Maintaining civil discussion

[Jesse Kuhnert]

If it helps, I've never witnessed any open source development mailing
list discussion where tones like this (which the developers committing
changes didn't themselves agree with) were tolerated.

Incidents happen all the time, but I guess they generally don't feel
as obligated to be nice to people that aren't being nice to them. A
little mailing list moderation might be additionally worthwhile if
order can't be maintained voluntarily..

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 6:58 PM, Pavel Minaev <int19h at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ladies and gentlemen, if I may have a minute of your time for a somewhat
> off-topic post that I nonetheless feel to be sorely needed...
>
> I've been subscribed to this mailing list pretty much since it was created,
> because I am interested in the evolution of the design of this feature. What
> makes me extremely uncomfortable, however, is the amount of veiled personal
> attacks in the discussions going on here. I don't want to point fingers at
> anyone in particular, but overall, I feel that the resulting atmosphere is
> not particularly conductive to rational discussion on the topic - and, while
> this has been the case very early on already, it has really blown up
> recently. IMO, the noise-to-substance ratio now is at the point where the
> usefulness of the list is rapidly diminishing; furthermore, I suspect that
> some people may be intentionally refraining from posting anything so as to
> not get insults in response (I do, for one).
>
> Can we please have some respect towards fellow posters, and maintain a
> polite, civil and professional discussion on the topic of the list, without
> snarky sidelines and thinly veiled claims that "I'm smarter than you"
> (regardless of your credentials, professional level, experience etc)? And
> even when you feel that the other person does not return that courtesy, give
> them the benefit of the doubt - it may be a misunderstanding on your behalf,
> or even an accidental bad choice of words on theirs - especially as some
> participants are not native English speakers.
>
> Thank you, and I hope no-one gets offended any further over my post.
>
>