Re: [gentoo-project] [RFC] CoC change to encourage clear communication

[Alec Warner]

On Wed, Dec 16, 2020 at 1:58 AM David Seifert <soap@g.o> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2020-12-16 at 09:23 +0000, James Le Cuirot wrote:
> > I can certainly appreciate the benefits of this as I just haven't had
> > the time to read most of the recent... uh... discussions. However, the
> > idea of enforcing something like this doesn't bear thinking about. It
> > reminds me way too much of 1984's Newspeak. If we're not going to
> > enforce it then there seems little point in including it. The most
> > verbose posters are unlikely to cut down just because we asked them
> > nicely.
>
> https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
>
> The debian code of conduct has a section called "Try to be concise".
> Would you really consider the Debian CoC Newspeak?

I think the concern is that sometimes the CoC is wielded as a cudgel: e.g.

"Be concise or I will ban you from the ML"

This is different than as a *principle* or a *guideline*. I think its
fine to say "We in Gentoo have a principle to be concise." This means
when someone posts a very long post you can simply reply

"Hi, Gentoo has a principle of concision, please try to apply that to
your posts in future; I'm not going to respond to long messages."

We have similar principles for code reviews (e..g don't send me a 1000
LoC review, send me 4 250 line ones broken apart so I can understand
the changes.) It doesn't mean one can't send big reviews, but it means
that when I get a 1000 LoC code review..the first thing I'm gonna do
is tell the author "please break this up" and then the review goes to
the bottom of my priority list.

-A

>
>
>