Re: The Culture of this group

Yes, I think haveing an agreed (and to a large extent that means documented)
statement of what we think our culture is would be a valuable step.

Obviously, the Working Group has a culture built over the past few years of
its existence, and equally obviously that hasn't been a fixed thing.

To have some clearer idea of what is considered acceptable behaviour, and
some idea of how to seek redress in the unfortunate event of people stepping
beyond the boundaries of reasonable, seems like it can only help the group. I
am wary of spending too much time on this and not enough on doing our job,
but I feel that investing some time in this will result in greater working
efficiency overall.

There are documents around the Web on "ways to behave on mailing lists" and
so on which form a partly-shared informal background.

Just as a side note, Jonathan Chetwynd has been intersted in working out
whether we can say anything clear and helpful about "tone" - not offending
people, etc. This may be another scenario in which we think about it a bit
more. (I suspect we are a long way from having answers that are acceptable as
checkpoints, but we only get there by working on it...)

cheers

Charles McCN

On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Graham Oliver wrote:

  Hi
  My training as a facilitator tells me that to be
  successful a group needs at an absolute minimum 2
  things

  1. A Purpose
  2. An agreed group culture ('how we agree to behave in
  our interactions')

  We have the first through the charter.

  I don't believe we have the second.

  I find myself sometimes offended by posts but unsure
  how to act.

  Of course, I can exercise my perogative and choose not
  to follow posts by certain people, withdraw from the
  group, appeal to a higher authority etc.

  None of which appeal to me.

  I firmly believe that as a group we need to take
  responsibility for creating and looking after our own
  agreed culture.

  As, such I am prepared to take on the task of
  facilitating the creation of an agreed culture.

  I would be interested in getting feedback from people
  (postitive or negative) to this idea, because it has
  to have strong support to have a chance of success.

  Cheers
  Graham









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Charles McCathieNevile    http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61 409 134 136
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Received on Sunday, 9 December 2001 00:25:27 UTC