Hi! On 2014-11-13, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > For concreteness: > > [ ] Yes, this is a great idea. About time! > > [ ] This looks good, but it would be better if... (insert suggestions). > > [ ] No, I greatly value the freedom to spout offensive profanity, and > will fork Sage in frustration if there is such a code. (We really do > want to know if there are any developers who would quit working on > Sage if we have this Code of Conduct; by definition such a person > should have no hesitation publicly saying so in response to this > email. I'm imagining what someone like Linus Torvalds might say if > this were proposed on the Linux kernel mailing list. I just want > people to think -- having a code of conduct isn't _obviously_ the > right thing to do.)
I certainly see the possibility that a contributor quits if s/he is mistreated by other contributors. I actually have first-hand experience: A couple of years ago, I was involved in the German translation of some parts of the Sage documentation. Another contributor personally insulted me here on the list, and even by comments that he tried to put into the Sage code. As a result, the German translation became a very low priority for me, and I am not even sure if it is completed now. However: If there was even the vague possibility of instrumenting a code of conduct to kick valuable contributors out, then by Murphy's law it would eventually happen. But I think it must not happen, which is why I am strongly against a code of conduct that has the status of enforceable law within our community. I don't think that publishing a code of conduct is the right thing to do. What really matters (also in the case of bullying at school) is: If people see that contributor A mistreats contributor B, then they should first of all be solidaric with B and openly express that they do not agree with how A acts--- *without* starting to mistreat A in turn. This, I think, is by far more important and helpful for B and for the community as a whole than to kick A out. Instead of publishing a code of conduct, I think it would be more helpful to explain by (constructed) examples how and why people get offended by certain ways of expressing concerns, and suggest better ways of expressing the concern. Best regards, Simon -- 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.
