[erlang-questions] Announcing Erlang.org Code of Conduct

[Gordon Guthrie]

> Most people I know in the Erlang community use the Better form most of
the time, and the Good form on occasion, which is why the CoC feels so
unnecessary to me.

I will repeat what I said previously - you don't write supervisions trees
for process that don't crash - and you don't write codes of conduct for
flame wars about bloody editors

I can't think of a single example from the mailing list which would draw
down the CoC - and that's a good thing.

I am introducing a CoC for Erlang events because I have become aware of
sexual assaults against female engineers at tech events (some of which I
have attended).

This discussion is all getting a bit self indulgent.

Pretending that the context of this CoC is NOT people reading horror
stories about tech in their newspapers is all very la-la-la-la

I do agree with Gareth when he said the introduction of it has not been
handled very well - a Request For Comment first might have been a good
idea...

Gordon

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 1:21 PM, Loïc Hoguin <essen@REDACTED> wrote:

> On 03/18/2015 01:53 PM, Jesper Louis Andersen wrote:
>
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:28 AM, Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED
>> <mailto:ulf@REDACTED>> wrote:
>>
>>     I think many of us have been taken aback by this apparent clash of
>>     principles:
>>     The Right to Express your Opinion vs. The Right Not to be Offended.
>>
>>
>> I had a longish mail that I did not post. It discusses exactly this
>> point, rumaging around John Stuart Mill's work from 1859, "On Liberty".
>> The crux is that freedom of expression[0] doesn't mean you are free to
>> say anything. In particular, you are not allowed to say something which
>> ultimately causes harm to someone else. But you *are* allowed to say
>> things which are deeply offensive to other people, if that is necessary
>> to argue your idea.
>>
>> Universities have a long tradition of following this concept of freedom.
>> In some circumstances, the truth of the matter, the data which has
>> statistical and scientific support, is deeply offensive to the current
>> status quo. Which begs the question of "how university-like do we want
>> the mailing lists to be?". Now, we are lucky in the sense we don't have
>> to directly discuss the harder issues of society very often of this
>> mailing list, but I'm not sure we can claim to be innocent as a group.
>> Some times, we mock other programming language communities (and they
>> mock us, so I guess it is simply fair payback). Some times, we post
>> highly provocative mails that make people rethink their stance on
>> programming (I hope). I'd like to see at least the latter still being a
>> possibility.
>>
>> In addition to Miles and Ulf, I also think Joe has a point by
>> questioning the concept of "being nice". It ties well into the right to
>> express ideas which may be offensive to some.
>>
>
> Be nice to people, not to ideas.
>
> To give an example:
>
> Good: Javascript sucks because A B C.
> Bad: You suck because you like Javascript.
> Better: Erlang has improvements D E F over Javascript which allow you to G
> H I.
>
> Not only will you not convince someone to stop using Javascript if you use
> the Bad form, but they will most likely ignore you or leave and never come
> back again.
>
> The Good form can still offend some people (inventors of Javascript for
> example), but most will just shrug it off and move on.
>
> The Better form is strictly positive and will most likely not offend
> anyone. And you get to teach that person good things about Erlang too.
>
> Another example:
>
> Good: Your idea is bad because A B C.
> Bad: Your idea is moronic.
> Better: Your idea could be improved by D E F. / Have you looked at G?
>
> Most people I know in the Erlang community use the Better form most of the
> time, and the Good form on occasion, which is why the CoC feels so
> unnecessary to me.
>
> Though if there had to be a CoC, I would really prefer one that includes
> what I mention here, as the CoC would encourage people to use the Better
> form rather than discourage people from using the Bad form.
>
> --
> Loïc Hoguin
> http://ninenines.eu
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> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
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