Re: Requesting a cool down period.

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>]

On May 10, 2018, "Carlos O'Donell" <carlos@redhat.com> wrote:

> On 05/10/2018 08:22 AM, Torvald Riegel wrote:
>> On Thu, 2018-05-10 at 02:13 -0400, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
>>> Please lend me your support by abiding by a cooling down period,
>>> and preparing for a proper discussion after the cool down.
>> 
>> I think we should still point out behavior on the mailing list that we
>> think is not representative of the glibc community, and not accepted by
>> the community (eg, the anonymous comment I replied to).  We might have
>> many new people reading the list or just the particular thread in
>> question, who haven't sampled all other posts on the list.  I'd like to
>> avoid that they get wrong impressions.
 
> I agree. This would not be a discussion of the above topics, but hopefully
> a brief message that the topic is in cool down, and that the poster's
> behaviour is is not acceptable. Some people, like strangers, will not abide
> by the cool down, and should be reminded gently.

May I suggest (excuse the one-past-the-end post) that, at least during
the cool-down period, we refrain from even pointing out what is or isn't
acceptable tone?

One reason is that this debate is so heated that it's far too easy to
mistake dissent for inadequacy of tone.  Indeed, AFAICT in 100% of the
cases in which one party criticized the tone of the other party, the
parties held opposite positions in the debate.  What's more: the same
words, when used against or for people holding a certain position, got
praise or criticism, respectively, depending on whether the
praiser/critic's opinion was aligned or misaligned with the target of
the praise or criticism.  We don't want to even look like we're
suppressing dissent, especially for strangers.


Another reason is that opinionated criticism (as in, criticism that
carries with it an opinion on the subject matter) is provocative to
dissenters, so it achieves the opposite of the intent of the cool-down.


One way to deal with these issues, especially the former, would be to
require that whoever criticises an opinion on its tone MUST hold the
same position as that expressed in the criticized opinion.  That would
remove the appearance of opinionated or biased criticism within regular
participants.  However, the very strangers that might be targets of such
criticism might very well not be aware of the critic's position, so they
might still honestly feel that the criticism is a disguised attempt at
suppression of dissenting opinions.


So it seems to me that, if we're to post such messages, it would be best
if they were limited to a link to the cool-down request, in private, and
nothing else whatsoever.


Thanks for your consideration,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer