Planet Fedora guidelines?

Fri Jun 18 16:53:52 UTC 2010

On Fri, 2010-06-18 at 10:36 -0500, inode0 wrote:
> Seriously those days were not very long ago, I'm not talking about the
> dark ages.

Okay sorry for the confusion, I didn't know about the discussion you
referenced or how long ago it happened. I made a compare-contrast
between now and a long while back when our planet used to not be open
and (I thought) of a less controversial nature with a higher quality of
content.

> 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.

Yeah, I don't think we can make and enforce rules that people need to be
considerate of each other. E.g., it's not a law in the US that you must
be considerate of others and you won't get arrested for not being
considerate. Such a thing would be ridiculous.

But *culturally* I don't think considerateness should really be an
option. I would really like to see our project with a strong culture
where a lack of considerateness is strongly discouraged. How do we build
that kind of culture?

Here's one idea I have, feel free to dart it up / use it to build a
better idea:

- Have some basic guidelines about what's appropriate to post to planet
and what's not appropriate to post to planet written up and linked to
from the planet sidebar and/or footer. 

- Set up a private mailing list / ticket system / something where people
can submit complaints about posts on planet.

- If the post does seem to violate the guidelines, someone (I don't know
who) contacts the poster directly letting them know about the guidelines
and letting them know which guideline they violated and that their post
had upset some people, asking them to consider filtering it from the
planet.

Limiting contact with the poster to one person (hopefully one less
emotionally involved) rather than a deluge of complaints I think comes
off as more friendly, and I think discussing the post in a friendly
manner one-on-one is less confrontational. Overhead of a ticket system /
someone to answer the tickets is an issue though. 

If you don't talk to the person how do you build the culture? I can see
how you'd read this as policy=>enforcement, but I don't think the point
is to hunt people down and punish them. I think the point is to build a
better culture, and you can't do that by just plugging your ears and
covering your eyes to things that aren't compatible with the culture
you're trying to build.

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

What are those 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.

(I hope I'm not coming off too touchy on this subject b/c I'm female,
and it probably goes without saying but I wanted to make it clear I'm
totally not offended if you still disagree with me on the above point.)

I would argue though just because they are seen every day on television,
billboards, and in magazines doesn't mean they aren't a problem there as
well. There are plenty of teenage girls killing themselves via anorexia
or bulemia... I've heard of little girls ~8 years old telling people
they are "on a diet."

Also images like that aren't equally tolerated in every country / area.
I know of a handful of popular magazines in particular that re-jigger
their layouts and photo choices for publication in particular
countries. 

That aside, I feel really strongly that if Planet has content that isn't
work safe, something is wrong. There's a reason there are particular
things that aren't considered appropriate at work - because the focus at
work is supposed to be on work! Particular images are considered sexual
harassment, because they support a culture where women are second-class
citizens, and they incite negative emotional reactions in people making
them less able to get their job done. 

So I would argue for planet content guidelines encouraging posts of a
nature that would be appropriate to discuss with work colleagues - cute
puppies, family ski trip, new cool phone - kosher. Your night out at the
strip club or your allegiance to your company's competitor's products -
probably not so smart to bring up at work. 

> > 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.

I have a really hi-res screen and that logo is still obnoxiously big.
Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me as much if it was a reasonable
size...

> > 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.

Well, the link did look less-than-innocent to me.

> > 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.

Of course and I believe the same about you :)
> 
> 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.

I think maybe though, you're putting a particular negative spin on it
that isn't quite fair. E.g., if you look at the other side, if we don't
do anything and just 'let it all hang out' - it seems like individuals
don't always have the correct judgment in what to post, which leads to
posts that contribute to a negative atmosphere around the project or
even open source in general. Silence tends to be interpreted as an
endorsement.

For example, there is a very real misogynistic atmosphere around open
source projects in general:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Incidents 

I'm really sad that Planet Fedora is cited there (although it's far from
the worst incident on there, see
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/CouchDB_talk)

This kind of stuff goes on then we wonder why there aren't more women
involved in open source....

I think why we keep hemming and hawing about the issue here is because
freedom is such an important value to our community, and anything
appearing to be censorship evokes a visceral negative reaction. But
please, let's also consider those whose freedom is being impinged on
when we let people post whatever they want without any guidelines or
consequences. For example, we have freedom of speech in the US, but we
also have defamation laws....

~m