Let's rename "Planet Mozilla" to "Planet Mozillians"

[Richard Soderberg (:atoll)]

Let's rename "Planet Mozilla" to "Planet Mozillians", with rebranding and UI cleanup - and feeding it using a list of feeds from the Mozillians database, rather than a list curated by human beings at Mozilla.

Planet permits Mozilla folks to say "please republish every post on my blog to planet". A few folks choose instead to say "please republish only Mozilla posts on my blog". Prior to Mozillians, it may be that Planet is the only way for the rest of the world to find and follow people within the Mozilla community.

With Mozillians, that is no longer the case. There are structured data formats that permit us to readily share a list of RSS feed links with the world. Planet has traditionally maintained a feed list associated with each person on planet; long-term, Planet should source that list from Mozillians rather than maintaining a duplicate "list of Mozillians".

Once the content is clearly Mozillians and not Mozilla, we're conveying more clearly that "this is what Mozillians say" and also "this is not what Mozilla says". People could choose to narrow their "Planet Mozillians" focus to only, say, UX engineers. Or DBAs, or desktop, or whatever. It permits more effective curiosity and exploration of what we all do, without requiring fancy topic filters or daily human curation of every single post to Planet.

- R.

ps. Various folks have either asked for, or presumed that Planet is already, a curated feed of "Mozilla posts from Mozillians". There is no such curation today. I would love to see a "curated Mozilla posts from Mozillians" blog, as a useful replacement for the old "Planet Mozilla" that we have today, but I don't know what I would call it, and it's unrelated to making Planet more correctly reflect "Mozillians" rather than "Mozilla".

[Rubén Martín]

El 07/03/12 19:16, Richard Soderberg (:atoll) escribió:

> Once the content is clearly Mozillians and not Mozilla, we're conveying more clearly that "this is what Mozillians say" and also "this is not what Mozilla says". People could choose to narrow their "Planet Mozillians" focus to only, say, UX engineers. Or DBAs, or desktop, or whatever. It permits more effective curiosity and exploration of what we all do, without requiring fancy topic filters or daily human curation of every single post to Planet.

What's the difference for you between Mozilla and Mozillians?

For me it's the same, Mozilla is an organization formed by Mozillians,
so current "Planet Mozilla" title makes totally sense to me.

Regards.

--
Rubén Martín [Nukeador]
Mozilla Reps Council Member
http://www.mozilla-hispano.org
http://twitter.com/mozilla_hispano
http://facebook.com/mozillahispano

[Al Billings]

On 3/7/12 10:45 AM, Rubén Martín wrote:
> El 07/03/12 19:16, Richard Soderberg (:atoll) escribió:
>> Once the content is clearly Mozillians and not Mozilla, we're conveying more clearly that "this is what Mozillians say" and also "this is not what Mozilla says". People could choose to narrow their "Planet Mozillians" focus to only, say, UX engineers. Or DBAs, or desktop, or whatever. It permits more effective curiosity and exploration of what we all do, without requiring fancy topic filters or daily human curation of every single post to Planet.
> What's the difference for you between Mozilla and Mozillians?
>
> For me it's the same, Mozilla is an organization formed by Mozillians,
> so current "Planet Mozilla" title makes totally sense to me.

The difference is that the current branding and mozilla.org domain makes
it looks like the Mozilla project and community endorses everything that
shows up on Planet Mozilla. That combined with an uncurated feed meets
that questionable content from someone's blog can be posted there and
look like it is part of the official Mozilla position to news and other
outside parties.

Frankly, I'd rather read a curated news feed and subscribe separately to
personal blogs.

Al

[Axel Hecht]

I would like to voice my opinion against that.

Open-source planets are "this is what this community is about and what's
up".

It's totally fine for that to be a source of disagreements.

To digress into two more side-tracking threads:

AFAIK, mozillians.org is going to be rebranded to connect.mozilla.org,
so the 'mozillians' brand is going away.

Digressing more, and excuse me, as I don't feel good. Just feeling less
good to not mention: The recent outbreak seems to be bound to the
relation between religion and politics. From my cultural perspective,
that relation is weird in the US. As such I think that for US folks,
that post might have crossed a line that doesn't exist in other parts of
the world. For other parts in the world, the line might have been
crossed at a completely different place.

That's cool, we're mozilla. We disagree on stuff, sometimes strongly.
Branding won't change that, nor change the public perspective on things.

Axel

PS: Digress 3, abillings' return was quite adequate and sufficient in my POV

[Aakash Desai]

> AFAIK, mozillians.org is going to be rebranded to connect.mozilla.org, so
the 'mozillians' brand is going away.

Actually, that's not true. The URL is changing, but the Mozillians brand
will stay. We'll simply call it the Mozillians phonebook on the design
elements.

> ______________________________**_________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/governance<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance>
>

[Benoit Jacob]

----- Original Message -----
> I would like to voice my opinion against that.
>
> Open-source planets are "this is what this community is about and
> what's
> up".
>
> It's totally fine for that to be a source of disagreements.

Alright, could we then also have a separate thing, that would be purely for communicating about Mozilla projects?

While I understand that many people like the Planet in its current form, there are other people like me would are looking for something slightly different: something that would be purely a place to communicate about what's going on in and around Mozilla projects, a place where there would never be any personal/political posts.

Cheers,
Benoit

>
> To digress into two more side-tracking threads:
>
> AFAIK, mozillians.org is going to be rebranded to
> connect.mozilla.org,
> so the 'mozillians' brand is going away.
>
> Digressing more, and excuse me, as I don't feel good. Just feeling
> less
> good to not mention: The recent outbreak seems to be bound to the
> relation between religion and politics. From my cultural perspective,
> that relation is weird in the US. As such I think that for US folks,
> that post might have crossed a line that doesn't exist in other parts
> of
> the world. For other parts in the world, the line might have been
> crossed at a completely different place.
>
> That's cool, we're mozilla. We disagree on stuff, sometimes strongly.
> Branding won't change that, nor change the public perspective on
> things.
>
> Axel
>
> PS: Digress 3, abillings' return was quite adequate and sufficient in
> my POV

> _______________________________________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
>

[Robert O'Callahan]

On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 11:02 PM, Axel Hecht <ax...@pike.org> wrote:

> I would like to voice my opinion against that.
>
> Open-source planets are "this is what this community is about and what's
> up".
>
> It's totally fine for that to be a source of disagreements.
>

That might work if everyone visiting planet.m.o understood it. But many
don't and years of fine print haven't fixed it. Frequently when I posted
non-Mozilla-related content (especially controversial stuff) that got
picked up by Planet, I'd get comments "woah, what's this non-Mozilla
content doing here" ... and I bet a lot more people thought it than
commented.

I'm uncertain whether I personally want to read the "whole feeds" of the
Mozilla community, but I think Planet visitors deserve to have reasonable
expectations met, and I think having content on planet.mozilla.org be
related to the Mozilla project is a reasonable expectation. (So once I
became able to restrict my Planet feed to just Mozilla-related content, I
started doing that.)

I think the project and community will be better off if
planet.mozilla.orgis restricted to content related to the Mozilla
project, and some other
site is set up to aggregate the complete feeds of Mozilla community members
for whoever wants that.

Rob
--
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your Father in heaven. ... If you love those
who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors
doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more
than others?" [Matthew 5:43-47]

[Ken Saunders]

There are many options in place today (Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca,
blogs of course), where people can get to know and follow the personal
lives of Mozillians if they so choose, so it would be nice to have a
place to follow activities specific to the Mozilla project and nothing
more.

Since Mozilla is global, and most of us all have different political,
religious, cultural, moral, and other beliefs, I think it's best to
separate personal and professional items.

If I were asked to name the one thing that I loved most about Mozilla,
it would be that we come together as one with common goals despite the
differences that I mentioned above.

Ken


On Mar 7, 6:38 pm, "Robert O'Callahan" <rob...@ocallahan.org> wrote:

[Robert Accettura]

Ken:

This already exists as has been mentioned on the planet blog for several weeks every week:
http://planet.mozilla.org/projects/

The debate is about limiting speech there and elsewhere to something approved by a set of people TBD.

-R

On Mar 7, 2012, at 7:18 PM, Ken Saunders wrote:

> There are many options in place today (Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca,
> blogs of course), where people can get to know and follow the personal
> lives of Mozillians if they so choose, so it would be nice to have a
> place to follow activities specific to the Mozilla project and nothing
> more.
>
> Since Mozilla is global, and most of us all have different political,
> religious, cultural, moral, and other beliefs, I think it's best to
> separate personal and professional items.
>
> If I were asked to name the one thing that I loved most about Mozilla,
> it would be that we come together as one with common goals despite the
> differences that I mentioned above.
>
> Ken
>
>
> On Mar 7, 6:38 pm, "Robert O'Callahan" <rob...@ocallahan.org> wrote:

[Asa Dotzler]

On 3/7/2012 3:26 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> I would like to voice my opinion against that.
>>
>> Open-source planets are "this is what this community is about and
>> what's
>> up".
>>
>> It's totally fine for that to be a source of disagreements.
>
> Alright, could we then also have a separate thing, that would be purely for communicating about Mozilla projects?
>
> While I understand that many people like the Planet in its current form, there are other people like me would are looking for something slightly different: something that would be purely a place to communicate about what's going on in and around Mozilla projects, a place where there would never be any personal/political posts.
>
> Cheers,
> Benoit

Try http://planet.mozilla.org/projects/

- A

[Asa Dotzler]

On 3/7/2012 3:38 PM, Robert O'Callahan wrote:

> I think the project and community will be better off if
> planet.mozilla.orgis restricted to content related to the Mozilla
> project, and some other
> site is set up to aggregate the complete feeds of Mozilla community members
> for whoever wants that.

And what editorial regime would you propose for the Mozilla physical
offices? What about for IRC?

Shall we go ahead and say as well that we should not share anything of
our personal lives in these other Mozilla forums?

(When someone says that they do not appreciate you sharing your personal
views in an email signature in the Mozilla Public Newsgroups or any
other email forum, will we decide as a community that email signatures
can only be work-related?)

- A

[Benoit Jacob]

----- Mail original -----

This doesn't have anyone's own blog, just projects blogs. These are only a small part of the mass of useful-to-me blogs. Most of the blogs that I want to see are owned by someone. For example, Nick Nethercote's blog, which includes in particular the MemShrink project updates, is missing from /projects. So, /projects isn't what I want.

Benoit


>
> - A

[Asa Dotzler]

On 3/7/2012 9:40 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
>
>
> ----- Mail original -----
>> On 3/7/2012 3:26 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> I would like to voice my opinion against that.
>>>>
>>>> Open-source planets are "this is what this community is about and
>>>> what's
>>>> up".
>>>>
>>>> It's totally fine for that to be a source of disagreements.
>>>
>>> Alright, could we then also have a separate thing, that would be
>>> purely for communicating about Mozilla projects?
>>>
>>> While I understand that many people like the Planet in its current
>>> form, there are other people like me would are looking for
>>> something slightly different: something that would be purely a
>>> place to communicate about what's going on in and around Mozilla
>>> projects, a place where there would never be any
>>> personal/political posts.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Benoit
>>
>> Try http://planet.mozilla.org/projects/
>
> This doesn't have anyone's own blog, just projects blogs. These are only a small part of the mass of useful-to-me blogs. Most of the blogs that I want to see are owned by someone. For example, Nick Nethercote's blog, which includes in particular the MemShrink project updates, is missing from /projects. So, /projects isn't what I want.
>
> Benoit

You could grab the conveniently provided FOAF or OPML subscription list
from the sidebar and create your own customized for Benoit subscription
list in your favorite feed reader. You can exclude people who say things
you don't approve of quite easily.

- A

[Michael Lefevre]

On 08/03/2012 07:10, Asa Dotzler wrote:
> On 3/7/2012 9:40 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
>>
>> ----- Mail original -----

>>> Try http://planet.mozilla.org/projects/
>>
>> This doesn't have anyone's own blog, just projects blogs. These are
>> only a small part of the mass of useful-to-me blogs. Most of the blogs
>> that I want to see are owned by someone. For example, Nick
>> Nethercote's blog, which includes in particular the MemShrink project
>> updates, is missing from /projects. So, /projects isn't what I want.
>

> You could grab the conveniently provided FOAF or OPML subscription list
> from the sidebar and create your own customized for Benoit subscription
> list in your favorite feed reader.

Sure, and so could lots of other people who want the same thing, and
then they all need to keep their own customised lists updated. But
that's a rather ridiculous solution to a problem that planet could
solve, if you (the module owners) wanted to solve it.

> You can exclude people who say things
> you don't approve of quite easily.

As usual, you are putting words into people's mouths in an inflammatory
way. He said nothing about disapproving of people saying things. He said
that he didn't want to see some things because they were not useful to him.

Michael

[Asa Dotzler]

On 3/8/2012 12:11 AM, Michael Lefevre wrote:
> On 08/03/2012 07:10, Asa Dotzler wrote:
>> On 3/7/2012 9:40 PM, Benoit Jacob wrote:
>>>
>>> ----- Mail original -----
>>>> Try http://planet.mozilla.org/projects/
>>>
>>> This doesn't have anyone's own blog, just projects blogs. These are
>>> only a small part of the mass of useful-to-me blogs. Most of the blogs
>>> that I want to see are owned by someone. For example, Nick
>>> Nethercote's blog, which includes in particular the MemShrink project
>>> updates, is missing from /projects. So, /projects isn't what I want.
>>
>> You could grab the conveniently provided FOAF or OPML subscription list
>> from the sidebar and create your own customized for Benoit subscription
>> list in your favorite feed reader.
>
> Sure, and so could lots of other people who want the same thing, and
> then they all need to keep their own customised lists updated. But
> that's a rather ridiculous solution to a problem that planet could
> solve, if you (the module owners) wanted to solve it.

The planet team does indeed want to solve this. You're obviously not
following this very closely so I'll recap for you. We said we wanted to
do this quite a while ago. We have a bug on file to do this. We posted
to planet just today saying that we're very much interested in doing
this. Yeah. We want to solve it. Yay!

- A

[Blake Winton]

On 07-03-12 19:25 , Robert Accettura wrote:
> The debate is about limiting speech there and elsewhere to something approved by a set of people TBD.

Not necessarily "by a set of people". We could, for instance, use
Mozilla's Unlawful Harassment Policy[0] as a basis for topics and/or
viewpoints to avoid.

Although, if we do choose the "set of people" option, I suggest giving
me ultimate executive power to decide what's appropriate and what isn't. ;)

Later,
Blake.
--
[0] https://intranet.mozilla.org/Unlawful_Harassment_Policy (Apologies
to those of you who can't read that page. It contains similar text to
most harassment policies I've seen at other companies.)

[Robert Accettura]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 10:45 AM, Blake Winton <bwi...@latte.ca> wrote:
> On 07-03-12 19:25 , Robert Accettura wrote:
>>

>> The debate is about limiting speech there and elsewhere to something
>> approved by a set of people TBD.
>
>

> Not necessarily "by a set of people".  We could, for instance, use Mozilla's
> Unlawful Harassment Policy[0] as a basis for topics and/or viewpoints to
> avoid.
>
> Although, if we do choose the "set of people" option, I suggest giving me
> ultimate executive power to decide what's appropriate and what isn't.  ;)

I'll start off by saying I'm speaking purely on my own here...

I can't think of any situation in history where this hasn't been a
slippery slope even on a micro scale.

Any policy needs enforcement/interpretation. So "set of people" is
mandatory. Workplace harassment is really another topic than the
community at large. That won't fit the cultural norms or laws of
everyone in the communities locations. Other community members have a
much more stringent standard by nature of their employer. Other
countries have protected groups that Mozilla's policy won't list.
Mozilla Corporation is part of the larger Mozilla Community, not the
other way around unless someone flipped that and forgot to blog it.
We could go on. They are similar topics, but not the same.

For example, we could say the post in question was inappropriate
because it felt exclusionary to LGBT indviduals. However we could
also say any pro-LGBT organization within Mozilla is exclusionary to
those with strong Christian and other religious beliefs by the same
means as it can be inferred by some to be stating their faith is wrong
(vs their sexuality on the other side). Is any trace of either now
forbidden within the Mozilla community? What (or who) is the tie
breaker? The same could be said for any feminist belief and those in
the community from a more male dominant society (yes, they exist and
people feel strongly about it). How do world politics factor in? Do
we acknowledge a presence in Palestine[1] or is that in some way
offensive to mozilla.org.il and other members with strong opinions
there? I'm sure we could come up with a big list.

Mozilla Corp, as diverse is it is (especially compared to many US
companies) is still very small and insulated compared to the larger
community by nature of clustered employees in certain areas (notably
US, Canada, Europe, Japan). That's really a good thing and speaks to
the success of Mozilla overall.

I honestly don't think you'd ever draft a policy that doesn't tell 30%
of the community their beliefs aren't valued. Other than to give
everyone a voice, and agree to disagree. Which has been the policy to
date, and with a few small exceptions scaled surprisingly well.

This community is officially HUGE and DIVERSE now. It's not the
Mozilla of 2002 that I remember, or 2006, or even 2010. That's a great
thing. Little story: a few months ago when looking to break planet
out into projects, we pulled the list of all the feeds and went
through them by hand sorting. I don't think anyone was prepared to
see how huge just the people on planet really are. This is a massive
movement of people with a strong connection to the web. Planet grows
weekly. Mozilla grows daily, hourly. Just in the time I typed this
email.

The reality is personal opinions will come up in various ways in the
community no matter what filter or policies are applied to planet or
the community at large. The suggestion that "mozilla only posts"
fixes the problem are just kicking the can about 10 feet down the road
and doesn't address the actual problem.

I 100% agree a policy in terms of civility is needed (no personal
attacks, feel free to debate but don't fight, don't belittle people or
their belief systems etc. etc.), but I'm not sure a list of taboo
topics that are off limits would accomplish that. We should be
looking for ways to encourage diversity and different viewpoints in a
civil way, vs trying to stifle anything different. I'd even argue the
Mozilla Manifesto should be amended to include a reference to it.

Cheers!
-R

--
1. Since I'm sure someone wants linkage...
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Palestinian_Mozilla_Day

[glazou]

I think this is THE LEAST of pmo's problems. We have a problem of
bandwidth on pmo, with far too many articles syndicated per day while
many of them should in fact be on a wiki for persistency over time,
but we don't have a problem of topics. A community is made of a large
diversity of people and it's impossible to agree with all.

Moderating PMO is not feasible given the high syndication. Asking
everyone to provide a mozilla-centric-only feed is not always feasible
because not everyone has a blog system allowing that.

It's like buying a newspaper in a kiosk : you want Newsweek and
there's a corner with Penthouse, Hustler and more. Don't shout at the
kiosk owner.

So my best suggestion is the following one

A. Add to http:/planet.mozilla.org 's colophon the following mention
"unless syndicated from an official blog of the Mozilla Corporation or
the Mozilla Foundation, the article syndicated here don't represent
the views of Mozilla bla bla"

B. CHANGE NOTHING ELSE

Thanks.

Daniel Glazman

[Robert Kaiser]

Richard Soderberg (:atoll) schrieb:

> Let's rename "Planet Mozilla" to "Planet Mozillians", with rebranding and UI cleanup - and feeding it using a list of feeds from the Mozillians database, rather than a list curated by human beings at Mozilla.

For one thing, I find it a great idea to make the planet be fed using a
list of feeds from the Mozillians phonebook, I'd find that awesome.

For the other, I don't think adding a "Planet Mozillians" is a good idea
as the naming of those two planets would be too confusing.

Adding a "Work Planet Mozilla" or something that has its own name and
only aggregates posts about actual Mozilla activities might be nice for
those who want it, though, as that's a recurring request.

I personally find it quite sad that I don't see the full spectrum of the
people in our community on Planet Mozilla right now due to
self-censorship of the content going there, I'd love to see more
personal stuff and opinions. For me, planet is about the people, not
about sterile topics only.

Still, I like that idea of feeding from profiles on the Mozillians
phonebook.

Robert Kaiser

[Gijs Kruitbosch]

On 08/03/2012 12:25 PM, glazou wrote:
> <snip>

> A. Add to http:/planet.mozilla.org 's colophon the following mention
> "unless syndicated from an official blog of the Mozilla Corporation or
> the Mozilla Foundation, the article syndicated here don't represent
> the views of Mozilla bla bla"

> <snip>

There has been one since bug 376873 was fixed 2.5 years ago. On the right hand
side of the main page, you'll find it says:

> Collected here are the most recent blog posts from all over the Mozilla community.
>
> The content here is unfiltered and uncensored, and represents the views of individual community members.
> Individual posts are owned by their authors -- see original source for licensing information.

I think that's plenty clear*. Of course, it won't show up on anyone's feed
readers...

Gijs

* Disclaimer: I filed the bug and made the patch so am probably not neutral,
although the wording was already tweaked by fellow mozillians in the bug.

[Robert O'Callahan]

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:45 AM, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.org> wrote:

> On 3/7/2012 3:38 PM, Robert O'Callahan wrote:
>

> I think the project and community will be better off if
>> planet.mozilla.orgis restricted to content related to the Mozilla
>> project, and some other
>> site is set up to aggregate the complete feeds of Mozilla community
>> members
>> for whoever wants that.
>>
>

> And what editorial regime would you propose for the Mozilla physical
> offices? What about for IRC?
>

None, because we have no evidence people are showing up there expecting to
see only Mozilla-related content and being surprised by the presence of
other content.

Shall we go ahead and say as well that we should not share anything of our
> personal lives in these other Mozilla forums?
>

No.

(When someone says that they do not appreciate you sharing your personal
> views in an email signature in the Mozilla Public Newsgroups or any other
> email forum, will we decide as a community that email signatures can only
> be work-related?)
>

I hope not, because there is a tradition for almost the whole history of
email that email signatures are a valid space for non-work-related
expression, and I think email users understand that very well.

[Majken Connor]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Robert O'Callahan <rob...@ocallahan.org>wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:45 AM, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
>
> > On 3/7/2012 3:38 PM, Robert O'Callahan wrote:
> >

> > I think the project and community will be better off if
> >> planet.mozilla.orgis restricted to content related to the Mozilla
> >> project, and some other
> >> site is set up to aggregate the complete feeds of Mozilla community
> >> members
> >> for whoever wants that.
> >>
> >

> > And what editorial regime would you propose for the Mozilla physical
> > offices? What about for IRC?
> >
>
> None, because we have no evidence people are showing up there expecting to
> see only Mozilla-related content and being surprised by the presence of
> other content.
>
> Shall we go ahead and say as well that we should not share anything of our
> > personal lives in these other Mozilla forums?
> >
>
> No.
>
> (When someone says that they do not appreciate you sharing your personal
> > views in an email signature in the Mozilla Public Newsgroups or any other
> > email forum, will we decide as a community that email signatures can only
> > be work-related?)
> >
>
> I hope not, because there is a tradition for almost the whole history of
> email that email signatures are a valid space for non-work-related
> expression, and I think email users understand that very well.
>

> Rob
> --
> “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
> But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
> that you may be children of your Father in heaven. ... If you love those
> who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors
> doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more
> than others?" [Matthew 5:43-47]

> _______________________________________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
>

I don't come across email signatures very often, I guess gmail hides them.
I'm surprised if this is true. It doesn't make any sense. Just because you
put it after your name doesn't mean it's not part of a work communication.
I think the issues that would come up though would be length and whether or
not the signature is discriminatory.

[Asa Dotzler]

On 3/9/2012 6:06 PM, Majken Connor wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Robert O'Callahan <rob...@ocallahan.org>wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:45 AM, Asa Dotzler <a...@mozilla.org> wrote:
>>> On 3/7/2012 3:38 PM, Robert O'Callahan wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think the project and community will be better off if

>>>> planet.mozilla.org is restricted to content related to the Mozilla

> I don't come across email signatures very often, I guess gmail hides them.
> I'm surprised if this is true. It doesn't make any sense. Just because you
> put it after your name doesn't mean it's not part of a work communication.
> I think the issues that would come up though would be length and whether or
> not the signature is discriminatory.

I think this is a perfect example post. Rob's on-topic reply to this
email/newsgroup post was approximately 60 words. His signature was
approximately 70 words. More than 50% of this communication was Biblical
scripture. That's not uncommon at all for a ROC email or newsgroup reply.

I have no problem with that Christian doctrine promotion in a Mozilla
forum. Others do. I don't want Mozilla to get in the business of
deciding whether or not our communications channels should regularly
include posts like ROC's which are a majority religious content. Others
seem to be enthusiastic about that censorship.

I think that policing such a thing is a dangerous precedent. I prefer to
"live and let live" on issues like this. But there are plenty of people
in our community who think this kind of thing needs to be banned or
regulated.

If we are going to ban personal and religious content from Planet, we
should do it for email, newsgroups, IRC, HTML forums, Bugzilla, and any
other public Mozilla forums -- and this should absolutely include email
signatures.

- A

[Scott Johnson]

Asa:

> If we are going to ban personal and religious content from Planet, we
> should do it for email, newsgroups, IRC, HTML forums, Bugzilla, and
> any other public Mozilla forums -- and this should absolutely include
> email signatures.

I respectfully disagree with this. I understand where you're coming
from - that we need to be "across the board" in our policies to be fair
- but, from my standpoint, I would argue that we should only change
things as we have problems with them. We apparently have a specific
problem with planet, so let's change that. If we have folks that are
offended by email signatures in the future, then we can address that at
that time.

Also, I'm not sure it's the fact that email signatures or planet
postings are religious in nature... I could have an email signature
that's sexist in nature, and that would be offensive to others without
having anything to do with religion. I don't think that people are
offended by scripture in general. I'm not offended by quotations from
the Koran or Bhagavad Gita. It's when someone takes scripture and turns
it into an argument that restricts the freedoms or beliefs of another
that it becomes difficult to stomach, IMHO.

~Scott