[Python-ideas] Civility on this mailing list

[Paul Moore]

On 19 October 2016 at 12:29, Michel Desmoulin <desmoulinmichel at gmail.com> wrote:
> I feel like people are really getting hyper sensitive about communications.
> While I do prefer talking to calm rational people with a friendly tone, I
> acknowledge this is not always the case and it's ok if somebody go overboard
> from time to time.

It's certainly far better to avoid taking offense at comments that are
made, wherever possible. People do make mistakes, and do get
overexcited at times.

> We are not living in a perfect world, and spending a lot of effort trying to
> smooth everything out seems overkill to me.

However, it's *not* OK for people to assume that it's up to the reader
to not take offense. We may not be living in a perfect world, but we
are living in a world where we get to deal with people from a lot more
backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives than most of us are used to.
To say nothing of the fact that on the web, it's easy to *forget* that
people we interact with aren't "just like us". This is a huge
privilege, but also makes it very easy to make mistakes. It does no
harm (far from it!) for us to put some effort into trying to consider
our readers' point of view when writing. And the beauty of email is
that we have the *time* to stop, think, and make sure our words say
what we want, without offending people.

So +0.5 on people not being too quick to take offense at what they read.
But +1 on people putting time into not *causing* offense.

And a big thank you to all the people (admins, people working on
things like CoCs, etc) like Brett who take time to remind us all to
treat each other civilly and considerately.

Paul