I was lured to Ruby two years ago -- initially by way of Rails until I found the wonderful and powerful language that made it possible. Since that discovery, I quickly made Ruby my primary programming language and made strives to find projects where I could use it to best effect.
However, unlike many of you, my life is constrained by the health of someone near and dear to me. I am a caregiver. Most of the friends that I made in my pre-caregiver life simply could not identify with or understand my decision to assume this role. Slowly but inexorably these friends disappeared. My life became circumscribed by the needs of this loved one.
And then I attended my first Ruby conference and was changed.
I found a different set of friends and a different community. Early on, I was introduced to the mantra "Matz is nice and so we are nice". It has been my impression that, generally, we Rubyists are decent folk. As such, I have dedicated a sizable portion of my life to them as was evidenced lately by Ruby DCamp.
I have had the privilege of meeting numerous brilliant and even compassionate individuals who share the same passion for Ruby as I. I am proud to call some of these individuals my friends.
Yet we are an unusual community, made up of individuals of a diverse set of ages and backgrounds. By nature there will certainly be misunderstandings.
While it is wrongheaded to expect that people from such diverse backgrounds can share the same values, they can at least share their opinions in a civil fashion. To that extent, I emphatically agree with the assertion made by Rich Kilmer, for whom I have developed a healthy respect of late, that we should all demand civility.
However, it is unfair for Rich to assert how we, as individuals, should value ourselves. How we value ourselves is about as personal decision as they come. Clearly, in these remarks, Rich is defending his close friend, Chad Fowler from Giles' outrage.
While I will not endorse the demeanor of Giles' retort, I do uphold the generalities of his initial message: We should defend our community from chaos. The role of the leader is to unify. Leaders who sow chaos are not leaders at all.
Our de facto leaders should be at least as accountable as the rest of the community. Responsibility and accountably naturally follow authority otherwise wherefore trust?
While I do not support lashing out at one another, the community needs a way to make its leaders accountable while ensuring that respect flows both ways and civility is maintained.
at 11:55 AM
Great point!
But it's difficult, err, accountability is difficult in a voluntary community like this... we all choose to be here, participating in the community. We can leave at will (Zed, for instance). Enforcing and accountability just aren't possible... are they?
How have other communities handled this? Is it earning and losing respect that we use to render this accountability?
Curious what your thoughts are on this.
at 12:13 PM
Face/respect is the obvious currency. Another is eyeballs/feet. If you don't value what someone has to say, don't give them your attention. However, neither are accountability.
Also we are not entirely a voluntary community. We are actually a plurality of communities, some voluntary and others not. There are pockets of officialdom (i.e., Ruby Central, Offices held by *UG organizers, Conference organizers -- admittedly pointing at myself now too). These seem to be tough nuts to crack because Ruby Central is self-policing, *UGs are accountable to their membership (yet another volunteer community), and conference organizers are accountable to their attendees and sponsors.
I intentionally left the "how" of accountability an open question. I wish that I had a good answer.
at 06:13 PM
So a couple hours ago I posted that I hoped people could move on and calm down. Since then I got an e-mail which suggests he might have bigger fish to fry - rumor has it there's been a death in his family. Except for some people who seriously freaked out, I think it's obvious to everybody who's seen my rant that the werewolf-killing was a metaphor. Actual real-world death is a big freaking deal and we should leave the guy alone. I'm not taking back anything I said, but let's just table the whole issue and bring it up again later when we can criticize the guy without being total heartless douchebags.
And I'm not calling you that - I know you wrote this way before this news - I've been travelling and moving apartments and doing all kinds of crap and it's been difficult keeping track of everything. But seriously, let's let it go already. I think my criticism was vivid enough that bugging the guy any further would probably be unnecessary in any event.
at 08:27 PM
Have you ever noticed that this mantra of being nice is never repeated back at people like Chad, Dave T. and Matz?
Let's take Matz. He willfully released a version of Ruby that couldn't even run rails, and left it that way for months. I don't even know if it's still broken or not, mostly because I don't use Ruby anymore.
Did anyone tell Matz he should be nice? Nope, instead they defend him and when you question his authority they just say,
"Hey you should be nice."
In reality, it's a lot like someone telling you that disagreeing with The President means you're obviously not a patriot. It's just a stupid phrase that's designed to make you stop thinking for yourself.