[Python-ideas] Civility on this mailing list

[Brett Cannon]

Based on some emails I read in the " unpacking generalisations for list
comprehension", I feel like I need to address this entire list about its
general behaviour.

If you don't follow me on Twitter you may not be aware that I am taking the
entire month of October off from volunteering any personal time on Python
for my personal well-being (this reply is being done on work time for
instance). This stems from my wife pointing out that I had been rather
stressed in July and August outside of work in relation to my Python
volunteering (having your weekends ruined is never fun). That stress
stemmed primarily from two rather bad interactions I had to contend with on
the issue track in July and August ... and this mailing list.

When I have talked to people about this mailing list it's often referred to
by others as the "wild west" of Python development discussions (if you're
not familiar with US culture, that turn of phrase basically means "anything
goes"). To me that is not a compliment. When I created this list with Titus
the goal was to provide a safe place where people could bring up ideas for
Python where people could quickly provide basic feedback so people could
know whether there was any chance that python-dev would consider the
proposal. This was meant to be a win for proposers by not feeling like they
were wasting python-dev's time and a win for python-dev by keeping that
list focused on the development of Python and not fielding every idea that
people want to propose.

And while this list has definitely helped with the cognitive load on
python-dev, it has not always provided a safe place for people to express
ideas. I have seen people completely dismiss people's expertise and
opinion. There has been name calling and yelling at people (which is always
unnecessary). There have been threads that have completely derailed itself
and gone entirely off-topic. IOW I would not hold this mailing list up as
an example of the general discourse that I experience elsewhere within the
community.

Now I realize that we are all human beings coming from different cultural
backgrounds and lives. We all have bad days and may not take the time to
stop and think about what we are typing before sending it, leading to
emails that are worded in a way that can be hurtful to others. It's also
easy to forget that various cultures views things differently and so that
can lead to people "reading between the lines" a lot and picking up things
that were never intended. There are 1,031 people on this mailing list from
around the world and it's easy to forget that e.g. Canadian humour may not
translate well to Ukrainian culture (or something). What this means is it's
okay to *nicely* say that something bothered you, but also try to give
people the benefit of the doubt as you don't know what their day had been
like before they wrote that email (I personally don't like the "just mute
the thread" approach to dealing with bad actors when the muting is silent
as that doesn't help new people who join this mailing list and the first
email they see is someone being rude that everyone else didn't see because
they muted the thread days ago).

As for the off-topic threads, please remember there are 1,031 people on
this mailing list (this doesn't count people reading through gmane or
Google Groups). Being extremely generous and assuming every person on this
list only spends 10 seconds deciding if they care about your email, that's
still nearly 3 hours of cumulative time spent on your email. So please be
cognisant when you reply, and if you want to have an off-topic
conversation, please take it off-list.

And finally, as one of the list administrators I am in a position of power
when it comes to the rules of this list and the CoC. While I'm one of the
judges on when someone has violated the CoC, I purposefully try not to play
the role of police to avoid bias and abuse of power. What that means is
that I never personally lodge a CoC complaint against anyone. That means
that if you feel someone is being abusive here you cannot rely on list
admins noticing and doing something about it. If you feel someone has
continuously been abusive on this list and violating the CoC then you must
email the list admins about it if you wish to see action taken (all
communications are kept private among the admins). Now I'm not asking
people to email us on every small infraction (as I said above, try to give
everyone a break knowing we all have bad days), but if you notice a pattern
then you need to speak up if you would like to see something change.

When I started my month off I thought that maybe if I only read this
mailing list once a week that the frequency would be low enough that I
could handle the stress of being both a participant and admin who is
ultimately responsible for the behaviour here, but I'm afraid that isn't
going to cut it. What I don't think people realize is that I don't take my
responsibility as admin lightly; any time anyone acts rudely I take it
personally like I somehow failed by letting the atmosphere and discourse on
this list become what it is. Because of this I'm afraid I need to mute this
mailing list for the rest of my vacation from volunteering in the Python
community after I send this email. I personally hope people do take the
time to read this email and reflect upon how they conduct themselves on
this mailing list -- and maybe on other lists as well -- so that when I
attempt to come back in November I don't have to permanent stop being a
participant on this list and simply become an admin for this list to
prevent complete burn-out for me in the Python community (and I know this
last sentence sounds dramatic, but I'm being serious; the irony of
receiving the Frank Willison award the same year I'm having to contemplate
fundamentally shifting how I engage with the community to not burn out is
not lost on me).

-Brett
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