[Python-ideas] Civility on this mailing list

Wed Oct 19 07:29:42 EDT 2016

+1.

I read many disagreements, and people being rude and unprofessional on 
occasions, but nothing that would make me have a bad day, even when I 
was the target of it.

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.

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

Le 18/10/2016 à 01:10, Rene Nejsum a écrit :
> Dear Brett/
>
> I have been reading the python-idea archive from time to time over the
> past years and I joined the list about a month ago to promote my “crazy”
> async object idea. I did fear the response to a newcomer with an
> unlikely idea, but I must say the *everyone* has been extremely nice,
> writing often long answer to discussions and trying to understand where
> I’m coming from with this idea. And it definitely made me try to think a
> little extra before sending responses …
>
> I did also raise an eye-brow when reading some of the comments in the
> thread you mentioned, they seam a little out of touch with my experience
> on other threads here.
>
> Hope some time off will do you good, my best advice to you and others is
> something that have helped me, in similar situations is the old saying
>  “Other peoples opinion of you, are none of your business” :-) It took
> me some years to get it, but now it helps me every time i get worked up
> about something another person says to me or about me.
>
> best
> /Rene
>
>
>
>> On 17 Oct 2016, at 20:29, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org
>> <mailto:brett at python.org>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> 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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>
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