Re: Down with Canonical - Boycott Ubuntu Spyware

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On 28/01/13 14:47, Thomi Richards wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm posting this back to DunLUG, since I assume the reply to me 
> personally was in error.
I thought we were getting off topic, but happy to discuss back on Dunlug.
> 
> On 28 January 2013 13:36, Alex King <[email protected] 
> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> 
> Thomi,
> 
> You can't control how others behave or what they say.  If you
> think they "should" respond in a certain way you are setting
> yourself up for disappointment.
> 
> You can lead by example (as you have been doing), and request that 
> people use certain standards, but it's not a given that everyone
> is going to play by the "rules".  Don't let them get to you.
> 
> People are free to do whatever they want.  It's not always 
> productive to refer to outside rules (etiquette) as some people
> will always disagree, and it's likely to just be another endless 
> argument.  But if you do want that, be very specific about what
> rule set you are requesting people to follow.
> 
> 
> That's certainly a valid opinion. Let me offer my own, alternative 
> hypothesis:

OK, I'm always up for a good intellectual argument.
> 
> Communities (online, or otherwise) only work when all participants
> share roughly the same set of social and behavioural norms. This
> set of

OK, that's an assertion, do you have any evidence to back that up?
Arguably one way of having a group that works well is to have everyone
act in a similar way and have a strong set of rules/expectations.
This is the "ethnically clean" way of working and it works pretty well
for Scandanavian countries.  However, there is also an argument that
tollerance is another way of achieving the same end.  This is the UNIX
philosophy, accept a wide variety of input, and always produce well
structured, polite output yourself.  In this way we can have a
community that is more diverse, more uncomfortable at times, but I
would argue can work equally as well or better.

> acceptable behaviours is sometimes termed 'etiquette'. Usually
> people adopt different behaviour depending on the company they
> keep. For example: I have friends who are highly religious: While
> in their company, I try to modify my behaviour & language in order
> to avoid offence. Similar patterns exist everywhere - Kathinka
> already touched on this, idea - that different social groups have
> different norms. What is acceptable in some circles is frowned upon
> in others. It's been this way since apes thought "I'm fed up with
> getting eaten by dinosaurs, let's club together and show those
> lizards who's boss!"[1]



> 
> When meeting a new group of people (at a dinner party perhaps),
> the smart thing to do is to try and assess what behavior will be
> tolerated, and which won't. This is easy when face-to-face with the
> other participants. Body language, verbal and other clues signal
> approval or otherwise. In this way, the norms of the group are
> communicated *implicitly*.
> 
I simply note that while most people who go to dinner parties will
assess the expected standard and adhere to it, a certain percentage
will assess the expected standard then delight in pushing the boundaries.

> However, in an online, virtual community (such as this one), those
> clues are absent, or at least harder to detect. This makes it very
> important for a community to define *explicitly* what behaviour
> will be tolerated, and what behaviour causes offence. This is
> precisely why many online communities have some form of "code of
> conduct" document, or at least give hints as to how to interact
> with other community members. One of the most famous examples of
> this (to my mind anyway), is the "How to ask questions the smart
> way" document[2]. That document is targeted to a different
> community, and I'm not suggesting that we adopt it - it's merely an
> example of an explicit communication of social norms,
> 
> So - back to your email.
> 
> You're absolutely correct when you say that "You can't control how 
> others behave or what they say.". As just one member of this
> community, I can't do that. However, *we*, as the DunLUG community,
> can decide the kind of behaviour we will tolerate, and the kind
> that we won't. If I thought that my own views were not shared by
> anyone else in the group, I'd either accept the majority decision,
> or leave to find a group that did share my views. However, I don't
> think that's the case here. The feeling I get from the other
> messages in this thread is that most folks either don't care, or
> agree with 90% of what I'm saying.... but I could be wrong -
> judging these things from email text is tricky.
> 
Well, you're mixing up two things here.  You acknowledge that an
individual can't control someone else's behaviour, but then say that a
group can define rules of acceptable conduct.  Well, even if a
majority of the group can agree on a set of rules, how will we enforce
that?  So the two issues are how to come up with the rules, and how to
enforce them.  Of course there is a long history of people grappling
with these problems, and coming up with various forms of governments.

If you define this set of rules that defines acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour, you then have to have a system of complaints
and judgement, and sanctions for wrongdoers, since not everyone will
abide by rules just because they're there.  That's why we have police,
prosecutors and prisons.

In my opinion, the problem with this is the very fact we judge
people's actions as "right" or "wrong", "acceptable" or
"unacceptable".  If instead we try to meet our own needs and
contribute to others out of the joy of giving, we'll have a lot less
trouble with law and order.  Actually, as soon as you start labeling
some people as unacceptable or as displaying unacceptable behaviour,
they will be motivated to "fight" you.

So I think email lists without any rules, implied or explicit, better
meets my needs for open communication.

> Finally, you've mentioned Non-Violent Communication before, and
> it's an interesting idea. However, personally, it's not for me. It
> feels to me that using NVC removes my ability to be assertive, to
> call out bad behaviour. I don't believe that these eruptions are
> caused by ordinary members voicing their opinions - rather, they're
> caused by people who can't, or won't abide by a common shared set
> of social norms. I don't think asking regular community members to
> adopt NVC will prevent these; rather, it'll make it that much
> harder to stop the trolling, when it (inevitably) pops up.
> 
Well, what do you suggest we do about the non-"ordinary" members, who
won't or can't abide by the rules?  If we don't use NVC, how do we
effectively deal with trolling when it inevitably pops up?

NVC does not advocate asking anyone not to do something or to stop
doing something.  Instead it advocates asking for what they do
want/need.  Perhaps the list needs to have accurate information so
they can understand topics being discussed, so we could request
contributors stick to facts as much as possible.  Perhaps we want to
encourage participation from people promoting Linux, so we could ask
people to support that.

Marshall gives the example of why you ask for what you want and not
what you don't.  He met with a group of teachers who were having
problems with the schoolchildren who were throwing rocks and breaking
school windows out of hours.  His answer was, "kill all the children,
you won't have a problem with broken windows any more".  His point
was, if you define what you don't want, it inevitably leads to
violence, better to rephrase it as what you do want.

NVC as a discipline certainly restricts you from "calling bad
behaviour", but it's all about being assertive.  It's all about
getting what we need in an effective way.

NVC can sound wishy-washy at first, but my experience is that it is
both more challenging and more effective than blame and punishment.
There are certain things you can't do with it, like uphold large
social structures/institutions where the people in them don't agree
with what's happening, but I don't see that as a disadvantage.

Really.

Alex
> 
> It feels to me like the DunLUG community is in limbo - I'm still on
> this list because I want to support people running Linux. However,
> it seems like the group has been drifting towards another space
> (possibly more of a social group than a technical one). If that's
> the case, then possibly the current troubles are just friction from
> the change...
> 
> Anyway, that's what I think :)
> 
> [1] My anthropology skills are weak, at best. [2]
> http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html -- Thomi
> Richards
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