For those who aren't aware, within the past week we've had some issues arise within our community regarding what's proper behavior for our IRC channel. The conflict being that some individuals were having discussions and posting links that were considered unprofessional and offensive by others. A second chat room was created (#drupal-nyc) and declared the official room, a decision executed with plenty of private discussion but very little public group discussion. Currently, both #drupalnyc and #drupal-nyc are without the Druplicon bot until we have sat down and resolved which room is official as a group.
This incident has brought to my attention that there's a problem within the NYC community regarding how to communicate with each other in a situation where there's conflict, which is causing segmentation and resentment in the group as a whole. It is my belief that the best way to resolve such issues is to communicate with one another in person and/or on g.d.o.
I've started this thread with the intention of starting an open dialogue about how we communicate as a community and how best to resolve conflict as a community when it happens.
Keep it respectful, folks.
Comments
I would like to point out
I would like to point out that even though this conflict happened within NYC community on IRC, it is by no means restricted only to NYC community. This problem happens within Drupal and other open source communities at large. For that reason i'd like to point out that this quote from post above should be read with 'community at large' in mind rather than limited only to NYC scope: "This incident has brought to my attention that there's a problem within the NYC community regarding how to communicate with each other in a situation where there's conflict, which is causing segmentation and resentment in the group as a whole. "
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Sometimes interesting things appears on http://litwol.com
I wasn't a part of said 'conflict ridden' discussion..
That fact matters not.
The truth that rings out to me after having read a few of the comments is that G.D.O is a group of professionals (or at least that's what I expected when I signed up) who have at least part of our individual and in some cases collective livelihoods centered around this awesome product. We have jobs.. and we have clients - all of whom will eventually (hopefully) become enthusiasts who frequent the group and / or IRC as well.
That being said, there's no reason that I can see that we as a group should deal with each other and check our own behavior on anything less than a professional level. If we fail to do so, this less than professional behavior will begin to affect our very professional careers.
Check me at RockTheDrop.com
is there some place where we
is there some place where we can read a transcript or synopsis of the actual conversations under discussion here? I've been out of pocket for a couple of weeks and missed the big flap.
--Kelly Bell
Gotham City Drupal
twitter: @kbell | @gothamdrupal
http://drupal.org/user/293443
Considering improper conduct
Considering improper conduct and lack of community involvement on behalf of those that decided to split and claim "#drupal-nyc" to be the new /official/ channel, i am going to change it back to #drupalnyc (which mainly means link on our homepage to irc channel changes, that's about it). Posting it here to open discussion for those that are interested.
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Sometimes interesting things appears on http://litwol.com
Seriously, enough
My vote is for...
drupal-nyc to be the new official channel. It follows the naming convention so I think it's fine. No one is stopping anyone from drupalnyc channel from saving their old logs.
If anyone wants a nsfw.party channel then they should make one without drupal in the name. It is as simple as that.
it have been done.
it have been done.
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Sometimes interesting things appears on http://litwol.com
Pretty much, this has already
Pretty much, this has already been done. A nsfw non-Drupal related room was created, and the off-topic conversation has entirely moved there.
The issue regarding the IRC room at this point is mostly along the lines of there are now two rooms with essentially the same function, and over the past several days as I've monitored both, are having very similar Drupal related conversations. On this Saturday afternoon, there are 7 people in #drupal-nyc and 12 in #drupalnyc, 6 of the 7 people in #drupal-nyc are in both rooms. There is one person who's only in #drupal-nyc and 6 people are only in #drupalnyc.
The compelling argument for #drupal-nyc is because the name fits the naming convention of most of the Drupal IRC rooms.
The compelling argument for keeping #drupalnyc being it's what we've been using and what people have in their auto-connects.
In my opinion, it doesn't really matter. Probably a better question is who has ops currently and who should have them. That should be something we discuss as a group.
Absolutely correct
I agree - at this point in time this is the key question.
I think those who had ops on the drupalnyc channel did not show the leadership needed to squash the sexist banter that was proving so disturbing to some of our group members. The defense of "hey nobody told us they were offended" is both inaccurate and frankly lame.
The fact that this escalated into having a respected member of the drupal community from outside the nyc group come in to help set up a new channel with different ops is a very unfortunate turn of events for our group.
It is frankly embarrassing and evidence of a lack of appropriate leadership for this group.
My suggestion for our next meetup is that we confirm who is the op on the new drupal-nyc channel, make sure it is someone who we respect to enforce standards of courtesy in our official channel, and drop the irc matter there.
If there is a desire to discuss how we can avoid this sort of conflict in the future that's fine too.
Considering improper conduct
What is this supposed to mean? Who are you accusing of being guilty of improper conduct?
The bottom line is that the room was moved by people who had voiced their valid concerns over the NSFW nonsense. Those concerns were brought up and have been brought up in the past, but have been outright ignored, so people took action to change things.
For me it's about respect. If members of the community are offended (and they are) then why not just admit there is a problem and change the behavior? Accusing people of "lack of community involvement" because people are unwilling post transcripts and defend their position publicly in this post is just wrong. It has been discussed publicly. I'm shocked by the way this whole thing has been playing out, and I'm just really sad and disappointed about it.
I vote for #drupal-nyc.
NSFW = unprofessional
Done. End of Story.
My thoughts:
Keep it for Drupal Beers ... and an alternative IRC channel, it's not like you guys are paying for the channel anyway.
Change the official room name to #drupal-nyc <-- to follow suit. I know that all the developers understand that.
Let litwol maintain #drupal-nyc. Yes, he can step up to the plate and be the honorable ruskie that we know he can be.
No one has to post "past conversations" as this isn't the Inquisition.
Respect others.
Look both ways when crossing the street.
Flush.
(i am talking about your caches)
kapish?
There are plenty channels
There are plenty channels with dash, dot and not in their name. Dash word separator is by no means the "official" way naming channels. Not sure why we are wasting time discussing the naming rules as there are none.
I understand emotions are running high (for some) but it seem to completely prevent those from seeing changes. It seems just saying it is not enough, instead of tarnishing from the side lines, try joining the channel and see the changes for yourself.
I will absolutely not stand on the sidelines and watch selected individuals decide the fate and cause fragmentation of this community over private conversations and absolutely no community involvement. On the other hand if you and several of your friends want to open a private channel for specific topics then by all means you should do so, but you will not call it the /official new NYC channel/. If you wish to bring changes to community at large you are more than welcome to start discussion on g.d.o and give chance for everyone to weight in.
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Sometimes interesting things appears on http://litwol.com
I resent these accusations
I resent these accusations and I refuse to sit here and be ignored while being attacked indirectly for speaking out against inappropriate behavior. It's disgusting and it makes me physically sick.
Bye-bye NYC group... Will miss most of you.
Can someone please provide some context here?
For an "outsider's" benefit... I keep hearing snippets of details about this in IRC and such and am trying to figure out what the whole story is. As a Drupal "community manager," for lack of a better word, it's obviously very concerning to me when I see what looks like people driven out of a user group due to some sort of conflict with the organizers.
Can someone please provide the back-story, so we can get this resolved in an amicable manner? I'm happy to mediate.
so, what exactly is NSFW?
Given the genre of work i engage in, i'm extremely confused about what exactly is not suitable for work, when something that is actually work might be offensive. Everything on the web is someone's work, whether it be a version of art (including porn) or a business oriented site (like financial advisers). This discussion is confusing and extremely opinionated. There is much content which might be considered not suitable for work, but while taking a small peek at the forum gofuckyourself.com they are all discussing web mastery of inappropriate content (using the definition i'm receiving from this thread) at a professional level.
NSFW is a term which should be used for content that is out of context AND could be found offensive to some or any. in direct response and common understand with webchick, i too am completely misunderstanding what was deemed offensive and what context that content was put in.
Someone needs to put out on the table why they were offended and on what grounds it was offensive. There is an explanation to everything and i'm sure as a community so intelligent and knowledgeable as ours, we could come to a calm mature understanding to what happened and set newly outlined agreements to what is appropriate conduct and what is not. just like Drupal itself, we all need to be flexible enough to integrate our community with our professional lives.
--
Mike Nichols
My Own Soho, LLC
mike@myownsoho.net
www.myownsoho.com
Mike, see here
http://drupal.org/node/748600#comment-2773512
As a long time member of the drupal nyc group I can attest to the accuracy of what Jen describes as comments to be found in drupalnyc over the last couple of years. I can also attest that a number of folks - both male and female - have objected to it over that time.
How many didn't object, but simply chose not to be a part of such a group?
Is this really OK for our community?
thank you for making this
I appreciate your description and Jen's specifics about an event that involved direct inappropriate communication that singled out an individual. It was unclear to me initially that this conflict involved something so specific and was not in response to an arbitrary reference to content outside the community.
Everyone should have the same courage to respond to anyone offending them.
winston: thank you for clarifying this and making Jen's post more visible.
[edited for clarification]
--
Mike Nichols
My Own Soho, LLC
mike@myownsoho.net
www.myownsoho.com
Where has the communication gone?
there is no point in starting another channel, but there is a strong point in dealing with the issues in the original channel instead of opening a new channel behind closed doors without the express knowledge of the group as a whole. I believe that a community deals with things together and what happened with #drupalnyc and the decision to open #drupal-nyc was NOT handled as a community movement.
bending technology to fit businesses.
As a normal DrupalNYC member,
As a normal DrupalNYC member, what happened to me was that the official IRC room was taken out and a new official room was created almost in one day. and I didn't receive any emails about the sudden change. What's the criteria to make a room official? and what's the process of doing it? I thought we would an issue queue for things like this, but I only saw the issue about making the IRC guidelines. I know we don't have much bureaucracy in Drupal community. but I feel that having made #drupal-nyc official was a less thought out move.
I think that is a valid question
However I think a more important question is what's the criteria for someone to be an op on a regional drupal* irc channel? What responsibility is there for that person to make sure that the channel stays drupal focused and a sfw place for anyone who wants to talk drupal in the local community?
The really sad answer to your question is that the reason there isn't a formal process/criteria for making this sort of change in IRC channels is because we have blazed the path of infamy for others.
Isn't anyone else ashamed or embarrassed that the current content of this page - http://drupal.org/irc/guidelines - is a response to activities in the NYC community?
Freenode policy
We all channel founders and operators of freenode must comply and enforce their off-topic policy at http://freenode.net/policy.shtml#offtopic.
Who gets ops it's a matter of the channel's/group founder, and some channel ops measure worthiness by the amount of support they provide to others, not by their skills as a programmer or designer. I can agree to giving ops to active channel users who actually support and contribute their time to others with issues or questions, as these are users who can help bring new talent to the group.
I think the guidelines page should have had the freenode's policy page in the first place since they are using their service and there are dozens of #drupal* related channels on it.
bending technology to fit businesses.
Sounds like we're in agreement then
From everything you're saying clearly the op of drupalnyc (vs the new drupal-nyc) was in fact not enforcing the off-topic policy.
Complaints to that effect (sexist comments, etc.) were lodged multiple times over at least a one year period of time.
And yet the problem persisted.
Seems to me the correct community action was for someone from the drupal community at large to step in which is exactly what happened.
RIGHT ON @ skyredwang
I think your "less thought out move" statement is what I probably should have said in my first comment. Why give any individual (or other group for that matter) so much power and control as to cause people to run to a new IRC channel. THat's #$(&! ridiculous. Is this really a situation where we want to be so childish as to "take my ball and go home"? There are certainly (afaik) more professional methods to handle this situation.
Sounds to me like if this went down in the workplace, someone would be apologizing and rethinking their actions before it causes a problem in the pocket.
Check me at RockTheDrop.com
First of all, I want to
First of all, I want to apologize for any additional drama that starting this thread may have brought forth. That was not my intent in bringing up the issue to community at large.
I haven't been under the impression that anyone has objected to the end outcome of this specific incident, which at this point is that the official IRC room was changed to #drupal-nyc, it's to be focused on Drupal related conversation and off-topic chatter should be kept off the channel.
I'm inclined to accept that decision, and move on to more important matters.
There are two main issues that I feel the group needs to address.
One, there are people within this community who feel that they witnessed something take place over an extended period of time that they could not speak out about because they'd either be ignored or judged for bringing attention to it. How do we, as a community, prevent this from happening again?
Two, there are people within this community who are concerned about how the decisions regarding the changes that occurred in response to this incident were made. Ideally, the NYC community should have been equipped to have handled this incident without the need for involvement of the g.d.o administrators. How do we, as a community, handle resolving conflicts after we learn about them?
I would say that historically speaking, Drupal is a very laid back community. I've heard the term do-ocracy used to describe the government structure of the project, that is, decisions are made in the Drupal community by doing. It's a great way to run an open source project that serves diverse needs because it keeps the barrier of entry low so anyone can jump in and start participating.... and that philosophy is echoed in how most of local community groups are run. You want to have meetups? Organize them. You want to talk about something? Lead a discussion on it. You want to have a beer? Meet me at House of Brews at 51st and 8th on Wednesday. However, there's something do-ocracy doesn't seem to work well for... and that is handling social conflicts.
In my opinion, the problem with using do-ocracy to solve social conflicts is that generally social conflict comes with strong, emotional feelings about something. When people decide to just do and not discuss, it tends to create more social conflict, and social conflict tends to cause people to not want to be a part of the community. I'm personally quite embarrassed that there are currently people who don't want to be a part of the NYC community anymore because of the intensity of conflict that's been occurring within this group.
I personally believe that conflicts within a group are best solved through discussion. Understanding that discussion can be difficult when people are upset and hurt, I believe that it's wise to have a set of guidelines prepared to guide you through resolving a conflict. That would include procedures for how to report an issue, how to respond to an issue initially, what to do if the problem escalates, etc.
This group personally means a great deal to me both on a personal and a professional level. I have met amazingly talented peers in the NYC group and I've made some pretty amazing friends as well, and it distresses me on a rather deep level that so many people, regardless of their reasons, are unhappy right now. I think we're in a position currently to learn from our mistakes, and come up with a plan so we don't end up repeating these mistakes in the future.
well put
I really like the way you've put this nikkiana. You've been a part of many different web-based communities as they've evolved over the years, and you definitely have a lot to offer in this realm.
Do you (or anyone else here) have some specific examples of how other communities have set up systems to resolve conflicts like this?
http://www.thomasturnbull.com
http://twitter.com/thomasturnbull
Community Standards
I am tired of the drama, but clearly #drupal-nyc is to be the official channel.
Back-story and next steps
We had a long talk about this on #drupal-nyc tonight, trying to come to some sort of step forward here. This post was written jointly by several folks including litwol, jensimmons, Jacine, RobLoach, likewhoa, and myself.
The back-story is this. #drupalnyc was originally started as a channel back when the NYC group was a small, closely knit group of members, and they used the channel not only to talk about Drupal but also as a general social channel, so funny jokes were posted and so on. As the channel grew larger and more diverse, this same mentality persisted, since that's how it had always traditionally been. As a result, unconsciously or not, when newer members raised issues about the content of the channel being generally unprofessional and sometimes deeply offensive, this criticism was consistently not taken seriously.
After a few years of trying, off and on, to mount both a "grassroots" effort to change the tone in the channel as well as confronting offending members personally, and not having their concerns acknowledged – finally some folks in desperation decided to start another channel. New #drupal-nyc would act as the "official" channel, with the help of some Drupal higher-ups to make it so, and this way the old channel could be left with its pre-existing culture in place. This was seen as a reasonable compromise to those involved, but not to regulars in the #drupalnyc channel, because the decision was made outside of normal group processes.
Litwol, the admin of #drupalnyc, has taken steps to try and remedy the old situation; for example, moving all "social" talk to a separate channel, and laying down a mandate that from now, on only appropriate conversations could be had. However, the trust between the two groups seems irrevocably shattered, from what I can tell. The #drupal-nyc folks feel that their concerns were repeatedly dismissed and that the culture of #drupalnyc directly cause people to not come to meet-ups and such. Litwol felt that proper procedures weren't followed, and had he known that the issue was THAT bad he would've intervened far ahead of time, despite originally neglecting/rejecting the issue.
After several hours of discussion, a compromise has been reached, that all parties are willing to accept. The #drupalnyc channel will automatically redirect to #drupal-nyc. This will become the new official channel, where the standard IRC channel guidelines will be upheld. #drupal-nyc is now publicly advertised in all the usual places, and #drupal-nyc also includes the presence of our beloved Druplicon.
Many thanks to all involved, and hopefully this will allow the community to put these incidents behind us.
Very happy about this!
Thanks so much webchick, and very happy we were able to come to a happy compromise.
I have a suggestion which I'll also post on our next meetup. My suggestion is that we NOT have this BOF session about conflict resolution at our April meetup, but rather hold it till May. I think that will put more time and space between, drupalcon will have come and gone, and hopefully folks can approach a "conflict resolution in the NYC community" discussion in May with a cool calm disposition.
I agree with Peter on this
I agree with Peter on this wholeheartedly - let's put this off until May meetup.
--Kelly Bell
Gotham City Drupal
twitter: @kbell | @gothamdrupal
http://drupal.org/user/293443
Concerned about the problem; my suggestions
I have been an active member of the Drupal NYC meetups since summer 2007, but I have not spent much time in #drupalnyc for a long time. I was completely unaware of the community conflict issues until very recently, which I saw coming up through the e-mail alerts. I got very concerned when I saw that Jacine had been so offended that she apparently quit the group. I therefore got on #drupalnyc two nights ago and had a long discussion with litwol, robloach, likewhoa, and skyred, all of whom I know from meetups.
At that time, I did not even know that #drupal-nyc existed. I also was completely unaware of the past history of complaints about sexist comments on #drupalnyc, which winston pointed to in a comment the other day. I also was completely unaware that Ghetto Prodigy also had past issues. It seems to me that all of the past issues have been handled well, and completely appropriately, by senior drupal people such as webchick, chx, merlin, and greggles getting involved, and the creation of #drupal-nyc. (I just wish that I had know about #drupal-nyc).
Given the past history, I don't see any reason why anybody is upset about the fact that a separate #drupal-nyc channel has been created. I also think that winston, nikkiana, and others from the local community are doing a good job of discussing this within the group. Like nikkiana, I have a long past history with several other open source groups (perl, ruby/rails, flex) and I also think it is important to discuss these things openly, rather than just hoping that they go away.
It seems to me that the overall situation right now is pretty good. There is a bof discussion of this planned for the next meetup, and it seems to me that the groundwork has been done by everyone involved such that the discussion can take place without devolving into an argument. However, I do think we still need to be very careful during that discussion to try to avoid problems, and reach agreements, as much as possible.
Thanks to everyone involved for all of the work that has been done to resolve this issue constructively.
sometimes it's inadvertant, but egregious and habitual offenders
I have been out of this loop - I decided to take a look at this very active thread after receiving many email notices about it.
It appears that the Drupal NYC community has debated and resolved some self-policing policies and arrived at a new IRC name that more closely follows the convention of others. This is all good.
I'd like to note that I have inadvertently "spammed" a different community (a spades meetup) when I thought I was sending email to the moderator and it ended up going to all. While I don't think that is the situation in question here, the community should take care to reserve judgment for egregious and habitual offenders, not just the occasional slip-up.
¿ are you netsperienced ?
♥ follow me @decibelplaces ∞
One piece is missing here...
According to freenode staff, #drupalnyc is not in the Drupal group space but #drupal-nyc is. Regardless of everything else that happened, that channel was clearly wrongly named.
Conflict resolution
I am offended by this language:
"Folks let's think outside the box a moment...does the situation above seem reasonable or even sound logical? Or is it more probable that some folks in drupal-nyc might just be unethical and full of S$%T ? Perhaps something deeper is happening? Time will tell.... "
Darryl Penrice, this language will not motivate anyone to do more than they are already doing to fight poverty. Want to think outside the box? Consider the possibility that you are in a conflict with others in NYC Drupal because you are perceived as wrapping the laudable theme of fighting poverty around the purpose of promoting your own self-interests.
For what it's worth, my advice, if you are really sincere about doing what you can to eliminate hunger, is to apologize for your poor choice of words and, in the future, avoid any language laden with negative connotations. Eventually you may find that eating chitlins is not necessarily what defines our common humanity.
By the way, my offer to help you with your project still stands, if you change your mind about predicating the thematic content of your project on hip hop and rap music.
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Hold up...
I've been quietly watching this thread unfold and checked back today to see what was new. I was planning to respond to Ghetto_Prodigy and say that while I appreciate the connections he's making between his earlier conflicts with members of #drupal-nyc and the specific issues that sparked this particular thread, I also think that he's started co-opting this thread to focus of his own beef. That seems neither productive nor respectful of the issues directly at hand and the people involved.
However, then I read Kipp Elliott Watson's post, felt a little skeptical about how he addressed Ghetto_Prodigy by his full name and not his handle like some sort of parental scolding and about his statement that "eating chitlins is not necessarily what defines our common humanity" - these things just seemed a little dubious to me.
But then I got to this sentence:
Um... what? Kipp, I'd ask you to clarify what you meant there, because that statement combined with the others I cited above look pretty problematic to me.
Hold up
jackaponte,
I met with Darryl in Manhattan sometime last September. I wanted to meet with him because I am involved in a Hunger Initiative Committee sponsored by my Rotary District and I thought his project and our efforts to combat hunger would be a natural fit. During this meeting, which took place in a restaurant, we talked at length about his vision for a website. At one point he told me he has a lot of contacts in the music world and he wanted to promote certain musicians on the project website to help with fundraising. I gave him my opinion that it was not a good idea to mix the content of hip hop/rap music with the idea of ending hunger on a global basis, because of message dilution. I told him I would help him with the project if he would not dilute the message and go with a site that focuses solely on the issue of hunger and how to end it on a global basis. He bluntly told me he could not drop the music angle because he saw no other way of him personally surviving economically. We parted company shortly after that.
jackaponte, I hope this clarify things for you. I am not comfortable about reporting this incident, but I am obligated to report this because I think people should adhere to a higher level of ethics before criticizing others for ethical frailties, however perceived.
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@Kipp - I appreciate the
@Kipp - I appreciate the context and clarification, even if I'm not sure I agree with your reasoning. But a discussion of that would definitely be off-topic, so let's not!
@jackaponte I appreciate your
@jackaponte I appreciate your concern here but let's not get sidetracked on that issue further. As webchick said: It's been well documented. Further discussion about that issue, including meta discussion, is off topic.
@ezra-g: As indicated in my
@ezra-g: As indicated in my post, I agree that Ghetto_Prodigy's discussion of his issues quickly went off-topic, though I don't think he was entirely off-topic when he first brought it up in direct relation to the issues at hand in this thread.
However, I was primarily responding to an element of Kipp's response that I found to be highly dubious and possibly racially problematic. His clarification helped me understand where he was coming from.
Kipp was also responding to Ghetto_Prodigy in his post; if you're trying to get people to not discuss the issues that Ghetto_Prodigy has been bringing up, I don't understand why you didn't also address Kipp in your post.
OK
Anymore replies in this thread makes kittens drink themselves to death!!
Thanks to webchick for stepping up and resolving this in a community manner by having an open discussion on IRC.
bending technology to fit businesses.
The Importance of Being Right
This thread reminded me of something...
http://xkcd.com/386/