(Ovid) Re: Development of the Perl Monks Code of Conduct

[Ovid]

Just some rough thoughts:

• No distribution of chatterbox logs.

  I would say "no logging", but how would we enforce it?

• No "Do my homework" questions.

  Asking for how to approach a homework problem would be okay.

• No profanity directed at anyone.

  I don't mind a little $#it every now and then, but if that's directed at someone, then it's out of bounds.

• Removal of nodes posted solely as an assault?

  This one could be tricky and I know that many monks might disagree as to what characterizes an assault. Examples of this would be this post and this one, both assaults on merlyn.

• Don't use published code without citing it.

  Again, tough to enforce. Many of us can smell the Cookbook a mile away, but what about someone "borrowing" a coworkers code? This would be an honor system issue.

• No downvoting of Ovid's posts.

  Okay, I don't think that will fly, but I had to try :)

I realize that not everyone would agree with the above sentiments, but I thought they could be a nice first shot.

Notice that I didn't include anything about discriminatory speech based on gender, race, religion, ethinicity, yada, yada, yada. While I like the thought of including that, how do we word it? I don't think censorship is necessarily an issue as vroom can do with the site as he sees fit, but some of the poetry out there clearly passes the line. When is it art and when is it discrimination?

Frankly, from what I've seen in the monastery, I don't feel that this is much of a problem, but the issue should at least be discussed.

Cheers,
Ovid

Update: I forgot one very important point: What do we do if we have a repeat offender? Ban them? Well, we can't. Dock their XP? Some might not care. Ban their nick? Some might be attached to their nick, some might not. Ignore it?

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[Fastolfe]

I would say "no logging", but how would we enforce it?

It's not practical to enforce it, so I say why bother? You can't control what people do with publicly available data on their PC, but you do have some say/rights in how they share that data with others. I think that's what we should focus on. Providing statistics from logged data is (in my opinion) perfectly OK.

No profanity directed at anyone

I think this could be summed up by saying "Be mature, no personal attacks against other people". Profanity directed at somebody is just an extension of name-calling. Severity of infraction is dependent upon severity of the attack. Profanity starts to move towards one extreme of that spectrum.

Don't use published code without citing it. -- Again, tough to enforce.

"Do not post copyrighted material without appropriate citation and/or permission from the author". You're right; this is largely an honor system thing, and you're also right in that many of us can spot Cookbook material pretty easily. It should be easy for us to then inform vroom or get the author to modify the node to include appropriate attribution. Aside from that, typical copyright stuff applies.

Aside from that, I agree complete with everything (well, almost everything ;) else!

David