Subject: Atom WG sociology

From: Tim Bray <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 12:53:57 -0700

On Oct 7, 2004, at 11:13 AM, Dan Brickley wrote:

> Regarding 'debating style', there's imho no need for this snipey style 
> of
> interaction here. Perhaps you and Eric and Mark know each other very 
> well
> and there's an implicit, friendly smile behind this exchange, but for
> those folks who aren't in the loop, such talk can sour the atmosphere
> and discourage participation.

+1.  And drop the hypotheticals, it already has driven more than one 
person away from Atom.  It also deters people who have new ideas from 
offering them because they worry (justifiably) that they will be 
subject to highschool-playground style abuse.  I wish I knew how to 
stop it.

Paul and I have on multiple occasions leaned on people off-list who've 
been behaving inappropriately, and typically they tend to behave a 
little bit better for two or three weeks and then revert to 
childishness.  So we think that's probably not an effective way to 
approach the problem.  That leaves us with public advocacy, i.e. what 
we're doing here.

-Tim