Aug 21, 2011

Basic Civility

There’s been a lot of talk about basic civility in the Perl community in recent times. And recently O’Reilly has taken a stance on a code of conduct for their conferences. Though, it appears that O’Reilly’s stance may be more motivated out of harassment of women than basic civility.

I think it’s about time we adopted some standard of basic civility for the Perl community. And I think a great place to start that is YAPC. So sometime before YAPC::NA 2012 we will come up with a ridiculously short set of rules that are easy for everyone to follow.

In order for this to work, it can’t be a book, and it can’t be a big list of do’s and don’ts. I think it should just state something like:

While we don’t all have the same experiences, skill levels, or upbringing, we all deserve basic civility and respect. In other words, attack an idea but never a person. Say whatever you want, but consider the context.

If it devolves into lists about what words you can or can’t say, or what topics are off limits, then it’s doomed to failure, because I wouldn’t have anything to do with that, and I bet you wouldn’t either. But I can certainly get behind the idea that even Matt Trout deserves a little civility. =)