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On Sun, 2014-02-16 at 21:20 +1100, Russell Coker wrote:<BR>
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The only recommendation that I made in regard to private mail was to deal with
the problem of abusive private mail that has been sent to some participants in
recent discussions.
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That's kind of a contradiction, I agree that private mail is private, even if its a private follow-up from a mailing list post, in which case any abuse then may fall under a general code of conduct, which we do not have, the closest is the "Values" but this is not binding on members, perhaps it needs to be? <BR>
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But in such cases you need be careful, eg: two friends may have a hissy at each other, they may both be LA member, but is not where they met, they decide to jump in on a thread and send a nasty mail to the other, the other one complains to LA under your suggested policy, one is reprimanded, the situation escalates - hollywood plot? No, seen it all before when charged with running an ISP abuse unit, you need consider the topic, the environment, the context, the person, and emotions, take the Cronulla riots for example, it could have led me to suspend or terminate 100's of our customers, I did neither, but had that been a normal situation, I may well have issued a caution to some, and terminated others, so unless you have seasoned reasonable people making the decisions, its dangerous. However, if the abuse is threatening harm to life or property, then there is only ever one port of call, the police. If someone is harassing you, you tell them to stop, if they persist, again, the avenue there is the police.<BR>
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It also comes down to interpretations and balance, take me for example, I call a spade a spade, rarely walk on cotton wool, so what people see is me, they do not see a FAKE/pretend me - not a Jeckle and Hide, like we have seen from any others around here, therefore some of my list posts occasionally may seem a little harsh to some, but I'm also one who has plenty of empathy and kindness for those who deserve, or earn my respect.<BR>
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I believe that the policy should clearly state that private mail of a
threatening or harassing nature that is sent in response to list mail should
NOT be considered to be private. I also believe that replies to mailing list
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You may be at odds with some laws there (copyright and privacy acts).<BR>
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The way things seem to work is that only the more powerful people in the Linux
community can safely get involved in discussions on this list.
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amen to that, but I did get a number of off-list nasty responses claiming there is no such "boys club", or "inner circle", of course those who said that unsurprisingly were members of that inner circle <IMG SRC="cid:1392590785.4401.4.camel@tardis" ALIGN="middle" ALT=";)" BORDER="0"><BR>
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