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Reasonable Person Principle

The Reasonable Person Principle is part of the unwritten culture of CMU computer science. It holds that reasonable people strike a suitable balance between their own immediate desires and the good of the community at large.

Reasonable people think about their needs, and the needs of others, and adjust their behavior to meet the goals of a common good for the community, i.e., expressing what you want to say, but accepting and accommodating the needs of others. Mary Shaw's explanation: The Reasonable Person Principle is part of the unwritten culture of CMU computer science. As applied to bulletin boards, this would include things like observing the explicit or implicit ground rules about subject matter or tone.

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