Aside on collaboration

On Thu, 12 Jul 2018 at 14:07, David Elie Raymond Christophe Ammouial <
david.elie.raymond.christophe.ammouial@everis.com> wrote:

> [...] I would recommend stopping using the invented phrase "Royalist
> English" if you seek credibility as a standards advocate. Plus it's
> provocative, which is not a favorable attitude inside consensus-seeking
> dynamics. Some people have already expressed their feeling about that and
> have been ignored.
>

On that point... And not to pick on Joe's contributions here particularly;
we have had two or three big email threads in recent weeks in which other
discussions have also got a bit more ... heated and accusational than was
probably necessary. The Wikipedia community have documented a
principle of "assuming
good faith <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith>"
which (while easier said than done) is something I think would be good
guidance for us here. Humour often doesn't come across well in email, even
if smilies and emoticons are used.

Personally, I will admit to tending to tune out when people use provocative
language and a confrontational style, especially when it's in their opening
statements and a calmer approach hasn't even been tried first. While I'm
glad to see that there has apparently been something salvaged from the
provocation in terms of improved language around camps, I would much rather
we pay equal or greater attention to contributions that are practical and
consensus oriented than those that yell "you're all doing it wrong!". If we
encourage community habits that reward shouting and confrontation, and
we're still here in another five years' time, ... we'll all be shouting and
yelling or burned out by then.

As Community Group chair (and project webmaster, dogsbody etc.), I have
some responsibility here to balance free expression with hosting a forum
that is welcoming and non-threatening to all-comers and that actually helps
gets useful things done. I have noticed that whenever we get these big mail
threads, we often see a bunch of mailing list unsubscriptions. Phrasing
that might seem friendly and fun in a human setting amongst friends can
have quite a different impact on mailing lists, where you have (hopefully)
a group of people from very diverse backgrounds, culturally,
linguistically, professionally, etc. It might be less fun but it's better
to be boring than edgy when writing here.  I also know from personal
communication that some very able and experienced people find this email
list rather too intimidating to participate in, and prefer to contribute in
other settings. Please all bear these kinds of dynamics in mind when
expressing yourselves here.

On the "Schema.org eurocentrism" thread specifics, we generally strive
towards neutral, broadly understandable use of English. We have a separate
activity <https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/280> on mapping our
terms to those in the Wikidata project, which is the language-neutral
database (or "Knowledge Graph") shared by all the language-specific
Wikipedias. Contributing via Github to those mappings, so we can make use
of the multi-linguage translations held in Wikidata, would be a vastly more
useful thing to do than sending shouty emails. For example,
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q832778 ('camp site' etc.) is linked to 30
different language wikis, and has translated labels and "also known as"
phrases.

In a few cases Schema.org has had to pick a spelling variant and when in
that situation we go with the US variant, so we chose "color" over
"colour". In other cases when a phrase is involved e.g.
https://pending.schema.org/WorkersUnion - we have tried to use something
that is clear, avoiding "Trade Union" vs "Labor Union" vs "Labour Union",
even if "WorkersUnion" is a somewhat less familiar formulation. Schema.org
is a project for the whole Web and not just for the United States of
America, and has benefited from contributions and collaborations from all
around the world. It is documented in English and frequently updated, which
makes complete translations difficult, but it is unambiguously meant for
global use. While it's far from perfect, we are not going to reach our full
potential here if contributors choose to waste their time arguing in email
when they could be building things or collaborating in more practical ways.

cheers,

Dan
(native English speaker, European, lifelong non-Royalist, and current US
immigrant)