Be positive and constructive in your communication

Problems that arise

• Comments on results and suggestions made by community members often lead in the opposite direction. If you do not pay attention to your words, people can become very disappointed soon.
• Disappointment: You might be disappointed when you read something that does overlooks or dismisses your thoughts or beliefs out-of-hand.
• Strong feelings: You might have strong feelings about some topics and it is important to you that a certain approach is the taken.
• Emotional influences: It is much easier to argue with emotions instead of objective suggestions.

Be positive

• Motivation is key in an open source community.
  Think about the people and their motivation. How will they feel when they read your comments after all the hard work they have put in?
• We all work for the fun of the collaborative spirit in Foswiki. Everybody ought to receive positive feedback on all efforts he/she contributed faithfully and in the best interest of the community.
• Everybody can contribute. We are okay with people making errors and weird suggestions every now and then.
• Believe in others. By default, assume good faith and that contributors always have the best interest of Foswiki in mind.

Be constructive

• Please always have the next steps on your mind.
• Try to motivate people to do more.
• Make constructive suggestions on how to improve the quality of the discussed issue.
• Avoid being defensive or argumentative when others disagree with your points. Look for areas of agreement.

An allowed way of "censorship"

• Substitute comments, that are "a drain of energy" for you or for others with the constructive and positive contents and link to this topic.
• Only do this, if you are sure, that you are helping everybody to stay on the track to good results. You will receive a lot of bad response, if you simply erase opinions from others. That is not okay.
• This should be rather an exception than a common activity.