so, to summarize and comment the complaints i have seen in the latest blog postings on http://planet.gnome.org and its comments:
i DO want people to post about politics, if they want to. i DO want people to blog about vegetarianism, if they want to. i DO want people to post about what they have done on their day, if they want to. i DO like people with strong opinions or positions, otherwise life and its discussions would become pretty boring. in general, i DO want people to blog about everything they would like to blog about, because it is their own blog. tbf, danielk, if you don’t like this, i kindly ask you to please just ignore those postings. nobody forces you to read every posting here, just skip them – i also skip postings, and i guess nearly everybody does. planet gnome is not exclusively for coding stuff, but about the life of those people behind gnome, and gnome IS people, and of course opinions and positions differ, but that’s perhaps the part that keeps gnome an interesting project for me: it’s not only about code, but about people. thanks.
Thank you very much for posting this.
You DO want Miguel to keep posting his Jew Hate. You DO want him to keep sucking at Microsoft’s filthy TEAT all the while shouting how sweet and tasty Ballmer’s milk is.
You DO want him to continue to be a cretinous traitor to the community that despoils everything he touches.
@Martin:
Miguel can post whatever he wants, and his points of view, whenever he likes. How you interpret his postings is your problem, but obviously i interpret them differently. And calling people “traitors” is this ideology thingy that just always bores me, because i heard it a billion times already. realize that open source software is not a religion, but another business model.
It isn’t about free speech. The right to free speech has to do with preventing gov’t censorship. If you don’t know what our rights are, you won’t be able to defend them. Miguel has no “right” to waste everyone’s time with his liberal ideas on what is meant as a technical feed.
I don’t really mind the political stuff, I just get sad and annoyed that it is an ignorant onslaught from one perspective.
BTW, I’m sure if a defense of the righteousness of the war in Iraq, importance of Gitmo, how Cheney is the best possible prez for 2008, and similar right-wing stuff was posted, it wouldn’t be so accepted..
@Keif:
planet.gnome.org is definitely *not* meant as a technical-only feed, it’s just a window to the life of those heads behind gnome, which also includes private stuff. that is the definition of planet gnome.
regarding your last paragraph: you are probably right that less people would *share* “similar right-wing” opinions, but for me it would not change a thing – still, everybody can blog about what he wants. if i remember correctly there have been pro-republican postings on planet gnome in the past, but people prefered to discuss using arguments, instead of asking to stop political postings. i for myself can only say: i have both right-wing and left-wing friends and i love listening to/discussing with/learning from both of them.
Keif said:
It isn’t about free speech. The right to free speech has to do with preventing gov’t censorship. If you don’t know what our rights are, you won’t be able to defend them. Miguel has no “right” to waste everyone’s time with his liberal ideas on what is meant as a technical feed.
Miguel has every right to talk about whatever he wants to talk about on his own blog. Of course, the p.g.o admins also have the right to not include his feed (although I hope they don’t remove it).
As much as I like the technical info on the planets (a lot!), I feel they would be a bit dry without non-technical posts.
I don’t care if people present views I don’t agree with (political or otherwise). I will either ignore those post, or shake my head and say to myself “I disagree”, or (rarely) I will post some sort of rebuttal in the comments.
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@gicmo: interesting point. :-)
people of course are free to criticize others, sure. but what i criticize is when people tell other people to shut up (and sentences like “please stop annoying us with your vegetarian posts on Planet GNOME” is one of them), because this suppresses freedom of speech. it’s the old question: shall i also be tolerant towards people that are intolerant? i mostly am, i think. but shall i “offer” freedom of speech to those that want others to not speak? a good question, seems like this is the one exception that i feel and that i wasn’t aware of before your posting.
i don’t want monologues, sure. but if you kind of insult people with a simple “shut up”, that’s not really a start of a “dialogue” to me. when writing my post i maybe also had the gnome code of conducts in my mind that i support, and did not mention it.
but in the end i have to admit that you’re right, looked like a contradiction, thanks a lot for pointing it out!