CHSTECH

Thank you for your help creating such an open and self-moderating community. That said, there are times when community members might need moderation of a potentially heated discussion. Conflict happens in every large community and there needs to be a published process for dispute resolution between users.

The #moderators room has been created to help address this issue (because all problems can be solved by creating more channels!). Moderators should be involved as a last resort and the community should heed the Code of Conduct regarding civility and debate. Ultimately, moderators will not make a decision about who is “correct” in a particular situation, but are available to enforce the civility of discussion.

The Code of Conduct has been updated to include a moderation process and a list of moderator responsibilities. The moderators are reaching out to various tech groups for broader insight and advice on how to approach heated situations with both integrity and sensitivity.

Moderators

Based on their involvement in this Slack and recommendations from the community, the following people were asked to act as moderators:

Bill Mote

Heather Solos

Scott Sanders

Rob Colantuoni

Chris O'Rourke

twilson63

Common Types of Issues

Argumentum ad hominem

Attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.

For Example:

User1: Personally, I prefer to use regular expressions for parsing HTML when web scraping.
User2: What kind of crap developer does that? So stupid! Too many edge cases!

An alternate reaction by User2 would have been more constructive:

User1: Personally, I prefer to use regular expressions for parsing HTML when web scraping.
User2: It might seem the easier route initially, but you’ll save yourself time and headaches by using a proper parsing library. Let me send you some resources I’ve used when tackling the same issue.

Trolling

Making a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them.

For Example:

User1: They should ban Perl in 49 states and send all the Perl developers to Alaska!
User2: Actually, Alaska is pretty nice this time of year...

An alternate method for User1 to portray their viewpoint:

User1: I've tried developing in Perl and I can't understand why they have all the sigils - not my cup of tea!
User2: Yeah, there is an interesting interview with Larry Wall where he discusses the sigils and his thought process. Let me dig up the link, you might find it enlightening!