[Imc-london] [Imc-uk-features] Possible proposal for list guidelines [was: Returning feature list to doing feature!]

[mish]

Thank you Tony, for trying to move this forward constructively.

I can't make the meeting in London, but would like to make a little
suggestion about how we run the features list which might make it into a
proposal.

Basically I wonder if we should develop some guidelines for what is
suitable on our email lists (and IRC ...)  We could do worse than
starting from the Ubuntu Code of Conduct:

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct

We are a very different organisation, but I think a lot of it is
relevant.  Some quotes from the code

"Be respectful. The Ubuntu community and its members treat one another
with respect. Everyone can make a valuable contribution to Ubuntu. We
may not always agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour
and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then,
but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack.
It's important to remember that a community where people feel
uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. We expect members
of the Ubuntu community to be respectful when dealing with other
contributors as well as with people outside the Ubuntu project, and with
users of Ubuntu."

"Please avoid flamewars, trolling, personal attacks, and repetitive
arguments."

I agree with Tony that the admins involved in this debate have been
reasonable in their discussion, but that the style of some of the
outside contributions has been unhelpful.

If we had clear guidelines we could point to about what was and wasn't
acceptable, then the list moderators could reject abusive posts and
point to the page where our guidelines live, asking the sender to
rewrite their email or leave us alone.

People on the list could normally be free to post as at present, but if
they persistently send emails outside the guidelines they could have
their moderation flag set.  And if there was a contentious issue being
discussed and trolls kept joining with new email addresses then the list
could go to emergency moderation for a period.

I guess we might want to expand the number of moderators to handle the
extra work involved.

Anyway, this is not a formal proposal now (that would need specific
guideline text) but I'm throwing it out for discussion, on list or at
the london meeting.

mish

Tony wrote:
> I will ask politely that - we get no more e-mails on this issue until 
> we have come to our collective decision (apart from our own work 
> towards a solution - see below for proposal). If people do not - then 
> i will in 1 week next propose that we hold mails on this issue in 
> admin.

> Then i hope this list can get back to its job of admin and feature 
> writing and supportive discussion of difficult mails - as a 
> collective with the same aim of seeing a well run indymedia site 
> working. I must admit  the admin discussion on this issue has been ok 
> - it is the outside tactics and level of argument that is taking time 
> and prolonging the decision.
>