Communities – by definition – are made up of different people, who will act differently even though they have a common interest. However when the actions of one reflect on the community as a whole, they need to be called out.
Within the Ubuntu community we have the Code of Conduct to define acceptable behaviour, and – in my opinion – the community is better for it. Recently there was a ‘joke’ posted to the Ubuntu-UK mailing list, which one member responded to describing it as breaching the Code of Conduct. Unfortunately Caroline did not explain her reasoning, but nonetheless a minor flame war heated discussion was triggered.
Jump forward a good few days, and some anonymous coward – who presumably was involved in the aforementioned discussion – decided to target Caroline for swearing on her blog. Following this she has removed herself from both the planet and mailing list.
The departure of any member from a community should be reflected on. In this case I don’t blame Caroline for leaving as she was not made to feel particularly welcome recently, but I hope she will reconsider her position. The actions of this one anonymous coward however are inexcusable, and by remaining anonymous make the rest of Ubuntu-UK look bad.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
I agree Dave. It’s sad that this happened on the mailing list, even sadder that someone thought it appropriate to anonymously post to her blog.
I think sometimes people forget the guidelines for the mailing list.
http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/mailinglists/etiquette
I don’t know who it was – it’s really irrelevent, but on live journal, unless you’re a registered user you cannot put your name on the post. (unlike here). Unless you remember to write your name in the comment text body. It may have been a mistake. I can see that the person wouldn’t want to own up now though.
I don’t think this blog post really is helpful to the ubuntu-uk community.
I’ve been hit by the CoC before. After helping people for hours on the #ubuntu IRC channel – back in the days when it was less than 400 people or so – and having to prise actual problem descriptions out of people before even starting to offer advice I think I called a couple of people idiots and probably said "that package is a pile of shit" or so.
*wham*
Immediate Code of Conduct waving hand-wringing whinging bastards everywhere, and then a nick ban so weak I had to rejoin the channel and explain to the retarded ops how to ban someone properly.
I gave up helping out in there after that.
IMHO, CoC is the Red Tape of Ubuntu and a PITA most of the time.
On the contrary, I think the CoC is one of the best things about Ubuntu. The summary ejection of socially-challenged idiots should be compulsory in free software projects. Admittedly Ubuntu has more of a fanboy problem than a sociopath problem at this point.
– Chris
The summary ejection of assholes IS a good thing, but not being allowed to say that some piece of software is shit, is overreacting imho.
I fail to see the problem with such an innocent joke. I also fail to see what was so terrible about the anonymous comment. This whole story is about overreacting…
Thats a darn shame!
I hope she comes back! Some people are insane and crazy in this world, but hopefully she will choose to deal with them as best as she can and continue to be blessed by the good people
I also failed to find sexism in that joke. The reaction seems to be pretty harsh though.
Reminds me of what is happened to Kathy Serria over at:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/as_i_type_this_.html
It net doesn’t seem to be getting any more civilized. On the contrary. This incident and others have caused me to unsubscribe from some linux podcasts because of their gratuitous vulgarity. An expletive here and there OK but it is all too easy to go over the line and some do. Their choice and mine to unsubscribe.
Someone once said "Be the change you want to see in the world." If you want to see peace and "Ubuntu" in the world then be that. If you want anarchy or vulgarity then I guess be that.
<i>It net doesn’t seem to be getting any more civilized. On the contrary.</i>
Strange. I take an opposite opinion from these events.
It used to be these types of conflicts happened frequently. Now, the rare inappropriate outburst draws attention.
The Internet will never be completely composed of mature adults. However, it certainly has matured in recent years.
This whole post seems a bit silly to me. If you are going to play on the internet, grow thicker skin. Getting worked up over some troll and spamming it on planets makes you no better.
While I don’t approve of the comments made by the Anonymous Coward, I think that Caroline has over-reacted both on the mailing list and on her blog.
As was pointed out, the joke could be described as sexist against either men or women, or as offensive towards God. IMHO it was none of these things, and the whole thing was taken out of context and got out of control. I may be unpopular for saying so, but the out-of-control-ness began with Caroline, and not the original poster.
To take it out of the mailing list and on to her blog comments was massively irresponsible, and I don’t condone that at all. However, the sensible thing at that point would be to just ignore it.
CoCs are good, but the enforcement needs to be done properly, fairly and decisively.
many of you seem to miss the point of the CoC, it is not there to annoy you, it is not there to give people a power trip, it is there because Ubuntu is about including everyone, its about growing up and using appropriate language and understanding that although you might not care about swareing or something else that is against the CoC, other people might. there are many other places on the net you can go to do that kind of stuff but not in anywhere ubuntu related.
Michael: You don’t need a LiveJournal account to comment non-anonymously on LiveJournal, you can use any OpenID. I use my own web site’s OpenID. If you can’t be bothered to set up an OpenID somewhere, you can always put your name under your reply. So posting anonymously was simply cowardice.
That said, the overreaction to the joke was pretty silly. I don’t see anything in the CoC that makes the joke inappropriate, frankly. More reasonable would have been to point out that it was totally off topic, and to ask people to take the non-Linux-related jokes to rec.humor.
Finally, comparing this to the Kathy Sierra incident is really overblowing it. And even the Kathy Sierra incident isn’t much compared to alt.flame back in the 80s.
The CoC is a good thing, until people use it as a club to defend against whatever offends them. If you’re going to be citing it and get called out for it, at least come back and explain how it broke the rules.
If so many people cannot understand the reasoning behind why the CoC was invoked, it seems to some that it was invoked for a petty reason.
I’m sure that Caroline believes in what she did and her reasons. If she is going to call people out for the CoC and not defend the reasoning, she must be prepared for it to come back on her when someone perceives that she has offended them.
That it was done anonymously does not matter. If the person had signed it ‘John Jones’ does not mean that it was indeed John making the post.
Just a point to be raised.
I, for example, could take exception to the term "anonymous coward" — I like my privacy (well, whatever bit of it we can get off the Internet), and do not care to have my name know. But, instead, I see it as an amusing term.
Note, also, that nothing would prohibit one to create a new persona, full of false/misleading data: this is as "anonymous" or "coward" as being logged as "anonymous".
And what would be gained?
(And, probably, some of you will go and try to find out my name. I do not care, nor is this the point.)
Stating that "anonymous posters are cowards" is as wrong as stating "every one that publishes his/her name is on an ego trip".
It is not being anonymous, or creating a fictious persona, or providing real identification, that matters.
(And one can be rude with or without a name attached.)
Education and respect does matter, on the other hand. The golden rule matters. And this is where the CoC comes to play. The CoC is necessary, and is part of the rules of the Ubuntu society. This is, in fact, one of the things that made me switch over to Ubuntu, after some eleven years of multiple distributions (or, basically, none, at the beginning).
What is sexist (the point raised by the original blogger) or not, generically what is correct or not, is something that has to be discussed, dissected, abstracted, and eventually absorbed by a community. At the same time, we need dissenting voices and views: not being able to discuss ourselves will lead to stagnation and alienation.
I find the joke quite funny. It’s not sexist. It pokes fun at the communications gap between the genders – sure, women are described as inscrutable, but from the male point of view. The joke isn’t demeaning towards women, and if a woman raises drama over it, I’m really not sure that the community must go soul-searching. And if you go around calling people out over ridiculous "violations" of the CoC, be prepared that your own peppered language may come under scrutiny as well.
Oh, and people who are posting anonymously on LJ aren’t cowards – they’re making legitimate use of an option that the journal owner gave them (or didn’t deactivate at least).
Add a paragraph to the CoC banning people who are menstruating, I mean humourless from even logging in. That should solve the problem.
If ubuntu is going to turn into wikipedia with rank humourless censorship by idiots with rulebooks, then why not use windows. At least Bill builds his censorship into the spell checker.
Remember that China’s net censorship is a direct descendant of the ban on wolfenstein imposed by the German government.
I’ll bet fifty bucks that touchy Caroline never had much to contribute in the first place.
I first heard that joke from my friend’s mother.
This whole thing is so retarded, it blows my mind.
For me the offending part is the subject of that mail. Me being a woman does not make me a newb/n00b/newbie (or however that happens to be spelled this year). Same applies for several female linux users I know.
The joke I even found funny. My first reaction was "Gosh, that’s about as hard as getting all men to understand men."
However, Sean’s CoC joke above was quite unfunny, IMO.
I fear this discussion demonstrates that the CoC is, in practice, regarded as entirely decorative within what passes for the Ubuntu community.
Check this out: It’s very heartfelt and compassionate; and really does say what Ubuntu really is about.
Forgot link, Here with link… sorry:
Check this out (link): http://ubuntulinuxhelp.com/can-we-talk-here/ It’s very heartfelt and compassionate; and really does say what Ubuntu really is about.
Don’t be dissing Anonymous. We only do what is right; some person threatening to “CoC” someone due to an off-colour joke is essentially way out of line itself, since it is a threat of the application of administrative power to exclude. That threat alone is far, _far_ more of an act of aggression than any non-directed off-colour joke could ever be.
Thus the lamented departure of this Caroline person due to her use of the EFF word is fair and just. After all, if one cannot accept that they might be judged not only by what they say but also by what they do, then they are hardly welcome in any community aiming to Get Stuff Done.
It would also be a good idea to consider that there are also persons who join communities in a bid for personal power, similar to why certain people go into a police career. Permitting a person’s gender to affect one’s judgement (particularly if they have a cute first name) is likewise inadvisable.
> For me the offending part is the subject of that mail. Me being a woman does not make me a newb/n00b/newbie (or however that happens to be spelled this year). Same applies for several female linux users I know.
You misunderstood. “For x read y” is a common idiom in the English language that means “take the following text, and substitute ‘y’ wherever you see ‘x’”.
In essence, he was repeating an old joke about men not being able to understand women, but putting it in the context of him being unable to understand newbies. He wasn’t saying that women are newbies, he was saying that it’s pretty damn difficult to understand newbies at times.