ideas regarding a conflict management strategy
First of all, I want to assure you that I care for GNU/Debian as a Linux distribution, and I care for Debian as a community. To lead a scientifical proof for that, I would have to tell you at least a part of my story of life. Which I can do at some point in time, but that would be too distracting from my main point at the moment. Please try to trust in my words, that I do indeed care for you guys out there and for the work you all do. In case you get the feeling anyways, that I am aiming to cause trouble, then please choose a private form to express that. Send me an E-Mail. But please dont use my piece of work here to run defacements or to do flaming. A long time ago there was a public discussion that some sort of conflict management system is required, that would help to fix problems that arise from social conflicts. The name for that idea got a lot of attention. I will keep refering to "SOC-CTTE" from now on, to make it easier for me, because you all know what I mean. The achievements that have been visible to me were three main points. The first point is the most important one. Which was a general agreement that some form of SOC-CTTE is necessary, to create more social stability in smaller groups and the Debian project as a whole. But the other two points were only about how the SOC-CTTE should be elected and what powers it should have. Totally missing for me is, how the conflict management could actually be done. Which seems to be the most important point. The most trivial but one of the hardest things to achieve is, to gain conciousness about the fact, that we are all people. And people make mistakes. The less aware you are about your non-prefect existence, the more serious mistakes you usually make. And maybe you dont notice yourself when many of these mistakes happen, but your social environment does. And the social environment we all have in common is the Debian community, either as developers, as business partners or as users and fans. It helps a lot to have people around you who you trust, who keep reminding you on the above point, when you are stuck in an emotional situation, that prevents you from finding a constructive solution to a problem. The next step can be awareness, that we all are part of group mechanisms, due to the different roles that we have to play every day. Our role as daughter or son, our role as mother or father, our role as wife or husband, our role as friend, our role as employee or employer, our role as citizen, our role as developer, etc. Because each role can cause its own conflict of interests. Each role can lead to moments of feeling sad, happy, stressed, excited, angry, etc. Another part is understanding of personality. Personality is founded in parts of genetics, it is founded by the parents and it is founded by the social environment. Personality is who we think we are, how we are seen by others and how our behaviour and our way of thinking is influenced. I think I can speak for all of us when I make up the claim, that we all believe in humanity and human rights, no matter if we are developers, business partners or users and fans. And we all agree that Free and Open Source Software is the right way to go. Quite easy so far. But how about the choice if we use console only or a graphical user interface? Or the choice of the editor? How about the choice of the window manager or the desktop environment? And How about the choice of a chat client? You might see easily how this can lead quite fast to disagreements. And these choices are not of the boolean type, there is no right and wrong, because it is founded in personality, in likes and dislikes. Now how can highly intelligent and skilled people find a ballance, between tolerance and accepting other people's likes and standing up for a personal preference? By non-violent communication, pretty much. And violence starts where another party has a disadvantage or is feeling bad. When you tell a person who is behaving in such a way, that you cant understand the motivation of the person, that the person should see a psychiatrist, or when you call a person with a different opinion an idiot or troll, then you raise the escalation level a lot. And negative action tends to cause a negative reaction. Which can lead to a circle of further escalation. Now what SOC-CTTE members will have to do is, to constantly walk both conflict parties through these 4 steps of conciousness, awareness and understanding. And lead all involved people back to the path of non-violent communication. What are your comments, questions or ideas, please? -- GMX FreeMail: 1 GB Postfach, 5 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 Free SMS. Alle Infos und kostenlose Anmeldung: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freemail -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: ideas regarding a conflict management strategy
Steve Langasek, MJ Ray, there is much easier ways to tell me, that you are not interested in this topic. I am sure you both have your reasons to choose this way of communicating that to me. The problem I have with this feedback is, that you might scare those people away from participating, who actually understand what I was writing in my E-Mail, because they dont want to become your target. I can understand that not all people are ready for self reflection and awareness. But mature and smart people can manage to choose a passive form of refusing participation. Lets try to use the few chances for self improvement and personality growth. -- Pt! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger?did=10 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re^2: ideas regarding a conflict management strategy
The feedback that I received so far on my E-Mail shows certain aspects of personality, that are part of the deductive reasoning, why the social climate within the Debian community can be tricky. First of all, the content of my E-Mail - my personal opinion - is not addressed at all. Instead, the person behind the E-Mail is addressed in such a way, that it causes bad reputation without any obvious reason. And the interesting point is not that a few people think there is a relation between me and people who might be useful to take over the role of a black sheep. I come in peace. My motivation is to work for a more social environment, where I can be who I am, the way I am, to satisfy certain desires. One main desire is to be able to use my computers. On these computers I use GNU/Debian as operating system, because it suits me best. I want to be a part of the community to be able to expand my knowledge, and to let other people benefit from the knowledge I gained. Sometimes I am distracted from these three core desires, because I am not any better than those people, who I address with my appeal. Mea culpa. Am I in the position to teach Debian Developers better social ethics? My social environment does not allow me to be a teacher, a preacher or a world healer. But I still try to make my social environment a little bit better, because that might be my way of contributing to something, that is of value to me, like other people create lines of code to help that things grow. So back to the main point, please. As feedback to my E-Mail I received statements like: "You might possibly be a person who I had a private battle with at some point in time" "I had to delete lots of dull stuff only to tell you that you sound like a troll" "I am happy to say go away" And this can feel quite violent. Which leads straight back to the content of my first E-Mail. - gaining conciousness - becoming aware - understanding personality - practise of non-violent communication -- GMX FreeMail: 1 GB Postfach, 5 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 Free SMS. Alle Infos und kostenlose Anmeldung: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freemail -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re^3: ideas regarding a conflict management strategy
Russ Allbery, thanks a lot for your opinion. I will use your E-Mail not to continue my topic on your back now, but you make a few interesting points that help me to go one step further with my explanations. You are correct that my first E-Mail was very much simplified and non-scientifical. I can only describe observations and personal opinion, because I am not a scientist. And I am aware of the fact that a certain type of personality has more problems to accept opinions of other people than others, especially if the opinion does not seem scientifically proven. That has also to do with the way some people think of the right approach to understand all the questions in life. If you take the point of view of many people who learn from sports magazines or TV shows, if you take the point of view from an expert for english literature, if you take the point of view from a physics student or the point of view from a philosopher. Its again no boolean type of choice between right and wrong. Fans of Douglas Adams know the humor behind the approach to find the universal answer. In my humble opinion, a complete personality is able to adapt answers from all kinds of different scientific disciplines, not only from that field where you had good marks in school or in the subjects where you graduaded. I heard Debian Developers say about Ian Murdock that he talks out of his skull and that he has to shut up. And their justification was that he only studied economy and trade instead of physics. Which makes it a fundamental problem for the Debian project, because that spirit is poisoned. There surely was a time where the ability to write good code and a general understanding of computer science was good enough to keep a large group of people together to work on certain tasks. But a mature and huge project like Debian requires social skills, too. Also in that context a similar point of criticism: no actionable content provided yet I had reasons why I dont fill the pipe with E-Mails that contain 20 pages long efforts if the expectation is pretty hostile feedback. Careful people dont build an entire house so others can just go and destroy it to have fun. I try to take this in small steps. And if the voiced feedback stays hostile I wont give my life to sell you my ideas about social ethics for the price of a punch in the face. And dont get me wrong here. I dont smell big business. I will repeat myself. I see this as my way of contributing to the community. And for the last point that I chose a poor forum for that discussion I cant say much. The mailing list description says its for discussions about the Debian project. When a conflict management system is off-topic there, please instruct me. And scientifical or not - the ability to feel empathy can be learned. -- Pt! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger?did=10 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re^4: ideas regarding a conflict management strategy
> > > I had reasons why I dont fill the pipe with E-Mails that contain 20 > > > pages long efforts if the expectation is pretty hostile feedback. > > As you can see, posting generalities didn't really fare much better. > Right - 20 pages of anything, from someone who doesn't appear to be > contributing to the community which he insists should change to his > standards, is not going to be particularly well-received. Steve Langasek, exactly that is a general misunderstanding of you and a few other Debian Developers. "I have three world-class operating system releases to my credit, and you dont" is cause for respect and fame, but it does not justify the attitude, that anybody else has no right to voice his opinion, if he cant show up with similar credit. Conciousness, awareness, understanding and practise of non-violent communication. The Debian Bug Tracking System is open, the developer and project lists are open, the entire structure is open. And this has a reason. It is exactly what makes Debian special and attractive compared to other distributions. But open structures also have their downsides compared to communities that are lead by companies. We see in real life every day how democratic processes are a real challenge to all involved people. Most of us are conscious about the fact that democracy is not a perfect system. But we are aware that it is the best mechanism available to keep huge groups of people together in a peaceful way. A few smart people with a good understanding of social ethics made up the Debian Social Contract. And one of the main points of this Debian Social Contract is "we will not hide problems" and "our priorities are our users". Thank you for keeping that in mind through all your actions. Some people obviously value tribalism much higher than the Debian Social Contract, when they went to attack "Patrick Frank" some months ago only because he was voicing a concern, that the current Debian Project Leader used defacements of other Debian Developers during his electoral compaign. And I am not making up this entire case again, just to cause another destructive flame war. Feel reminded on the electoral compaign lead in the US mass media between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: mud fighting instead of dealing with facts. And the reference to "Patrick Frank" was made up by you, Steve Langasek. When I have a look at this public conflict from that time around "Patrick Frank", then I come to the conclusion that "we will not hide problems" is not taken very serious. And observations of behaviour from Debian Developers on chat rooms on Internet Relay Chat from the last years show, that many people take "our priorities are our users" not very serious. A few smart people with a good understanding of social ethics made up the Debian Free Software Guidelines. And one of the main points of these Debian Free Software Guidelines is "No Discrimination". What is the point of making software that does not discriminate other people, but the behaviour of several Debian Developers does? Did you sign the Debian Social Contract and agree to the Debian Free Software Guidelines to get as much reputation as possible for being one of the best hackers, or do you enjoy giving people great tools so they can have the most benefit from using their computer? The Debian community is not about your ego and not about mine. Its about the desires of many people. To cover as many desires as possible is the main philosophy of Debian ever since. And exactly that was my point in my first E-Mails, when some people chose to try to give my name a bad reputation instead of dealing with the facts. Most of the Debian Developers need to get conscious about their own personality, the personality of other Debian Developers and the personality of all the people they have to deal with in general. I tried to explain why I am convinced about that requirement. GNU/Debian Linux is used and supported by companies like Hewlett Packard, Intel and many others. Shouldnt that create good self confidence for all the people who help to make GNU/Debian Linux what it is? Why do some people use that self confidence against small people like me, instead of trying to catch the message that I try to voice? The problems that I see and try to express are problems that are seen by other people, too. Some people deal with it in a different way. A really smart way of dealing with some of these problems of the Debian community was, when Mark Shuttleworth gave birth to the Ubuntu project. Much smarter people than me will write a book about his life sooner or later. So again, I dont aim to give a scienctific work here. But one of the reasons why Ubuntu catches much of the fame that would usually be due to the work of many Debian Developers is, that Mark Shuttlerworth was giving the Ubuntu community a clear and clean structure which is kept together by the company Cannonical. While many Debian Develo
Re^5: ideas regarding a conflict management strategy
Steve Langasek, MJ Ray, the way you give feedback makes it really hard to practise non-violent communication. And the biggest problem seems to be, that you are not even aware of the violent attitude you provide. I dont have the proper education nor am I getting paid to help you with your personality improvement. But it seems quite natural to me that some people react in a negative way to your hostile way of being. -- Pt! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
please learn to understand yourself and other people
The beginning of this posting is about the final situation at the end of a series of postings about "ideas regarding a conflict management strategy". Some people saw a possible interpretation of ad hominem attacks. And that is the best possible example of how a peaceful person turns slowly into a hostile person, if you use enough violent communication. The typical case now is that people only pay attention to the end result instead of looking at the beginning how it all started. A random person expresses an idea. The first step now is not to check what the person says, the first step is who says it. Why? Because people validate "do I like the person?" and depending on the answer they behave either in a peaceful or in a hostile way. Now what happens if somebody goes to slap a random person in the face only because this person has a dark skin? You would immediately see the problem right there. Only very few people still justify racism, because the majority of people is well aware that racism is wrong. By the time it became really trendy to be against discrimination, but does the majority of people understand why? The high goal is to become an advocate of humanity, not to be trendy. An advocate of humanity is able to understand and tolerate the opinion and desires of other people and will not give others a disadvantage only because of personal preferences. Which means for people in the Debian community that you do not attack people, because they prefer a different desktop environment, editor, chat client or because they express themselves in such a way that it makes you feel unhappy, because its your own duty do deal with it. Which means for Debian Developers that you dont play the cabal game. Which means that you practise non-violent communication everywhere. If you need assistance with the practise of non-violent communication then have the courage to open up and reach out for support. -- Pt! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
