A Stroll Through Planet Mozilla History
This is NOT the Planet’s module owner and peers’ official position on today’s events; I worked very hard with my esteemed colleagues to write that post. And I’m proud of our words. Below are some additional thoughts, which are entirely my own.
If it wasn’t for me, planet.mozilla.org might not be an official Mozilla project module.
That’s a tall claim, so allow me tell a story: see, planet used to be managed by a single person.
It was a thankless job that, apparently, no one else wanted. As was that individual’s purview, content filtering and feed handling decisions were made solely by him. The community wasn’t involved, and there was little-to-no transparency.
Mozilla was starting other governance initiatives at the time, and this seemed like a perfect example of something to transition to this new system. Asa was the first module owner.
I, being That GuyTM who opened his big fat mouth, became a peer.
We’ve made what I believe to be the most critically important changes to how Planet is operated: more transparent, with a clear policies to facilitate the community function Planet serves.
And so I’m personally very proud of what raising my voice, via that post in 2007, has achieved: a Planet that, through our work together, has better served the Mozilla community.
Today, some advocated a return to the pre-module days.
They wanted a particular post they personally disagreed with removed.
They wanted feeds changed, so such content would never appear on Planet again.
They wanted a Mozilla community member’s1 voice quietly silenced.
And as a Planet module peer, that is not something I will advocate for or be a party to.
Ever.
I want to make one thing very perfectly clear: I cannot express the degree to which I disagree with Gerv on this particular issue. But Planet, in its current role, has been a completely unmoderated, open forum for Mozilla community members to express themselves, and I will defend his right to say it, despite vehement disagreement with him.
But let us also be clear: advocating a particular political position in a civil tone is not “hate speech.”
It is not a “safe space” violation2.
And the absolute worst thing anyone making such a claim or disagreeing with the position can do is try to censor the discourse.
History, including Planet’s own, has shown time and again: education, empathy, and understanding are not served by the use of “administrative”3 methods to silence an opinion some find unapaltable. And there is an important distinction to be made between defending such opinions and endorsing them.
Fundamentally, today’s events have raised the question about Planet’s role and purpose within the Mozilla community. That’s a fine (and necessary) discussion to have. But it wasn’t a conversation anyone today proposed having.
To anyone in the Mozilla Community who feels “unsafe and unwelcome,” I encourage you to raise your own voice and speak your own position4.
I’ll be right here, standing for your right to say it on Planet and in the Mozilla community, too.
_______________
1 And I would certainly like to hear an argument that Gerv is not a Mozilla community member
2 Unless, of course, you consider “safe space” to mean “a space where ideas-I-don’t like are prevented from occurring,” in which case, no: Planet is not a “safe space.” And neither is “The Open Web…”
3 Or harsher
4 Mozilla has, in fact, been surprisingly silent on this particular issue
A thousand times this.
I don’t really think it’s rational or fair to describe as “quietly silencing” or “censoring” him the opinion that Planet is not an appropriate forum for Gerv’s views. I haven’t seen anyone say that he doesn’t have the right to post whatever he wants on his personal blog (though they certainly have the right to criticize him for holding those views), but it’s the jump from there to Planet that’s not acceptable, and exposes either a technical or policy problem that needs to be solved. No one reasonably expects Planet to be a “safe space,” but I don’t think anyone expects it to be a place where they find an attack on their struggle for civil rights.
Finally, I want you to consider that just because this forum has been open (to a select few approved individuals) and unmoderated (because nothing outrageously controversial ever tested the limits) that it was somehow immune to regulation when the need arose. Do you truly believe that if someone has posted hardcore pornography or a screed in support of child molestation that Mozilla would not have acted to remove it and discuss how to change Planet such that this would never happen again, as is happening now?
I’ve solved the problem by not using Planet Mozilla – because I don’t want that kind of politics in feeds I read during work, for all sorts of reasons.
I could post a needlessly controversial response to this topic on my own planet-syndicated blog. I could encourage others to do the same and degenerate planet into 4chan as that’s the logical consequence of this absurd position.
The idea that he or she who has the least respect for others should be the one who gets their personal politics heard is unreasonable yet if we all posted our personal political arguments on planet, it would be considered unreasonable and untenable and planet would not be here. So why let just the loudest shout?
So my primary source of engagement with the community is now gone – and I guess I better get on Usenet + IRC. I encourage others to do the same.
I notice you put “unsafe and unwelcome” in quotes; if that is a quotation, I would encourage that person to talk to me about it (through an intermediary if they like). Nothing I said should make anyone feel unsafe. (If it did, they would also feel unsafe walking the streets of California, where 52% of those voting agree with my general position.)
As for unwelcome (presumably ‘in the Mozilla community’): show me where I’ve ever been unwelcoming to any individual wanting to be involved in Mozilla. Jesus associated with and showed love to all sorts of people (while encouraging them to, repent, believe in Him, and change various things about their life). I strive to do the same. I bear no animosity towards anyone.
Gerv
@Aleron:
I don’t really think it’s rational or fair to describe as “quietly silencing” or “censoring” him the opinion that Planet is not an appropriate forum for Gerv’s views.
It is entirely rational (and fair) to do so when those calling for it are doing so in private, i.e. quietly, and asking for the content to be removed from Planet, i.e. censorship.
but it’s the jump from there to Planet that’s not acceptable
(I assume you’re making that statement as an individual, and not speaking for the entire community.)
As someone who was present when the module was created and present for the conversations at Summits, in surveys, and in the general business of Planet’s operation, I can tell you that the community wanted a forum wherein personal voices, such as posts like these, were allowed.
We’ve struggled with this balancing act for a long time, and you could make the argument that we’ve largely failed in this regard. I probably wouldn’t even disagree with you. But that’s a different argument than saying it’s “not acceptable.”
Do you truly believe that if someone has posted hardcore pornography or a screed in support of child molestation that Mozilla would not have acted to remove it and discuss how to change Planet such that this would never happen again, as is happening now?
The problem with these situations is the tendency toward hyperbole.
Let me repeat this: expressing a political viewpoint is not hardcore pornography, nor is it the advocacy of an illegal act.
(In your hypothetical, those posts would likely be removed—the Planet module owner+peers have editorial authority to do this—but it would be done so transparently, per an established process. I can’t remember the last time we did this though.)
I have no problem with discussion of changes to the community’s desires for Planet’s role. Unfortunately, no one talking with the Planet Module team today wanted to have such a conversation. They had a list of items they wanted done on a timetable that didn’t allow for thoughtful discourse on the matter.
That combination never leads organizations/communities anywhere good.
Hi
Planet Mozilla is a busy place and I visit it daily to just see what is buzzing. Mostly to just see what is happing to Firefox, snappy and Memshrink, so that I can see when Firefox will be cool again.
To see such a view on the official mozilla medium was rather disappointing. As a gay guy I am rather lucky that my country have a liberal consitution and laws so we are well protected and have equal rights.
The web is about being open and free and that is great. But I have always said and I firmly believe that it is not just a right. It is also a responsibility. One have to embrase that openess and freedom with the responsibilty of not invading / limiting someone else freedom.
So can I ask that the feeds on the planets be restricted to just mozilla and mozilla activities so that it is less clogged with camping trips and a 100 photos that takes forever to load and less of this personal matters as discussed yesterday. I am pretty sure that post was posted here for maximum effect and I am sorry, but that is not the responsible thing to do.
@Gerv:
That is, in fact, a quotation (from replies to the Planet module owner’s post).
Whether or not people “should” or “should not” feel a particular way is largely a pointless discussion. People have all sorts of varied experiences, and their reactions to stimuli can differ.
In this specific case, though, I want people feeling that way to also feel empowered to raise their own voices and express their own opinions about the issue. Calling for others to be removed from the discourse is never a solution.
(Incidentally, your data on Californian voters is stale: 59% of Californian voters now approve gay marriage.)
@preed
“It is entirely rational (and fair) to do so when those calling for it are doing so in private, i.e. quietly, and asking for the content to be removed from Planet, i.e. censorship.”
As I said in the other blog: Discouraging or banning certain opinions on a private property is not censorship. Nobody is preventing the affected party to publish the content elsewhere. Free speech does not imply that you have to tolerate every opinion within one’s own fourth walls (i.e. Planet Mozilla in this case). I wish people cry censorship all the time so carelessly. It makes the affairs for people suffering from actual censorship more difficult.
To see such a view on the official mozilla medium was rather disappointing.
Why was it disappointing to you?
So can I ask that the feeds on the planets be restricted to just mozilla and mozilla activities so that it is less clogged with camping trips and a 100 photos that takes forever to load and less of this personal matters as discussed yesterday. I am pretty sure that post was posted here for maximum effect and I am sorry, but that is not the responsible thing to do.
Per the official post today, we are looking at how to separate out the content; it’s apparently a more difficult technical problem than it may seem (annoyingly so).
As mentioned, Bug 733657 tracks this, so you can refer to it for status.
@Erunno:
I don’t want to get all pedantic here, but since you’re getting hung up about the definition of censorship, Wikipedia defines it as “the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.”
I fully understand the distinction between a government, a media outlet, and a[n] other controlling body, and the point you’re making that one does not have to put up with this in one’s living room, so please don’t belabor that point.
In this context, I consider Mozilla to be diverse enough a group of people that I want to avoid placing the responsibility in anyone’s hands to decide which “speak” is “doubleplusungood” enough to be “unheard.”
preed: thanks for the link
, although I think my point stands.
@Gerv:
I’ll be honest: I’m not entirely clear what your point there was.
If it was to communicate “if my comments cause people to feel ‘unsafe and unwelcome,’ then they must also feel unwelcome walking around the street, because [some number of] voters agree with me, and their feelings may-or-may-not-be-absurd,” then no, I don’t believe your point does stand.
They’re entirely disparate contexts, so much so that I just assumed the statement was rhetorical.
FWIW, I also agree with many who are saying it was in poor taste to syndicate this item to Planet. I think there were better things to do with our time, and I think such a narrowly-applicable (UK only) post could’ve been more effectively communicated to your blog-readership.
But, as I said, I’m not known as the “poor taste police,” nor do I want to be.
My point was: if expressing that view politely and without any threat or hint of violence makes people feel unsafe because they are afraid of what I might do to them, then they also need to similarly fear everyone else in the world who holds the same view. (It’s rather hard for someone to have a more safe position than ‘not at all violent, and opposing violence’.) And that’s a lot of people to be afraid of.
@Preed: Again, I feel describing this as “censorship” is the same needless hyperbole as describing Gerv’s post as “hate speech.” No one is saying Gerv can’t speak his mind, they’re saying that they don’t think Planet is the appropriate forum for these views. Planet may have worked as an unmoderated medium in the past, but the reality is that no one has ever posted anything that offended the community to this degree (correct me if you think this has happened before), and I think the response from the community confirms that this isn’t something they find acceptable, and is an incident they require rapid corrective action on. I absolutely understand your commitment for free speech and against censorship, but defending “the right to post offensive materials to Planet Mozilla” seems like a poor choice of battles.
@Gerv: Language note, when people use “safe” in this context they don’t merely mean physical safety (though that is something that many gay people live in fear of), but emotional safety. In short, people expect good feelings when they are a member of the Mozilla community, and when they see posts telling them that they don’t deserve a certain civil right that makes them feel sad. They’d have no reason to expect anything like that, so suddenly being confronted with that means they don’t feel safe and welcome in the Mozilla community.
Alereon: with your definition of “safe”, how do gay people manage to take part in political or religious discourse, or join a political party, or have conversation over dinner? Claiming emotional damage simply by being confronted by opinions you do not agree with seems to me like a way of stopping any discussion before it begins.
While I do not seek to cause offence for its own sake (I am no troll), I strongly deny that people have a right not to be offended, or that it’s Mozilla’s job to make sure that only “acceptable” views are expressed within its community.
Seeing this in the planet feed made my morning. Thank you for writing this.
Hate speech most certainly can still be in a civil tone. The problem with hate speech, however, is that something can be hate speech to one person and ‘free expression’ to another.
If we are to use the Wikipedia definition, hate speech is ‘any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic.’
I think in the post referenced, there is no question that the communication concerned the characteristic of sexual orientation.
So was the post disparaging? That all depends on which definition of the word you use. I certainly think that the post was intended to depreciate and denigrate homosexual men and women, matching at least some definitions. (Some would cowardly reply that it is only those people’s choices that are depreciated, in the same sense that criticising Muslims for their beliefs only belittles their choices…)
Having said that, in most (or perhaps all) countries the post would not be hate speech in the sense of criminal law.
Since it was brought up, I was around when the Planet shakeup happened as well, and I actually disagreed with it. Not vocally, because there wasn’t much point arguing with the people determined to take over Planet, but I much preferred when content was forced to be on topic, and I was comforted by the “medium term” plans to have a Mozilla-topics-only feed.
Since then, I’ve dealt with skipping the occasionally clearly off-topic posts as they come up, and it’s been annoying but not a huge deal.
But this morning, I opened Google Reader and began reading my “mozilla” folder when I came across a post that made my heart drop and gave me goosebumps. I’d never felt more unwelcome or had my trust broken in a Mozilla setting like that before. I don’t care whether it’s called “hate speech” or “a valid opinion” or whatever, I never want to feel like that again in a Mozilla environment.
It would be one thing if such a post had accidentally made its way to Planet, but it was clear from the comments that the author was proud to be within the letter of the law; he even pointed out he knew there were many gay community members and did it anyway. Many people have the power to do things under various policies, but they don’t do them because of tact and professionalism.
For me, that was the last straw with Planet and I immediately unsubscribed. I sent a note to the Planet team, not making any demands, but asking about the status of the Mozilla topics feed that was planned 5 years ago.
I think it’s extremely unfortunate that such posts will continue to be allowed on mozilla.org and I’m embarrassed for us. And the ramifications for the project, like a number of core contributors missing out on important posts and discussions posted to Planet and the new community members who will be turned off by this, are very disappointing too. But as a PM I respect priorities and it’s obvious the priorities I think Planet should have are quite different its leadership, and I’ve moved on.
@gerv: I’ll just say that I think being told that you don’t deserve a civil right because of something such as your race, gender, or sexual orientation is a much more significant offense to a person than a political disagreement. Can you understand how hearing someone say that they don’t think you should have the right to get married would be hurtful? This is especially the case because I don’t think any reasonable person would expect to see that kind of content on Planet Mozilla. I’m not saying people have a right to never be offended, but I am saying that doing something to offend people shouldn’t be taken lightly, and I think syndicating that post to Planet Mozilla was inconsiderate for the feelings of readers and how it would reflect on the Mozilla organization.
Alereon: if you count “any reasonable person” as “people who agree with you”, then perhaps you are right, but your point doesn’t carry much weight.
Calling gay marriage a “civil right” is begging the question. Currently, in the UK, everyone has an equal right to get married to people fitting certain criteria – one of which is that they are of the opposite sex. Now you may say that some people don’t _want_ to get married to someone of the opposite sex; but then you aren’t seeking the right to get married, you are seeking the right to get married to anyone you like. Which is not the same thing. Almost all societies have some restrictions on who you can get married to. The question is about where those boundaries should be. It is certainly not obvious that there is a “civil right” to have the boundaries in a certain place. Where would you put them, and what makes your opinion the one which should be dominant?
I did not specifically choose to syndicate the post to Planet Mozilla; as others have pointed out, it carries a full feed of my blog, and Planet policy is that that is fine.
Plenty of things flow past on Planet I don’t agree with, some of which I strongly disagree with. But I don’t call for posts to be taken down. Mozilla is in favour of an open internet, and I think that means it must be open to the expression of views with which one disagrees. Voltaire, and all that.
Gerv
For the record, the requests made to the planet module owners were as follows (and not the altered and paraphrased ones you state in your post, the letter never asked for anyone’s voice to be silenced):
1. The above post (http://blog.gerv.net/2012/03/coalition-for-marriage-petition/) be removed immediately from Planet Mozilla.
2. The author’s inclusion in Planet Mozilla be altered to include only items specifically tagged ‘Mozilla’ so that they will be called upon when posting new content to really consider whether or not their post meets the criteria of the planet.
3. Planet policy be updated to make clear what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate content, as well as what actions may be taken when inappropriate content appears.
4. Once updated, Planet policy be clearly stated in a more visible location, such as https://wiki.mozilla.org/Planet_Mozilla.
5. A “from the editors” post, notifying the community of these changes to policy, as well as a message to everyone@mozilla.org saying that the policy is updated.
@preed
“In this context, I consider Mozilla to be diverse enough a group of people that I want to avoid placing the responsibility in anyone’s hands to decide which “speak” is “doubleplusungood” enough to be “unheard.””
You don’t have to. Just make a few simple guidelines about what content should be aggregated to PM (e.g. “Should be mostly about stuff related to Mozilla.”). It doesn’t have to be lawyer-proof. This is not a governmental body. I have little doubt that the people contributing to PM know exactly what is related to Mozilla and what not. Self-regulation should therefore suffice in such a case unless someone is really bent on circumventing the guidelines by twisting their intended meaning.
preed, please post to p.m.o more often. I miss the footnotes!
Erunno, you’re asking us to change what planet is. We have guidelines. Our guidelines are that if you are a member of the Mozilla community we want you to talk about what you want to talk about. We encourage content not related to Mozilla. Take a look at Planet Gnome as an example of what this looks like. It’s wonderful. You get to know the people in your community, their interests, their adventures, and even their political and religious views. This is not a “mozilla news” site. It is a collection of the voices of the people who make up the Mozilla community. Your simple sounding suggestion of telling people their posts “should be mostly about Mozilla” is actually a suggestion to undo the changes we’ve made to Planet over the last 5 years to make it something other than that. It’s like telling Mozilla “it’s easy, just replace Gecko with Webkit and everyone will be happy.” It sounds simple and it might give some people the results they want, but it completely mis-understands a huge part of the reason for the products existence.
- A
@Gerv:
Agreed.
I also think there’s probably some wiggle room for a little sensitivity there, and that’s why I personally think the post was probably in poor(er) taste than it may otherwise have been, and certainly mistargeted.
@bastiaan:
The issue of “hate speech” aside (I mostly agree with your analysis, though we may disagree over whether or not it “disparages” or “denigrates” particular individuals), the problem with decrying it is that it serves to limit the discourse, and as such is an often-overused accusation, so as to halt the discussion.
It was (and continues to be) used for that purpose here.
@Justin:
You bring up a central point that I am happy to concede: we have failed at creating content feeds that serve audiences that want Mozilla-only content vs. those that want all of Mozilla contributors’ [personal] content (and such a group does exist, much to the vocal part of the community that attempts to claim that it doesn’t; we have data on this).
I’ve personally done what I can to facilitate this happening over the years (and the Planet module mailing list will back me up on this claim).
So, to that point, yes: we’re not serving community needs there.
I think it’s extremely unfortunate that such posts will continue to be allowed on mozilla.org
Why do you think it’s unfortunate?
I ask because a lot of people seem to be making this argument, and I don’t think they have any data to intimate (much less outright claim) that Mozilla, as a 501c3 organization or C-corp, is supportive of LGBT rights or people (to any extent further than is required by law).
People keep referring to this, as if it can be assumed.
I don’t think it can be assumed.
@Lukas:
I appreciate you posting them here.
My suggestion would have been for you to have publicly posted them to begin with, instead of keeping them private (which is why I paraphrased them).
The fact that these requests were made in private (instead of in, say, a bug) made them, in my opinion, all that more onerous. People seeking censorship don’t do it in the public square.
If the group (which, BTW, is apparently also a Mozilla Corporation-only clubhouse? Please feel free to reference a page or notice where any “LGBT queer or ally” in Mozilla[-not-just-the-Corporation] can find information on joining!) you’re representing wants their requests to have more weight, I suggest they endeavor to make their actions transparent to the entire community.
@Erunno:
Your suggestion is predicated on the idea that every single person in the Mozilla community only wants to see Mozilla-related content on Planet.
That’s factually incorrect.
Also, this response to your comment in the official blog post said what I was trying to say, just much better than I did.
@Dan:
I would! But apparently, the [vocal] Mozilla community has a very narrow view of what it considers “acceptable” content for Planet! (I would imagine my footnotes fall into this category.)
(I do respect that, so I self-censor; but feel free to follow my ramblings here!)
@preed – Taking an issue to the module owners should be a valid option for process. Public posts and bugs can sometimes lead to press swarming, mis-contextualizing, and easily dismissing the poster as poisoning the well. Anyway, I think there’s always 6 ways to do something and the people involved in making the request the planet owners chose one.
You make a good point that there isn’t an obvious place to join in the Mozilla LGBTQ (and Allies) community, so I have added the mailing list to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mailing_lists#Mozilla.Org
You can argue that Gerv’s post was free speech and whatnot all day long.
Bottom line is his post and your post make me feel unwelcome in your community. Perhaps if your post was more along the lines of: “I think that what Gerv said was inappropriate for Planet Mozilla, but don’t want to go back to the way things were”, I might feel differently.
Then there would be at least some communication that you care about welcoming people like me into your community.
As it stands however, I am getting the impression that many Mozillians (including yourself) aren’t concerned with making others feel welcome.
I don’t care if it was technically hate speech or not, I don’t know if it is. But I know it’s thinly veiled homophobia, and I know you are standing up for it.
Every claim of being made to feel unwelcome, demeaned, or unsafe is not reasonable, even if it is heart-felt and genuine. As an LGBT person who read Gerv’s post, I cannot disagree with its goal more than I do, but fail to see where a reasonable person would find cause to feel unsafe because of it, or unwelcome in the Mozilla community. Just as others mentioned, it is Gerv who seems to be in the most danger of feeling unwelcome for having expressed such views. To me, this suggests there is nothing wrong with the current policy as Gerv is the only one reasonably likely to be “harmed” by his post appearing on Planet.
Planet Mozilla has seemed plenty clear to me about what it is, and I tried to do something similar with my local LUG for the same reason. It’s nice to have a place where you can learn more about the members of the community. I’d hate for that to change. Also if there are people who feel as Gerv does in my community, that’s something I want to know about. Censoring it doesn’t make it go away. Gerv strikes me as an opponent to be engaged in dialog with, not an enemy to be shunned.
The Mozilla-only feeds sound useful in and of themselves, but also sounds like a bit of a project, and not the kind you solve just in code.
Lukas: 1) has already happened, at my request. Clearly this post has caused disruption to our community that is unnecessary and distracting. It is not serving any good purpose by remaining on Planet.
Re: 2), having seen what happened, I have no desire to cause this level of disruption again. I am working on a technical solution to filter posts. (When my blog was on MozillaZine, which it was for many years, I only had one feed; coincidentally, a few months ago, I moved to self-hosted WordPress, which does have category-based feeds, so that is now possible.)
If Planet Mozilla policy stays the same, and it still takes non-Mozilla-related content, I would prefer to use “opt-out” tagging rather than opt-in on my blog, but there is an open question about whether that’s possible. In the mean time, I’ve put in place an interim solution.
I entirely support 3), 4) and 5), as long as (as happened last time), Planet policy is decided by community-wide discussion, with the final decision being taken by the module owners. preed has already noted that perhaps Planet is no longer serving everyone it could be; I hope that will change for the better as a result of this. I support the current policy, but I don’t expect my voice to carry more weight than anyone else’s, and I suspect there will be a majority in favour of change.
Finally, I would repeat a request I’ve made in the past: if people have a problem with me or things that I’m saying, they should come and talk to me about it.
Gerv
Kaida and others: you do not (and cannot) speak on behalf of a whole group of people whose opinions you do not know so please don’t pretend to. This is particularly relevant here.
Gerv, if you’re reading: Channel 4 now right has a very relevant discussion!
@preed
“I don’t think they have any data to intimate (much less outright claim) that Mozilla, as a 501c3 organization or C-corp, is supportive of LGBT rights or people (to any extent further than is required by law).”
Hmm, interesting point. I’d like to think that was pretty much assumed as a baseline, and that if there’s actually no statement/position/policy/whatever that it’s basically as simple as no one’s bothered to go about making it so.
That actually seems like it would be an excellent response to the current situation. And I seem to recall that a number of other tech companies (Google, Microsoft) have taken already taken public positions on such.
Gerv’s post bummed me out.
The internet encourages a distance that makes it easy to hurt others. I already have a thick skin, but when I wear it too often, it gets wrinkled. Occasionally, I have it dry cleaned, and while it’s off, I like to surf parts of the net I expect to be mostly safe. Is this most hurtful thing I read today? No, but it was hurtful enough.
Moderation (which is a social problem, not a technical one) can increase the strength of communities. The very action of Planet being an aggregator belies Moz’s active role in re-publishing the content.
This discussion, which seems to have many common derailing techniques in full force, also bums me out. Telling those in the position of lower power “not to look” is not an effective strategy for hearing honest feedback. Polite society sometimes demands that we keep some of our more controversial opinions to ourselves, or find appropriate places to share them. I had hoped the Planet is a polite society, but I am now unconvinced.
That this particular impoliteness carries Mozilla’s domain name and branding is the biggest bummer of all. I want to be proud of my company and my community, and I am not right now.
As one of the authors of the letter, I hoped that quiet, backchannel communication would allow from subtlety in the discussion, and help prevent escalation. I hoped (and still hope) this discussion would lead to a moderation policy of notifying authors, with something like:
“this post was removed because it violates our community standards, which are at . Planet provides value in publicizing your voices, and to protect that value, we sometimes make decisions not to republish content. Appeal at if you feel this was in error.”
GL
a 5 minute framework for fostering better conversations in comments
With links to MetaFilter, which is a very successful example of how moderated content can improve the value of it.
Greg, you said the people that make up the Planet team should notify authors with something like “this post was removed because it violates our community standards, which are at .”
When Mozilla has a community standards document (which itself will be far more controversial than this one particular issue, IMO,) that might be a reasonable request. But Mozilla doesn’t have a community standards document and it is not Planet Mozilla’s place to determine the Mozilla community standards. Maybe you can come back with that request when you’ve finished working with the Mozilla community to develop that document.
- A
For the record, Asa, yes, we are asking you to change Planet. Quit digging in and actually talk about doing so, please.
We can differ on the degrees of change necessary but this particular storm makes it clear that it is time for some sort of change.
Al, you’ve asked and I’ve said no. It’s that simple. I do not assent to an editorial regime for Planet. Shall I start asking that you and the rest of Mozilla accept a similar editorial regime for IRC, or in the newsgroups, or in the halls of Mozilla physical spaces?
(If I did you’d be right to say “no”.)
I guess we’ll take it up to Mozilla governance then.
Al, that’s where Mitchell and I and others said you should take your concerns this morning. I’m not seeing a lot there.
- A
Huh. Strange. I posted there. I see Axel and others did as well.
Ultimately Planet is either for Mozilla-related topics or it isn’t. If it’s for broader topics then keep on posting Gerv.
Drama King, the current policy and the policy that’s been in place for five years is that members of the Mozilla community get to decide what content they syndicate to Planet. Some choose to syndicate all of their posts to Planet. Others, only some of their posts. That’s how it works and how it’s supposed to work. We count on our community to self-censor rather than having the Planet leadership do it. That works quite well most of the time, and fails enough to cause a major stir about once every 18 months or so. I consider that a pretty good track record.
@Lukas:
I agree that there’s often 6 ways to do things, especially at Mozilla!
I was just pointing out that when people are asking for content to be removed, and they’re doing so in private, it may give people extra pause.
I can tell you it gave me extra pause.
I’m glad to see the Homozilla list publicized.
@Kaida: I’m sorry that my post made you feel that way; what you would have preferred I said is a pretty good summary of my intended message, sans details.
You’re right that I did stand up for Gerv’s ability to post what he wants to Planet (under Planet’s current role), just as I would stand up for your right to post a response. I hope that makes you feel, at least a little bit, as if I value community members’ input and contributions.
Because I do.
@Ron: You’re spot on.
I’m reminded of someone telling me about the New York marriage equality passing; he said it had the moniker of “the nephew amendment” (or similar, IIRC), because it had gotten to the point where most politicians and their (wealthy) supporters knew someone who was LGBT (their nephews), and that’s what made the votes.
We enrich each other with more interactions (and speech), not less.
And we change minds and hearts that way, too.
@dolske: Astute point. My next blog post responds more directly to it.
@Gregg: Given any random morning, it probably would’ve bummed me out too.
I don’t agree that Planet is intended to be “polite society,” in its current role. Maybe a larger portion of the Mozilla community thinks it should be. That’s definitely a conversation we should have.
But not in knee-jerk reaction to a particular post, and not with a 24-hour clock ticking.
@Asa: I didn’t know Mozilla was doing a community standards document. I think that’s great.
Great post J. Paul! I completely agree.
Tough I’m not on Gerv side, I’m quiet surprised about all the noise his post generated.
excellent issues altogether, yyou simply won a emblem new reader.
What might you suggest about your publish that yoou just made a few days in the past?
Anny sure?