Connotation analysis for Fedora Project codenames

[Robyn Bergeron]

On 03/26/2012 12:17 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 3:05 PM, mario juliano grande balletta
> <mario.balletta at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> No one owns the planets, stars, galaxies, etc.  Using names from
>> nature could offer an endless supply of possibilities and also avoids
>> cultural issues, unless there are any Raelians in the community
>> (kidding :-).
>>
>> Imagine Fedora 18 ( Orion )  or Fedora 18 ( Wombat )  or Fedora 18 ( Everest )
>>
>> see the idea?
> It's quite recognized that Mars is the God of War.  Are you suggesting
> Fedora should use a release name that promotes war?  Pluto is the God of
> the Underworld.  Names of deities can be offensive to atheists.
>
> See the idea?  People can get offended by anything.
>
> josh
> __________
I'm going to attempt to take us from endless commentary into concrete 
proposal mode. Of course, I'll have to add my minor bit of commentary at 
some point, but.... :)

I mostly wish that this discussion had come up a long time ago - maybe, 
say, while voting for the specific name that has sparked this 
discussion, but at the bare minimum, prior to us actually kicking off 
the release name process.  I'm not a fan of disenfranchising folks who 
have submitted names, nor of doing the same to folks who have made the 
effort to inform folks that their names aren't meeting "is-a" 
requirements, doing basic name collision searches, etc.  Thus, I'm not a 
fan of yanking release names right now before voting.

I'm also of the opinion that a lot of people happen to have *fun* 
participating in the naming process, and I also think it's an excellent 
opportunity to show just one more way that Fedora differentiates itself 
-- anyone can propose a name.  Perhaps it's something we could 
capitalize on a bit more in terms of being a first step for someone 
discovering what they could actually accomplish as part of our 
community. But anyway......

I propose:

* Continue with naming process as previously detailed, but perhaps with 
a lengthier voting period and/or a greater effort to raise awareness of 
this particular election.
* Allow "No Name" to be an option for the F18 cycle.
* Have a separate vote (I have no idea if this can be done within the 
same voting "page" or if we'd need to have two separate elections at the 
same time) for:

** Keep release names
** Abolish release names after F18.

We could, theoretically, just add "No Name, F18 and beyond" in the list 
with all other release names, in one vote. My hesitation here is how 
well this jives with the voting methodology; it's entirely possible that 
we could wind up with 30% of votes going to "No name" and 70% of votes 
being split into fractions of less than 30% amongst multiple release 
names, which I don't think very accurately represents "I like the 
release naming process" vs. "I dislike it, please discontinue."  I could 
be wrong here, I'm not a range voting expert or a statistician.

With regards to connotation analysis, and I *will* inject my bit of 
commentary here:

I'm a believer in the Fedora Project's contributors' abilities to Do the 
Right Thing.  What I'm not a fan of is the initials FP transitioning 
from meaning "Fedora Project" to "Fun Police."  We have an enormous, 
diverse, worldwide community, with representation from all corners of 
beliefs, values, political ideologies, and otherwise, and everyone has a 
voice. I believe that 99.999% of the time, if or when an egregiously 
offensive *anything* comes up, people speak up.  We've seen this in the 
past with a small handful of issues, and the community has always taken 
the steps to assess and sometimes correct those issues, case-by-case, 
through discussion and reasonable judgement.  As Josh stated above, 
people can get offended by *anything*, and the last place I think we 
want to be as a project is a spot where we wind up subjecting every 
corner of the project to scrutiny levels that, in the end, can be 
incredibly subjective, and more importantly, block getting Things Done 
in any sort of timely manner.  I don't want to lose the Having Fun, 
Getting Things Done aspect of participation that we enjoy here.

In short: I trust Us, the community of contributors.  Frankly, not only 
do I think that a small handful of people dedicated to "connotation 
analysis" is less likely to catch those issues than, say, the whole of 
the community, I think that it could actually be detrimental in that 
folks may not speak up, assuming that the review group will catch 
issues, or that people become disenfranchised from speaking up because 
they are not part of "the group."

That said, I don't think there is a problem with, say, posting the list 
of names that the Board is sending to legal for review to the 
translations list *at the same time it goes to legal* as a best-effort 
sanity check to ensure that the word "Banana" isn't actually the name of 
a dictator who lead a genocide in Azeroth.  And in doing so, *trusting* 
that it doesn't become a free-for-all of ridiculous associations claimed 
to be offensive, such as "Bananas are yellow, and I hate yellow," or 
"Some people are allergic to bananas," "I broke my leg once slipping on 
a banana peel," "The increasing size of bananas is considered by some to 
be the effect of evolution, and evolution is not accepted by all 
beliefs," "Monkeys love bananas and they will be offended," or any other 
similar, ahem, monkey business.

And (tongue-in-cheek), God help us if the International Arithmophobia 
Association comes along. :)

-robyn