Following up with my last friendly reminder

I still can’t get around the fact my post about being respectful on Planet Ubuntu got so much attention and was hi-jacked for so many different purposes.

The next Community Council is on Aug. 5, however I doubt I’ll make it to present my specific complaint as I’ll be at Linux World Expo at that same exact time, in an event I can’t move or cancel. Someone suggested having a poll across members to settle the matter. I hope we don’t have to wait another month, unless another member wants to present the issue that day – let me know. Bottom line is I’d like to have a better Planet, hoping we can agree on what that is. And if we can’t, well, so be it.

Regarding all the technical explanations I saw for not categorizing posts, I’ve posted links and instructions for WordPress, Drupal and Blogger at the Planet Ubuntu page on the wiki. Something good has to come out of this 🙂

I got a few emails from friends that found it disturbing I don’t address each and every remark that followed. I don’t feel much of what’s been said has been helpful, in fact most of the comments have made the point for me by posting public personal, hateful attacks or by focusing on out of topic posts (which in fact I don’t mind much). What else can I add to that kind of response ?

I can’t convince everyone this is not my personal quest for morality and absolute rules accross all-things-Ubuntu. If you’ve seen unacceptable behavior (however you define it) from members and never brought it to our community lead’s attention or to the Community Council, I can’t do much about that either.

As a member I think it’s my duty to bring up issues in a helpful, courteous manner and be part of the solution but if I can’t even do that anymore, then I guess there is in fact « nothing to see, so move along ».

 

8 réflexions sur « Following up with my last friendly reminder »

  1. All you really did was beating a dead horse. Things said are only insulting if YOU GET INSULTED BY THEM. It’s your immaturity. The proper way of handling those situations is moving on, without especially writing moot blog posts.

  2. >still can’t get around the fact my post about being respectful on Planet Ubuntu got so much attention and was hi-jacked for so many different purposes.

    You make it sound like that was a good thing.

    Any troll can get the people ranting.

    It comes to down how badly you want the attention…

    I for one, as somebody that just follows the planet, prefer the subject to die. Formalizing cultures beyond the social (‘hey, don’t do that’) is fascism .. (or the nation-state, whatever you want to call it)..

    It’s also pretty arrogant. It’s meant to aggregate blogs of ubuntu-related people.

    Whatever the hell you want it to be, make your own newspeak filter. We, (the people just reading it), like it fine the way it is. If somebody steps out of line, tell them.

    But don’t turn this into some sort of existential masturbation. Im-the-planet-content-guru-identity is pathetic. Don’t be that guy. If you need purpose and direction in your life, please focus on something that actually needs fixing.

    The planet is fine like it is. Don’t abstract culture. If you don’t like what person X says, or how they formulate it, tell them directly and consistently. Debate it.

    But don’t drag the whole world in your little over-abstraction. Nobody like that guy. Focus on people, and your own interactions, rather than wanting to structure ours.

    A better environment, starts with YOU not bashing the PLANET your part of. (if you don’t like it, leave the damn planet .. don’t shoehorn into your own cultural limitations..)

  3. Meneer, Mekkar, neither of you are civil, and that makes your arguments ineffective. You can disagree with Fabian without bashing him. See, I’m trying to socially influence you (« don’t do that ») and see how effective it will be.

  4. Your original thread on this topic was not hijacked. A lot of people came out and told you they are tired of being told what to do because our culture differs from someone else’s. That’s not hijacking.

    I like how you suggest we should take a vote. Most of us have no say in your votes and are continually dismissed anyhow. That’s why we’ve left and Stephen is the only one left. Nevertheless, we are not talking about attacks here or threats or anything of the sort. We are talking about three letters. In addition we are talking about who is liked and who is not liked.

    A community that votes on these topics, is not a diverse community. Should we then vote on whether women are allowed in the community? What about Americans, it seems a lot of the Ubuntu « community » hate us Americans because of what George Bush has done. The fact that half of us voted against him doesn’t matter to them. Let’s also vote whether single parents should be allowed in or those that are divorced.

    As I said originally, these kinds of debates belong in a church, not a technical community. This Ubuntu thing really is moving more and more towards cult like features.

  5. As a reader of the planet, I found your post inappropriate. Jono is also posing often making devil signs with his hands. For me that is not different to the use of WTF in a blog post and I don’t see any reason to force some purification. Ubuntu is Linux for Human beings. Let the planet be human!

  6. I personally do not find anything wrong with « WTF », and I think our « synthetic » culture approves of the use, in moderation and outside of personal attack. The idea that those three letters alone crossed some line hidden in the CoC was so alien to me that I had to assume there was more to it than that.

    Sh may have crossed some other lines (and clearly crossed a few others later), and I tried to offer some steps forward besides the calls for excommunication that were forthcoming. I still like the k5 idea for collaborative editing, but at this late stage in web development it’s not 2.0 enough. A poorly executed joke about « genociding humanity » in reply to another person’s mild joke about genocide could be quickly identified and improved or dropped.

    Voting on what words should or should not be used is about the least productive idea I’ve heard; « f*cking stupid » is a far cry from « f*cking brilliant ». One of these is disrespectful, aggressive and violent, the other is a contentious form of praise.

  7. >You can disagree with Fabian without bashing him.

    I disagree with that sentiment completely. I know there are many cultures where _politely_ formulating an offensive idea suddenlty makes it respectfull, mine (netherlands) is not one of those. Perhaps, with the proper schooling i could learn to communicate the same feeling thing in a polite way. But that would still be the same feeling, now would it? And the feeling is not _RESPECT_.

    Likewise, telling somebody you are morally superior and they need to step it down isn’t something that gets ‘respectfull’ by formulating your words politely.

    Suggesting to create official behavorial rules, a black-list of subjects and words and a central party of inbreed-incrowd is
    the opposite of participation. Everybody’s equal, but the counsel is just a little bit more equal.

    It’s a form of politicalizing a culture. With politics, respect ENDS and powerstruggles BEGIN.

    I repeat: the mere suggestion of censor, is itself, offensive and disrespectfull to the an extreme beyond personal attacks.

  8. people NEED diversity!
    it’s what makes us all going forward. if there’s something you don’t like, go on and improve it. censoring will be totalitarianism.

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