I do not think rights of free speech matter in this context. What matters is the type of community you want to foster and develop. I think open source communities should strive for openness and transparency. I will not use or ever recommend SugarCRM because of the posts over the vTiger fork of mine and others that were "moderated". PBX-in-a-Flash "moderated" my questions concerning the use of GPL code and their shareware install scripts. In neither case was I trying to damage the communities, but someone thought that my questions would damage their community "market share".
I think the two example communities are damaged far more by the "moderation" than by the content of my post. If principles like freedom and openness are good, then I say they are always good - even when used for things we do not like. In the spirit of transparency, I see not problem with a wiki posting of community "members" that have/had practiced "bad form", but I am still slow to recommend the evaluation of individual members. -Tom On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 15:03, Stephen John Smoogen <smo...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Luke Kanies <l...@madstop.com> wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > The underlying assumption of membership in any community is that your > > participation is at worst neutral, and if possible positive. > > Communities, online or off, generally do what they can to protect > > themselves from detrimental influences, which is where policies, > > politeness, moderators, and all that come into play. > > > > Puppet's community has been both fortunate and awesome, in that it > > requires almost no moderation or control; we've only had to kick a > > couple of people out of our IRC channel and they were clearly just > > insane or spammers, and we've never had to remove anyone from our > > mailing list other than spammers. > > > > We've recently had some problems where one or two people are > > maintaining their presence in the Puppet community solely as a way to > > recruit people out of Puppet and into their community, at the expense > > of ours, and I think we need a straightforward community policy on this. > > > > Overlapping communities are awesome, and I'm all for your encouraging > > Puppet community members to join other communities *in addition to > > ours*, but it seems a bit insane for us to support people coming into > > our community just to evangelize competing products and communities. > > > > My take is that if your participation in our community is *solely* for > > purposes of shrinking it by drawing people into your community at the > > expense of ours, then you should be kicked from our community. > > > > What do others think? Should it be acceptable to privately contact > > members of our community, encouraging them to leave? > > > > The free speech side of things could say that it is a basic right > because its up to the person being contacted to choose to leave or > not. Throwing people out without solid evidence is too prone to > lawsuits, bad publicity for the people throwing, and can easily be > made into a "They just don't want competitors on their lists" kind of > game.. Also who decides, what evidence is it based off? Hearsay, > emails that could have been forged [been done before].. it can devolve > quickly into High School cliques of who's in and not. And that worst > of all drives away potential customers who are looking for > professionalism before they would want to use or be part of the > community. > > Calling people on their behavior seems to be much more effective in > that it inoculates the community that they will be aware of it. In the > end it is still up to the individuals to leave/stay in a community. > > > > -- > Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux > How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed > in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice" > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Puppet Users" group. To post to this group, send email to puppet-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to puppet-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/puppet-users?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
