Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time?

> On Jan 10, 2016, at 2:59 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On 01/10/2016 10:44 AM, Regina Obe wrote:
>
>>> JD
>>
>> This may come as a big shock to many of you, but as a contributor
>> I don't care if you are racist, sexist, transphobic or whatever as long as
>> you
>
> I think this is reasonable but my point is that we don't care if you are sexist (in terms of .Org). We care if you allow your sexism to bleed into the community.
>
> In short, as long as you are professional and respectful, your personal beliefs may remain your own.
>

My problem with all of this is when there is a demand for no tolerance. People cannot comfortably live and work without some level of their essence (good or bad) bleeding into their work.

I think Regina’s comment above is the most important comment I have read. I want to work with Regina, right attitude, right focus. And if I did step over the line and Regina felt the need to address the issue I would very very much respect it. This is the attitude that a code of conduct should project, not all of the politically correct crap that is normally written.

It is important to protect the community from people who are on a mission to rid the world (or the community) of all ass-holes, racists, sexists, etc. That is never going to happen and their personal hate trip and lack of tolerance should not be in the community either. Certainly there is a line that should not be crossed from both extremes, but we need to be tolerant while people are learning and adapting so the gap between the two lines needs to be as wide as possible. The code of conduct IMO must address both extremes.

Honestly, I would rather work with someone that offended me every day than someone that was so easily offended that I had to watch every word in our communications. In managing projects, my experience is that more often that not, the people that focused on the style of the communications (politically correct, pleasing words, etc.) and were easily offended by style of communications had contributions that were much less valuable than people that were neutral or rough around the edges. The community will make more progress if it can find a way to accept these ‘rough around the edges’ people, not because they are rough, but because roughness does not degrade value except at the extreme. Often someone that is ‘rough around the edges’ has to be better at their work to make up for it. These are good people to keep around if possible.

Neil