It is alluded to, a bit, with the quote opening the wiki page. Though these values should be reframed away from what we are, and to what we want to be. Open source communities often produce great things. Unfortunately they are often centers of toxic behavior. We are a product of the larger open source world, we cannot escape that, and thus don't really live up to our social norms. Rather we aspire to. I think by making clear that this is what we want to be, rather than what we are, it provides two views that are different from what we have today. One it encourages everyone reading to think about what they do that could be done closer to what we want, rather than "These are our norms. I'm part of the group, therefore I'm what's written here." being the thought, it shifts to "None of us really do this, we come from communities that don't do this, but we can. What do you not do on this list?" Which ties into the second part, the other change is that by stating that we are not this, but want to be it, when we mess up, which we all do, it makes both apology and reflection much easier. The psychology shifts from "Oh! I broke the rules! That everyone else is following! I'm terrible, and not part of the group." Encouraging one to hide what was done, or try to reframe themselves in a positive light, rather than simply think about it. When we start from "None of us are this, but we all want to be." It's a lot easier to step back and actually look at whatever happened, and to try to learn something from it, and apologize for it. One is no longer made the black sheep that didn't follow the rules, rather everyone is the black sheep from the beginning. No one is left feeling separated, and improvement is the norm.
Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Technical Engagement/Team Social Norms
+1 to that, I really like the foundation wide one "we strive for excellence", because of that exact aspirational aspect of it
(that one was me, forgot to log in xd)
The lead of the page I hope conveys some of the historic intent:
Our team social norms help aim to guide our behavior in the workplace and improve our collective civility. These norms are unique to the Technical Engagement team, but should be seen as extensions of other WMF and community initiatives such as the Code of Conduct, the Friendly Space Policy, and the Technology deparment’s Communication Guidelines.
This is not a how-to guide on embodying the idea of a perfect teammate, we all have different backgrounds or stories that might not follow these norms, but we can get there together. There are too many intangibles not included for these guidelines to be the ending to any discussion, but these are specific touchstones that can make up the beginning of one. Humility, generosity, kindness, respect, and integrity are all implicit within the norms.
Having explicit norms help us to increase our awareness that these practices are important and require attention and intention from each of us. It’s also important to hold ourselves accountable and assume both individual and team-level responsibility, let's try and make our when workplace a safe environment for everyone.
I believe that these "rules" are what we hope to do, but it is almost certain that we will occasionally not live up to our own hopes or the hopes of others. "Do Forgive!" applies to ourselves as well as others. We try, we miss, we learn, we grow, we try again.
And I now see that is fresh prose, so thank you to those who added it. I think it matches the spirit of my historic understanding of these norms.
The new verbiage does add a lot to the end of this topic. Though why don't we change the title from "Team Social Norms" to "Team Social Aims" Norms implies a degree of adherence that I do not believe we have, nor should we attempt to enforce or create. I suspect such an attempt is more likely to create rather than diminish adversity.
For me personally, w:Social norm is an actual thing, and what we were attempting to describe. "Social Aims" seems mostly to be an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I cannot speak to the current team management practices of the Technical Engagement sub-teams, but when I was the manager these were very much enforced norms in that we actively talked about them and applied them in our day to day work.
I would agree that for me social norms are an actual thing. And that we don't follow what we prescribe. By claiming a list of social norms, there is an enforcement mechanism of ostracization at play. This is not constructive to getting a community to be more collaborative. As described in the opening message of the topic, enforcement mechanisms cause people to hide things, withdraw, or use some interpenetration of the norms to re-enforce a behavior, usually bad, that they do not feel like changing.
I attempted to capture what was being discussed in this thread in an edit to the opening paragraph. Please feel free to keep editing or discuss if I've not covered everything. One remaining item that I believe is mentioned here, but I'm not sure is addressed is around enforcement or accountability. In the spirit of what I think has been discussed here, I would want to make sure the prose relates that it's about helping each other be better people, and not about punishing those who make a mistake. I think the other policies across the movement, including those linked, better address issues should someone's persistent behavior rise to an unacceptable level.