Civility notes (was "Traversable instances for (,,) a b")

[Tom Murphy]

Hi Fumiaki!

     I agree with you that some poorly-chosen words by a few people have
soured this conversation, but please don't let that turn you completely off
of the productive conversation most of us are attempting to have! I think
it's largely been successful, too: even if many of us haven't changed our
-1/+1 votes, I for one have had my ideas challenged and have a more nuanced
view than before talking with everyone here.
     Henning and Edward are two examples (one from each side of the +1/-1
chasm) who have been aided by this discussion, in making important progress
to finding a middle ground (each in the form of proposed compiler changes).

     To the rest of us: Fumiaki regretting having posted here is a pretty
stark example of why speaking politely matters. People being scared away
and feeling unwelcome is a real phenomenon, and we need to do our part to
fix it. I'd propose:

     - If you haven't read it already, SPJ recently wrote a heartfelt
letter on the subject [0]. We've gotten better since then, but clearly
we're not finished.
     - Civility is a norm, and norms sometimes need to be enforced. From a
distance, we all look bad (and unwelcoming!) if anyone is hostile and we
don't make it clear it's not acceptable. Speak up! That said, everyone
makes mistakes - try to give people space to apologize and move on.
     - If someone says something insulting to you, please take that as a
sign to become more polite, not less so. The downward spiral is real.

     If you're called out for saying something regrettable (again,
regardless of if you're +1 or -1 on this issue), *please* take our desire
for civil conversation seriously. Responses like (I'm paraphrasing, and not
trying to cite anyone specifically): "It was a joke (mostly)" and "It's
your fault if you didn't get the joke" are worse than not writing anything
at all. Ideal would be a quick "Sorry!"

Thanks, all!
Tom

[0] https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2016-September/024995.html



On Sun, Apr 2, 2017 at 12:11 PM, Fumiaki Kinoshita <fumiexcel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The discussion has diverged to flaming due to a few offensive people. I
> guess I shouldn't have posted a proposal here, I should have submitted a
> patch instead.
>
> 2017-03-23 19:53 GMT+09:00 Fumiaki Kinoshita <fumiexcel at gmail.com>:
>
>> It's surprising that they are missing (forgive me, I'm not here to make
>> people grumpy).
>>
>
>
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