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OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 11 Oct 2018, 17:39
by psi29a
We’d hope that this would go without saying, but sometimes it needs to be explicitly said… do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In other words, help us help you. We have a commitment to ourselves to try to help, where we can, to be kind and patient. We ask that also in return. This is our hobby too, our labor of love, be it OpenMW, TES3MP, MWSE… we all want to get along even if we disagree with each other. If we feel that our good will is being abused, then we’ll stop providing help, warn and eventually ban individuals who can’t follow the Golden Rule. This also includes those who troll other projects, for whatever reason.

We hereby invoke Wheaton’s Law.

Cheers,
The OpenMW Team

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 11 Oct 2018, 19:32
by raevol
*cheering and applause*

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 12 Oct 2018, 21:05
by robcbwilson
Wheaton’s Law rocks, it should be the basis of how all people interact :)

Was there a specific incident that sparked the post?

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 13 Oct 2018, 06:50
by Ravenwing
Thanks psi29a, completely agree! For what it's worth, I find this to be one of the more reasonable and drama free places online!
robcbwilson wrote: 12 Oct 2018, 21:05 Was there a specific incident that sparked the post?
There have been a few heated discussions about features or design choices, usually about future scripting implementation, that got a bit out of hand and the ensuing drama obscured the points people were trying to make.

Helpful debate tips everyone: making the same argument over and over and louder each time does not make you more right. You have to refute the other side's points and support your own. Also, bringing up past drama in new posts doesn't help anyone.

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 13 Oct 2018, 07:36
by lysol
This wasn't the only reason though. There was a guy, who was acting as if he was involved in OpenMW, that was harassing a certain guy in the Morrowind modding scene. This guy was basically a dick.

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 13 Oct 2018, 08:20
by drummyfish
Personally I'm not a big fan of Wheaton's law and of Wheaton himself. It sounds nice, and I'd be willing to accept is as a recommendation or guidance, but vague words like "dick" in laws only give power to whoever is executing it to interpret in any way they see convenient. It's a disguised weapon in the same way COCs and similar things are. So, let's just hope we don't get where Linux has gotten recently :-]

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 13 Oct 2018, 09:24
by psi29a
drummyfish wrote: 13 Oct 2018, 08:20It sounds nice, and I'd be willing to accept is as a recommendation or guidance, but vague words like "dick" in laws only give power to whoever is executing it to interpret in any way they see convenient.
You don't have to like the person in order to agree with what they said. :)

Yes, it is a recommendation and can be seen as guidance. In the same vein as 'be excellent to each other' but without going full CoC.

Yes, the point is that this forum is OpenMW's responsibility and as such we will be more on-the-ball when dealing with toxic people. Honestly, had we been less 'everyone has a right to spew their bile all over the project and its forums' then Scrawl would not have done what he did. That is why we've promoted people to be mods across time-zones to help.

The only thing we ask is that people be reasonable to each other and not make things personal. The also means people trolling other projects as well, just don't do it, it's a dick move. Hence: don't be a dick.

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 13 Oct 2018, 12:19
by Ferk
psi29a wrote: 13 Oct 2018, 09:24The only thing we ask is that people be reasonable to each other and not make things personal. The also means people trolling other projects as well, just don't do it, it's a dick move. Hence: don't be a dick.
I totally agree with that.
Yet I can see the point from drummyfish about "dick" (or even "excellent") being a vague term often used regardless of whether an argument is being personal/unreasonable.

I have no idea about what was the context or whatever problem there was. I bet most people who read the news post would have no idea either. Imho, I would have ignored it and avoid feeding the trolls with any attention. This is just gonna make people want to know what happened.
psi29a wrote: 13 Oct 2018, 09:24Honestly, had we been less 'everyone has a right to spew their bile all over the project and its forums' then Scrawl would not have done what he did.
I was following the topic when this happened and I don't remember anyone making things personal or being unreasonable to each other. There was discussion, and some people might have voiced an opinion saying that moving from Github would be an overeaction, but I don't think it was to be taken personally. The fact that this is now being seen in retrospective as if the conversation had been toxic is what makes these type of "don't be a dick" statements vague.

This might be just my take on it, but I believe Scrawl just made his decision when he saw that the direction was not necessarily agreeing with his views (it seemed to me that he wanted to take the opportunity to ditch Github and migrate to Gitlab completely to make it a point that OpenMW is about free software... but there was not much support for the ditching and there's wasn't much of a free software advocacy mentality in the community, or any strong response from the devs like he would have expected, I guess..), I don't think it was about any lack of respect or any harassment towards him, or the project.

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 13 Oct 2018, 14:42
by psi29a
We cleaned up a lot of stuff after the fact. We continue to delete posts and clean things up. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Yes, it got personal, yes calling people software (social) justice warriors is personal, yes calling projects and the people who work on them pieces of shit is personal. Trolling and stalking people is personal. The list goes on and on. If you haven't seen it, good, we've done our jobs but it doesn't mean it didn't happen. We are just to a point now that we have to be explicit about it. We are not going to tolerate that kind of behaviour and try to be quicker at taking action.

So yeah... It's pretty simple, be helpful, be kind, be considerate... If not, then this isn't the place to be. It wastes everyone's time and energy which could be better spent on things they would rather be working on.

Re: OpenMW’s take on community interaction

Posted: 13 Oct 2018, 14:53
by Ferk
psi29a wrote: 13 Oct 2018, 14:42We cleaned up a lot of stuff after the fact. We continue to delete posts and clean things up. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Fair enough then, you might have been quite quick.

Though had I seen personal attacks like that I (and I hope many others) would have counter-argumented and defended Scrawl or anyone on the side of Free Software, instead of trying to be mostly impartial and keeping the distance as an observer.
Perhaps the problem was precisely that there wasn't much of a counter-reaction, since in his last post he explicitly said that he felt he was in the minority. It's hard to tell if moderation actually helps with that.

But well, it's all water under the bridge anyway.