Re: Code of Conduct: Is it time?

On 12 January 2016 at 09:25, Chris Travers <chris(dot)travers(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> One of the dangers of a CoC is that there are many potential issues which
> may or may not become real problems. I think if we try to be clear on all
> of them, then we risk creating codes instead of a general expectation of
> what we do expect.

Another consideration.

Last night I was thinking this issue over and then remembered that
normally very reasonable persons (which I count myself among) can
react quite poisonous when they are tired or stressed and people start
pushing their buttons. Those people probably would not be violating
any CoC rules, but can cause someone else to do so.

Moreover, some people are exceptionally good at pushing all the wrong
buttons, whether doing that willingly (out of malice) or not.
I'm a bit concerned that a CoC could give the malicious among those
the ammunition they need to push buttons of their victims. Now of
course, they could do that just as well without a CoC and I don't
recall any instances of this problem on this list.

To add to that, non-native speakers sometimes make mistakes that set
it off. I remember an embarrassing case where I thought the word
"gross" came from the German "Grosshaft", which means quite the
opposite (great, fabulous), and responded to a new idea on a list with
a heartily meant "Gross!". And then you suddenly get angry mails from
all over the place without understanding how that happened. Oops.

Where I stand? I do not know whether a CoC for PG is a good idea or
not, I can't decide. Anyway, in my case it's nothing more than an
opinion anyway - my contributions are pretty much limited to offering
help on this ML.

--
If you can't see the forest for the trees,
Cut the trees and you'll see there is no forest.