Debian is Too Large to be Polite? (March 26, 2006)

A lot of the discussion at this year’s Debian leader election is about people on the mailing list being rude and crude. Apparently, the group has grown a little large for fully informal procedures.

Some candidates propose applying a code of conduct around the mailing lists. On its face this sounds counterproductive to me -- a mailing list is supposed to allow all opinions, are they not? With 900 people speaking, you fundamentally need to prepare yourself to get shocked once in a while.

Additionally, many of the people proposing such codes of conduct have not been careful to say how they will enact it. Censorship (why beat around the bush?) can be helpful, sure, but it is important to be woefully careful about it if you want your organization to stay healthy.

Most importantly, though, focusing on crude comments misses the main issue. The issue is for the team to work together to enrich each others' understandings and to make decisions that everyone feels is a fair reflection of the groups' desires. Here are some directions, taken from existing democratic political organizations, that seem likely to help:

• When crafting a general resolution, Debian's closest thing to law, follow a sort of parliamentary procedure that has been adapted to the Internet. That is, everyone gets a round to speak before the next round of rebuttals comes in, etc. I am sure there are clever people in the project who could devise a good protocol.
• Branch off special-interest groups when possible so that the number of people to coordinate in a discussion is manageable. When they are done, they can bring their ideas to the general group for a larger-scale discussion.
• For yes/no legal decisions, such as those discussed on debian-legal, use a judicial system. Have someone advocating each side, and have a judge mediate the back and forth argument. The current situation on debian-legal is essentially mob rule. The popular folks simply drive through what they want and drive out people they do not like.