Planet Fedora guidelines?

[inode0]

2010/6/18 Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org>:
> On Fri, 2010-06-18 at 09:37 -0500, inode0 wrote:
>> Whatever happened to the days when the planet was a place for
>> contributors to express themselves, both personally and
>> professionally, "warts and all?"
>
> At least a couple of things have happened since those days:

Seriously those days were not very long ago, I'm not talking about the
dark ages.

> - our community has gotten bigger, unwritten social rules aren't as
> easily known anymore
>
> - the privilege of being a member of the planet has been extended to
> anyone who signs up for an FAS account. From my POV, it used to be on
> many if not most planets that you had to work within the project for a
> while and become a well-known contributor before you were extended an
> invitation to be added, which was considered a sort of honor. (Obviously
> there are problems with that older model, like who gets to decide and
> when)

This was not the case when I previously raised the issue of
discouraging political rants. The planet was open to all contributors
then as it is now.

> I enjoy reading about Fedora contributors' lives outside of Fedora, and
> I don't think anyone would advocate that posts to our planet must be
> Fedora-only.
>
> That shouldn't give any one person carte blanche to post whatever they
> want, however. There are many Planet contributors who filter out
> particular posts from reaching the planet because they actually care to
> consider their audience. That kind of consideration for other people is
> a good thing.

Agreed, being considerate of others it nice. Some will do that and
some won't. It isn't a requirement, feel free to encourage it.

>> Given that the Fedora Planet is a fine place to express political
>> views about what is going on in one country or another I can't believe
>> we are now talking about policing posts that appear to actually be
>> about free software.
>
> Seth mentioned the possibility of policing the post. I think the post is
> a problem but I don't know if policing is the best way to deal with it.
>>
>> When I asked on this list about discouraging political rants on the
>> planet because it makes us all look like idiots to new readers I was
>> given the "warts and all" explanation of why that is fine. I accepted
>> that then and unless it was complete BS this doesn't bother me in the
>> least.
>
> I don't think I read that discussion - I don't remember it. It's kind of
> hard to draw a strong line. It's easy to say "Fedora posts only" but I
> don't think anyone wants that. I also think there are several valid
> cases for Ubuntu-related posts on the planet, and such posts have
> happened before without issue.

The line was pretty clearly drawn in my mind. Planet contributors can
pretty much talk about anything they please (given a few constraints).

> But how about sexualized photos of scantily-clad women? I'm not cool
> with that. Maybe some people are, but I don't want to have to stop
> reading planet Fedora because I'm afraid of what might come up. If I'm
> browsing planet Fedora during the workday and a big picture of Lucy Liu
> in a wet white bikini is on my screen, according to my office's sexual
> harassment policies, I'd be in trouble! To folks who don't work for Red
> Hat, such an incident might be reason for their work in Fedora to no
> longer be sanctioned by their employer.

If said scantily-clad women are seen every day on television, on
billboards, and in magazines I think we are overreacting. No one has
to read the planet while at work if it is a problem to do so. I don't
agree with that prohibition either to be honest given the previous
discussion I had on this list about the planet.

> To me it seems there are clearly classes of posts that aren't
> acceptable.

Sure. But an Ubuntu logo and while I can't read this particular post
it seems to be about the Ubuntu manual project and if that is what it
is about I find it hard to condemn it without knowing a lot more than
I currently know. Right now it seems quite harmless to me.

>> > Maybe we don't need policies and enforcement (I certainly think they are
>> > an annoying overhead on top of anything they are applied to), but I
>> > certainly do not want to have to tolerate this kind of crap and enable
>> > people to be less than excellent *just* for the sake of not having
>> > policies and enforcement.
>> >
>> > The person is apparently a new FAS account holder and a recent Planet
>> > Fedora addition, and just may not understand. And how would he if we
>> > don't have any guidelines written anywhere?
>>
>> He will learn the ropes by having other contributors "be excellent" to
>> him by making a stink about commenting on the Ubuntu manual project?
>
> First of all, did you take a look at the link he provided? To me, it
> appears to be a commercial page looking to grab a lot of detailed
> personal information about people before offering anything of use.

No, I don't click on random links from blogs written in languages I can't read.

> Secondly, are you criticizing me for bringing this up at all? How have I
> been not excellent in bringing up the issue here? Should I have kept my
> mouth shut? Is what I've written in protest really offensive or hurtful
> to the poster in question?

I hope you know by now that I *know* you are one of the most excellent
people I know.

I do, however, think that all the high level emphasis and talk about
hall monitoring, toxic and poisonous people, etc. is not only not
helping to solve any problem but is creating a harmful atmosphere of
control and intolerance that is not what the Fedora Project needs.

John