Re: Harrassment on this list

[Alexandre François Garreau]

Le dimanche 23 février 2020, 19:50:23 CET Andreas Enge a écrit :
> On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 01:04:45PM -0500, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
> > A code of conduct will not sovle the issue.  Kind communication will,
> > your message like the previous poster are both unkind.
> 
> Well, stating that a person who is victim of abuse and complains about
> it sends an "unkind" message is one of the patterns of communication I
> am criticising. It confounds the victim and the aggressor. Very unkind
> indeed! How do you expect to attract people to this mailing list, or to
> the GNU project at large, in this way?

Uh this is really PoV thing: “it’s not me who started” wait really? isn’t 
it possible that each one sincerely believes that it’s the other who 
started it? is “aggressor” here a purely objective thing? I’m sure if we 
were to ask him, he could believe the situation is “rms is the victim and 
you are the aggressor”.

What he said was in answer to your messages and initiatives that offended 
him and attitude which likely looked unkind to him… we can retrace then 
that initiative to the unkind reaction people had about rms’ events in 
last months, to the unkind joint statement against him, to the unkind 
smear campaign against him, to statements he supported who (or whose 
wording) were likely to be perceived as unkind by his detractors.

Talking about attractiveness, two things: first of all homogeneity is 
generally attractive, so disagreeing publicly is not attractive, so to be 
attractive a community shouldn’t be open or democratic… because 
*democracy*, and any collective arbitrage, require *disagreeing* 
(otherwise “democracy” (possibly meaning “being civilized”, “reasonable”, 
“kindness” or other broadly subjective stuff) is just a political 
hypocrisy, a double-thinking, a newspeak)… secondly, each opinion have 
detractors and supporters, and will likely turn away detractors… your 
opinion is not any less going to turn away people disagreeing with you 
(who still exist (there are at least troll-compliant right-wing people who 
would disagree with all of us but more with some, for instance))… and then 
trying to impose a state of censorship and of impossibility to disagree 
*is* also going to turn away people… yet more invisibly…

> > If you really want to help, I suggest you ask people to follow the GNU
> > Kind Communication Guidelines, and help in creating a welcoming
> > atmosphere not by asking for people to be moderated but by encouraging
> > kindness.
> 
> So far, I have not got the impression that asking aggressive people to
> communicate kindly has had any effect (while I think I have mostly
> succeeded in communicating kindly myself); all that happens is doubling
> down on insults and aggressiveness. Do you suggest I send out numbered
> requests? "For the 76th time, please communicate kindly!" And for how
> long do you suggest to continue sending out pleas that are not heeded?

Do once, then ignore.  Like people who don’t care about free software, 
about saying “gnu/linux”, etc.: you should know that.

> What do you suggest when people obstinately refuse to communicate
> kindly? That is exactly where sanctions ultimately can solve the issue,
> so unlike your first line, I think that a code of conduct can solve
> such problems.

The CoC doesn’t do it.  The reaction to it does.  And the reaction you 
propose is censorship/moderation/whatever…