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

[e@REDACTED]

On 03/24/2015 03:05 PM, Joakim G. wrote:
> Perhaps we could quote common moral values from holy books and put them in the CoC.

Perhaps we should institute a permanent ban for any non-sarcastic 
reference to religions?

> For example, Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31.
>
> But wait, just a list of different and reused holy quotations could consitute the whole CoC.
>
> Reuse is common in software I have heard.Den 24 mar 2015 13:08 skrev Tuncer Ayaz <tuncer.ayaz@REDACTED>:
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 5:52 AM, Joe Armstrong wrote:
>>> I view discussion CoC to be a light diversion from discussing
>>> programming problems. A form of relaxation.
>>>
>>> Hearing my learned colleagues point of view on such matters is
>>> enlightening.
>>>
>>> If I had one rule it wouldn't be "be nice" it would be "try not to
>>> be boring" - but niceness and boringness are in the eye of the
>>> beholder ...
>>
>> I hope we can refine things like that in the CoC to be more precise
>> and less ambiguous. Writing the draft, we tried our best, but certain
>> words may carry a different meaning given changing audiences. Also, a
>> words's meanings will change over time, but that's what a timestamp is
>> for. For example, we thought we made it clear that cursing/swearing is
>> only acceptable if it's in a non-hateful manner directed at
>> non-personal things, say, a piece of code. The idea was that one
>> shouldn't go full emotional and curse at each other, while still
>> allowing you to vent your frustration regarding a piece of code (or
>> tech), if you *really have to*.
>>
>> However, text communication loses most of the nuances present in face
>> to face conversations. That's why staying focused and avoiding
>> formulations that are likely to be mis-interpreted given everyone's
>> different backgrounds is a good idea, in terms of having a productive
>> conversation. Writing "that function is ****" certainly conveys the
>> point for most people, but you're highly likely to offend the author
>> or somebody else, and in that process steer the conversation from
>> technical facts to something based in emotions. That said, it's
>> imortant to clearly state opinions, but there are many ways to do that
>> which do not involve cursing/swearing.
>>
>> Actually, a statement like "this is ****" has to be followed by an
>> explanation anyway, so formulating it as follows is more productive:
>>
>> "This looks wrong to me. Are you sure that....?"
>>
>> If explaining to someone that their code is completely wrong requires
>> callig it names, as they would otherwise not understand the severity,
>> there is a deeper communication problem, although it may sometimes be
>> the only way. However, if somebody doesn't understand "it's completely
>> wrong", I doubt they will have an easier time grasping "this is ****".
>>
>> Joe, returning to "be nice", I wasn't aware of the meaning this might
>> have to somebody having grown up in a British household. In order to
>> avoid that, maybe we should have used the long form "treat others as
>> you desire to be treated" (or the "do not ..." version of it). I'm sorry
>> about that, but it can be fixed.
>>
>> Just like writing code, it's almost always the best option to allocate
>> more time to thinking about some statement you're about to make than
>> trying out variations until one passes the crash test. In any
>> situation, trial and error is seldom the right first action to take.
>> _______________________________________________
>> erlang-questions mailing list
>> erlang-questions@REDACTED
>> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
> _______________________________________________
> erlang-questions mailing list
> erlang-questions@REDACTED
> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>