meta is the “meta” blog for blogs.perl.org. It deals with issues surrounding this blog and not about Perl itself.

Recently we’ve seen some strong comments from a few people and we (Dave Cross, Aaron Crane, Aristotle and Ovid) have discussed what to do about it. We’re pretty much in firm agreement that the right answer is to do nothing. For now. All of us agree that censorship is not something we care for but there have been some comments that are teetering over the line and are making blogs.perl.org a less pleasant place to be. So we refer you to the Blogger’s Code of Conduct

• Responsibility for our own words
• Nothing we wouldn’t say in person
• Connect privately first
• Take action against attacks
• a) No anonymous comments OR b) No pseudonymous comments
• Ignore the trolls
• Encourage enforcement of terms of service
• Keep our sources private
• Discretion to delete comments
• Do no harm
• Think twice — post once

The idea behind it is to try to create a an atmosphere where people can exchange ideas and not personal attacks. We do not plan to enforce this, but to suggest that you might want consider why the above points are sometimes helpful. Most people don’t have to told to be adults, but some do. Those that do sometimes have to have it patiently explained to them.

In particular, some of you may remember the threats against Kathy Sierra that let to Tim O’Reilly calling for such a code of conduct. Sometimes things get out of hand on the Web.

On a personal note, I have no problem with profanity, but if it’s used in anger, or if you cannot express yourself without it, maybe it’s a time to step away from the conversation.