[Foundation-l] Our values

[Florence Devouard]

Matthew Britton wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> - I do not believe that we should ever sacrifice friendliness "for the 
>> greater good".
> You haven't edited the English Wikipedia recently, have you?
> 
> -Gurch

Well...

This is also what I mean by difference between "preferred values" and 
"actual values".

It seems to me that "wikilove" is something most of us would like to see 
as one of our value (a mix of respect for others, what they do, what 
they believe in, and a desire to listen to them rather than just 
straight telling them they are jerks if they believe in blablabla...). 
It is a desire of empathy for others. For some of us, it is because it 
is the type of environment they prefer. For others, very practically, 
because it is *good* for the project to have a great diversity of 
approaches and skills, and we can not have this diversity if there is 
not a minimum of tolerance and trust.

This said, we can not make wikilove a rule, a policy, but certainly a 
guideline in how we expect editors to behave one with each other.
On some websites, the people are not expected to behave nicely with each 
others. In some TV shows, you are even expected to be nasty and vicious 
with the other people on the stage. I would hope that the majority of us 
would prefer respect and tolerance at a minimum. Limits of tolerance are 
very quickly reached when a very racist person, or a pedophile, or a 
extrem-right wing person is editing. But still, we do not ban them on 
the spot, right ?
Wikilove can only be a guidelines, a hope.

That does not mean that this guidelines is always respected. Yes, there 
are edit wars, yes, there are personal attacks, yes, there is 
cyberstalking etc... and yes the english wikipedia is not always very 
friendly. But is this really the type of working environment we are 
looking for ?

Ant