
people working on the project.
> no longer post insults regarding any Apache committer on bileblog
But, yes, *that* I am saying.
Others may see it differently, but my view is that you cannot draw
boundaries around public content. The Internet is one big
conversation/social interaction, and what one says in public is connected
to everywhere.
> what limitations on his freedom of speech are we requiring?
He can say whatever he wants, with the expectation that the consequences
of repeated and excessively antagonistic/intimidating/abusive speech are
not likely to be different from those experienced within any social group.
Please tell me in which social situation(s) such behavior would be deemed
acceptable and tolerated by the group subjected to it. Generally
speaking, the social group finds ways to apply corrective measures as
necessary until the desired behavioral modification occurs.
No one expects or wants Stepford Committers. We're talking about normal
social skills that are generally learned by one's early teen years,
although I do wonder if today's latchkey kids are growing up anonymously
on the Internet without benefit of learning some of those lessons. But
presumably he has these skills in real life, and simply exhibits the
interesting phenomena where some people perceive the Internet as a realm
within which one can abandon normal social skills. One of the things that
ApacheCon helps to do by introducing people to each other is remind people
that they are conversing with fellow human beings, and not faceless
exemplars of the Turing Test.
The consequences of a group such as the ASF tolerating such behavior stem
from, amongst other things, the tendency of many other contributors to
just abandon the field rather than put up with such individuals. Much of
the damage is hard to quantify, because unlike in a physical encounter, on
the Internet we cannot see the people who walk up to our circle and
observe, only to turn around in disgust and leave rather than join.
--- Noel
smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
