Dead community walking

[Chris Puttick]

Dear Community Council

Dissent, disagreement and debate are not bad. Inclusion does mean
inclusion. Monocultures are inherently flawed. Consider some
introspection.

You are the Community Council. Good for you. Sounder members are part
of the Ubuntu community. That is, or should be, far more important. As
a result what your decision to close the list says, louder and more
clearly than anything else is this:

"we, The Community Council, get to decide who should and should not be
members of the community. We, The Community Council, don't like the
Sounder list, nor do we approve of the attitudes of many of the
members who frequent it. We, The Community Council, think inclusion
means to include those we approve of and exclude everyone else. We,
the Community Council, want everyone who is not like us or does not
hold our narrow political views to be eliminated from the community
forthwith"

But inclusion is about tolerance; not your weird narrow view of
tolerance, but actual tolerance. Inclusion is not about including some
identified groups while excluding others, grouped or otherwise. In
fact identifying groups is inherently anti-inclusion: those people
(who are not like us, this group) need to be specifically included
(now we have identified them as a specific group who are different and
need special treatment).

"It’s important to remember that a community where people feel
uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one" Ubuntu CoC

Absolutely, well said. It's equally important to remember that
eliminating dissent and difference is the beginning of the end, the
descent towards monoculture; communities rarely survive becoming
monocultural because evolution tends to difference, and because
monocultures are prone to succumbing to fatal diseases; i.e. the
Ubuntu community is going in the wrong direction. Sounder members,
especially the most opinionated ones, are needed in the Ubuntu
community for that community to be healthy and strong. They also
should be entitled to be covered by the CoC i.e. need to not be made
to "feel uncomfortable or threatened" by the rest of  the community's
actions.

I sincerely hope that the Community Council reconsiders its decision.
Sounder might be a a bit strange at times, and we who are on the list
might be representative of some of the stranger parts of the Ubuntu
community; but nonetheless Sounder serves a valuable purpose in the
Ubuntu community. Sounder is a celebration of diversity,  a place
where all, utterly regardless of their age, religion, gender, race,
height, physical state or political views, are welcomed; a place of
true inclusion. To close it has no positive outcomes for the Ubuntu
community, only negative ones.

Chris

CC'd to my blog.

---
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