Proposal for ML conduct

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Thu, 14 May 2009 23:32:40 -0400
"Paul W. Frields" <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 05:20:08PM -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
> > On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 05:05 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> > > 
> > > Why focus only on the mailing lists? How about IRC, forums or
> > > other means of communication? For the record, IRC conversations
> > > in #fedora have frequently been problematic as well. I think, you
> > > can bite the bullet and formalize a code of conduct now as I
> > > suggested a while back. If you are willing to ban a person for
> > > behaving rudely in a mailing list, I am sure that it can be used
> > > as a enforcing mechanism for a code of conduct. IIRC, that was
> > > the issue against it before.
> > 
> > We're picking mailing lists to start with.  There is already an
> > effort in place to try and correct the IRC channel issues, we'd
> > rather not step into that and distrupt the existing effort unless
> > we absolutely have to. Forums are outside of the Fedora project
> > space and we have no authority there.
> 
> Kevin Fenzi has done a lot to get more people working as operators in
> IRC in #fedora, and it has helped significantly in the last year or
> so.  

Yeah, we are trying. It's worth pointing out that any help is
welcome... stop by our weekly meetings in #fedora-meeting (thursdays at
16:30 UTC) or join the channel and let us know you are willing to help
out. 

I personally think things have improved dramatically. I hope we can
continue to improve it over time. 

We do have guidelines we enforce for the channel, possibly similar to
what is being proposed here for the mailing lists. Continued profanity,
flooding the channel, giving harmful advice to others and such behavior
will cause warnings or removal from the channel. 

I do think that what has helped more than the above is simply having
people around and willing to help and answer questions and solve
problems. When you see that going on, it's much easier to join in
helping than join in hindering. If instead you see people being
negative and unhelpfull it's much easier to spiral into that kind of
behavior. 

I would love to see the mailing list evolve this way, ie: make the
list a good resource and others will start treating it that was as
well, and those hindering will look out of place and ignored.

> There are still some times where things get out of hand there,
> and the ops do their best.  At times, I've seen ops that lose their
> cool, and I continue to advise them that it's OK to walk away.
> Personally, and metaphorically speaking, I'd rather a desk go unmanned
> than have it manned by someone who doesn't want to be there.

Absolutely. 

kevin
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