Playing police will not work
So there's now a Debian Tech channel. Apparently, some people thought there was need for a channel where we're all nice and friendly rather than start attacking eachother; and if you're not like that, you might get kicked out of there.
This isn't the first proposal from aj that involves forcefully being nice to eachother and policing those who're not doing so, but I don't think it's going to work. Debian has never done this; if you suddenly start making up such rules and request that people keep their temper, those people will just go somewhere else to cool off; and you'll lose the possibility for consensus that is so important for whatever Debian wants to accomplish.
I agree that our constant bickering isn't the most productive way to get things done; Debian would be so much more pleasant if everyone would just be nice to eachother. Unfortunately, Debian is a large group of largely unorganized people. It's actually normal in such a case that people fight every now and then—many of us are very passionate about what we do, and want the Debian system to be the best system out there. Which is good; it is one of the reasons why Debian actually is such a good system. But invariably, when so many people get to have a say about so many things, with everyone being basically equal (or at least, mostly so) as is the case for Debian, you'll have conflicts every now and then.
I can see two ways to handle that:
- Do not do anything. Accept the fact that there are fights every now and then, and deal with them; do remind yourself every now and then that these are all just bits and bytes, however, and do not hold grudges; or,
- Give some people more authority than others. We already have this (to some extent) in that people who 'do the work' get to decide, but when there's more than one person (of group of people) 'doing the work', there's currently a conflict of interest, and, as a reasult, heavy bickering. We could give some people the authority to make a judgement call in such a situation, but then you'd eventually end up with a corporate-type hierarchy that at least I myself would like to avoid.
It's also not quite unlikely that it gives more power to those who're first. I could come up with a proposal that would kill off whatever stuff you're trying to accomplish, while there's a different way to accomplish the same thing; you, being passionate about what you do, would go on and rant about it in some public space. Then you would be shut up by the "be nice" police, and my proposal would be implemented.
With the status quo, I would come up with the same proposal. You'd rant about it in public. I'd need to defend my proposal, which I'll do just as passionate, and we'll have a flamwar on a mailinglist from here to Tokio. In the end, we'd both be a bit less happy with what Debian has become, but -and this is important- either the status quo will be retained or a compromise will be found and could be implemented. It's not totally efficient, but it does work.
And really, forcing people to be nice—"or else!"...? That won't accomplish anything, really; it's just a different way of generally not being nice to eachother.
The question you should ask before implementing police states is "is this police going to add value to whatever we do," not "is this police going to make us happier?"
Even if being happy with what you do is, of course, generally desirable.
The problem is that Debian is infamous for having the rudest, most aggressive IRC support channels around; in fact, it has won several free software "awards" in this area ("worst IRC channel" and the like). In response, having one channel where people expected not to act that way is far from a police state; you can be as rude as you like somewhere else. What you don\'t get is that, for people whose disposition or culture makes them find the kind of rudeness you seem to like intolerable, they are already excluded thanks to the verbal near-violence that pervades the Debian culture. That\'s why you see so few women and so few (compared to their numbers) Asians. You, personally, may not mind much when people subject you to verbal (or written) abuse; others differ.
I never said I "like" rudeness, or anything. In fact, my entry acknowledges that our constant bickering and fighting is a problem.
However, I\'m saying that this isn\'t the solution, because it will just move the problem to somewhere else. Or, what\'s worse, create other problems by implementing bad "solutions" to things that need fixed, but that won\'t get fixed properly because you\'re losing the otherwise valuable input from other people by implementing police-like rules.
Thing is, you\'re never going to make people be nice with an "... or else!" attitude. I agree that Debian\'s culture needs changes; but an "... or else!" attitude isn\'t going to bring them.