Burning Chrome

I’m getting a bit tired of all the religious posts on planet.mozilla.org. Don’t you guys have a personal blog or something, or can’t you add the donotsyndicate (or whatever it was) keyword to your post? I’m reading this to be informed about Mozilla, not to be brainwashed with religious nonsense, no offense.

~Grauw

He claims, essentially, "I know the will of God better than the pope", then people discuss that claim with him, and you're concerned that he's being given a hard time?

There's an analogy here with other situations: someone wants to force children to pray a certain way in school; opposition to that is viewed as an attack on religion. Someone wants to establish their religion as a key part of state power, and opposition is viewed as an attack on religion. Etc.

it's alright for someone to have his personal beliefs; it's also up to him to blog about it if he feels the need for it. But planet.mozilla.org is not the place for that kind of religious exposure. Either he's having another blog for his religious inspirations or he just exclude the religion category posting from planet.m.org (can it be done?) I don't really see anything abnormal for somebody to receive such feedbacks when he's posting on a, as far as I know, non-religious software project blogging list.

A policy should be made on articles posted at p.m.o. , if anything these kind of posts are offending a lot of users and don't help at all the Mozilla Foundation.

While I agree it is rarely, if ever, appropriate to rake anyone over the coals whatever their beliefs or actions, do you really think feedhouse.mozillazine.org, a place where most come for fresh mozilla.org news, is an appropriate place to post potentially divisive and inflamatory comments about religious beliefs and thinking?

Jack

These are people's personal weblogs, they can post whatever they want. It would help if they'd add categories to their posts, though. If everybody had a "tech" or "mozilla" category, then planet.mozilla and feedhouse.mozillazine could filter out the unrelated stuff.

Or people could just learn to skip the stuff that they're not interested in. :-)

well I don't see the problem of religious posts as being a big issue on feedhouse.mozillazine.org as it's _not_ the domain of the Mozilla Foundation (mozilla.org).

As of the inflammatory part, he can close his comments on the post if he wants not to get any feedbacks from his claims, as rude as they can be.

Point is, on the domain/sub domains of Mozilla.org, you should not see some big-fan of X Y or Z religion making claims/thesis/revelations/whatever you want to call it on his path to enlightenment, it's just not appropriate, not helping the image of the products your trying to push to the mass, etc.

I agree with Jack that it's off-topic, but virtually anything can be potentially inflamatory to some people.

I don't think the audience's response is a good criterion for disallowing stuff. (This is why anti–public nudity laws in the UK are daft - they're based on causing offence, which cannot be proven.)

"...do you really think feedhouse.mozillazine.org, a place where most come for fresh mozilla.org news, is an appropriate place to post potentially divisive and inflamatory comments about religious beliefs and thinking?"

Sure, why not? Mozilla doesn't live and grow in a hothouse environment. There's more to the world. If all Gerv is posting about is religious, then that's another story, but since he posts about a wide range of topics, with a focus on Mozilla, I think it's fair for him to be represented (he is, after all, a member of the moz dev team, from what I know). He can also reap what he sows, too, and you should feel free to bitch to him if you want. Ask him to get another blog for his religious posts, and we'll see if he decides to listen to you.

According to this post by Bart Decrem, the code is <!-- donotfeature -->.

I'll step up in favor of the religious posts, even though I am an atheist.

Both Gerv and alex blog enough about Mozilla-related things that I can easily tolerate the relatively rare interludes of hearing about their beliefs or other mtters. It makes the whole thing more human. The other extreme would be a blog similar to Microsofts - basically a marketing outlet, and thus lacking authenticity.

http://feedhouse.mozillazine.org/ is pretty much an "insider source", so as long as these occasional religious blogs don't show up on http://www.mozilla.org I don't mind them.

"do you really think feedhouse.mozillazine.org, a place where most come for fresh mozilla.org news, is an appropriate place to post potentially divisive and inflamatory comments about religious beliefs and thinking?"

I SECOND THIS.

Where was the outrage over THIS religiously inflammatory statement picked up by MozillaZine FeedHouse? Other members have posted highly partisan political posts (anti-Bush), and there was never an outcry about those being off-topic.

So, I call "bogus" on complainers here pretending to have principled objections to Gerv's posts on the grounds that they are not about Mozilla or are offensive.

I think that planet.mozilla.org etc isn't just about Mozilla, it's about the people involved with Mozilla so a reasonable amount of 'non-mozilla' is fine.

Anyone seeking to ban a particular topic needs to grow a skin. No one is forcing you to read any of it.

I say this as someone who almost always find's Gerv's posts on religion quite disturbing. (I suppose I might say offensive if I were easily offended).

I would also strongly prefer to have the religious posts removed from Planet Mozilla.

Please stop talking about god, devil, heaven, hell, saints, angels, sins, prayer and all those old tricks.

Please stop with the religious *&^&*^... I think most people who follow the various Moz blogs and RSS feeds are sick and tired of this. Gerv can start a religious blog if he wants, but I'd really rather he keep his religious views out of Moz; it sullies the whole thing. I was pretty much shocked when I first saw Gerv's blog's title; nothing is so divisive as religion, and the Moz world simply cannot afford to be divided in the face of a greater enemy.

So, please, let the involved parties agree to a separation of Church and Code clause...

One of the reason I like Slashdot and planetmozilla is that people are free to speak their minds.
Speak up if you want to Alex, Asa, and Gerv.

Its interesting to read about the people who are deeply involved in Mozilla, and to be able to do so in one place. Its also pretty obvious from the titles and first few lines of the posts whether or not they are about Moz or something else, so if I'm not interested in the topic, I simply don't read.

I don't understand how people can say, "I'm getting tired of all the religious posts", "stop talking about God...", etc.

If a filter were put in place, please also add a way to turn the filter off so we can also enjoy getting to know the people behind Mozilla, instead of being forced to live in a moz-bubble.

How about a "Toggle Bubble Button" that you have to click ten-times-fast?!

hey, new to the blogging world and just set up a blog on pop culture and christianity. looking at some of these posts, you guys might be interested. definitely some good stuff on here. i've enjoyed reading it all. i'd love to get some feedback at my place if you have some time to check it out...