Hope nobody gets offended by this email and I have no option but bring it up because I have received few emails on the topic.
This is a multinational, multicultural community and this is a very good thing. We want to keep it this way. Each of us has different believes. Some people have expressed their believes (political, religious, metaphysical) but occasionally when this conflicts with believes of another person, the other person may feel offended. It has happened. I do not think anybody has been doing anything wrong, because 1) we have no policy about this; 2) because nobody ever tried to convince anybody else on matters not related to the mailing list topic. In those cases when religious or political statement was made, it was done in the form of a signature. Do we need a policy about this? Do we want see other people political/religious/philosophical statements in there emails? The problem with this issue is that everybody has a different sensibility threshold. I too have mine. For example I would be very uncomfortable if anybody were to post statements objecting what I consider basic scientific truths. Perhaps having a policy that says we should make no political/ religious/philosophical statements is the simplest policy to implement. Or perhaps just being aware of this problem is sufficient and people will act differently. Of course this problem cannot be solved completely as new users would not always be aware of policy. And there always be exceptions (what if a user if building a software that is connected to his/her belief). I this point I am not suggesting a policy on this, I am just telling everybody there is an issue. Some people have been raising it privately. You may want to think twice about what you put in your emails. You may get more people to help you if you are neutral. There is one policy I will be enforcing though (which is related but does not solve thee issue above): ------ If I see any statement that will appear discriminatory towards any group of people, I will demand an apology and, depending on the severity or lack of apology, I will ban the user who posted the statement. (for the record. to my knowledge, this has never happend). ------ Massimo
