Re: [VOTE] Contributor Guidelines, and Updates to Code of Conduct progress

On 09.02.2016, at 15:33, Derick Rethans <derick@php.net> wrote: > > On Tue, 9 Feb 2016, Zeev Suraski wrote: > >> 1. "Debate the technical issues, and never attack a person's opinion. >> People will disagree, so be it." >> >> I think this sentence is problematic. Not that I'm pro-attacks, but >> opinions - as ideas - should absolutely be up for scrutiny and debate. >> What I think we should say instead is this: >> >> "Debate the ideas, never attack the person holding them." >> >> Criticizing ideas is absolutely fine, and it's healthy. Ideas can be >> bad even if they don't have any 'technical issues' in them. It's the >> personal attacks we should avoid. And of course, the criticism should >> be to-the-point - but the proposed text already covers that. >> >> We can consider adding another important part of the equation - "Don't >> consider critique of an idea you proposed as critique of you >> personally." As humans, we tend to do that, and we shouldn't. > > I've changed it to: > > * Debate the technical issues, and ideas behind them, but never attack the > person holding them. People will disagree, so be it. I agree with Zeev here. It would be good to simplify this, and adding an explicit note about the inverse as well. Something like: "Debate issues and ideas, not the person holding them. Regardless of what side of a discussion you're on, realize that criticism of ideas or actions is distinct from criticism of a person." David