Maintaining civil discussion

[Alex Buckley]

There are strong differences on technical opinion, but I really don't 
feel anyone has lowered the tone of the list to a level where they must 
be removed. Discussion is brisk but orderly. I've said before that 
Oracle reads all the mails and it truly informs our thinking when clear 
differences of opinion are explored. For example, all the questions over 
checked exception transparency will eventually be raised in a 
JavaOne-like setting, so it's good to work out our answers now. (I'm 
sure you'll all get a mention in the JLS preface one day.) The worst 
thing would be to stop the exploration.

If someone uses derogatory terms or is personally aggressive, that's a 
different story, and Oracle will not tolerate that traffic on its lists.

Alex

On 6/16/2010 4:14 PM, Jesse Kuhnert wrote:
> 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.
>>
>>
>