[OpenISO] OpenISO.org Review of OOXML: Launch

[Norbert Bollow]

Claude Almansi <claude.almansi at gmail.com> wrote:

> As a non techie, I find your draft extremely clear.

Thank you!

> So I hope your draft soon becomes definitive, so that we can send it
> through mailing lists of both categories.

My main remaining hesitation is regarding potential participation of
representatives Microsoft and/or their partner companies in the
discussion, and regarding the potential issue of rudeness.

I think that I'm coming to the conclusion that I want to explicitly
invite Microsoft people to participate in the discussion (at the very
least I'm thinking of personally inviting the OOXML advocates whom
Microsoft flew in to Switzerland for the meetings of that subcommittee
of the Swiss Association for Standardization) because on one hand it's
only fair that Microsoft should be made aware of what's going on and
given the opportunity to correct any misunderstandings etc, and
secondly explicitly reaching out to Microsoft to give them this
opportunity is also important with regard to the long-term goal of
building OpenISO.org's credibility.

Of course, if we get active participation from Microsoft's side, it
is possible that there might be rude postings in response, and there
is then the question of whether rudeness is tolerated on the list or
not.

Here's a definition of the type of rudeness that I'm talking about:

  "The deliberate use of provocative language intended to irritate or
  annoy an individual; ascribing negative connotations to an
  individual without evidence or reasoned analysis; mockery or
  dismissal of someone else's honestly held viewpoint."

(Source: Kieren McCarthy,
http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/arc/governance/2007-11/msg00507.html )

I believe that the only reasonable policy is to have a rule against
such rudeness and enforce it irrespective of against whom the rudeness
is directed.

Specifically, here's what I have in mind:

- The "Guidelines" documents and the "welcome messages" for the
  email mailing lists implementing the OpenISO.org "Working
  Groups" will make clear that behavior such as rudeness which
  is disruptive of fact-oriented discussion is not considered
  acceptable, and will result in the transgressor "being moderated"
  (i.e. the mailing list system would hold future postings from
  them for checking and manual approval by a "moderator" who will
  check that the postings are -in his or her reasonable judgement-
  not rude or otherwise disruptive).

- In order to prevent such moderation from resulting in a severe
  loss of transparency and accountability, I plan to set up an
  additional mailing list <modevents at OpenISO.org> which will not
  be used for substantive discussions, but only for informing
  anyone who might be interested about "moderation events" (such
  as someone being added to the list of people whose postings
  will be help for moderation, or a posting being rejected) and
  for complaints/discussion/rants/whatever about such modevents.
  There will be no moderation of the modevents mailing list;
  participants of that mailing list are expected to know how to
  use killfiles or equivalent blackholing techniques.

The point of this set-up is to ensure that rude people and other
trouble-makers are not able to prevent the Working-Group mailing
lists from fullfilling their function.  The modevents mailing list
does not need such protection because it is not a problem with
regard to the goals of OpenISO.org if rude people prevent useful
discussions from occurring on that list.

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org