Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Can people be entirely banned from Gentoo?

At least from a technical pov I tend to say "no". Implementing a
"feature" we (as in Gentoo) cannot technically enforce is useless, as
enforcing it would require lots of manpower and manual interaction which
we need more urgently in lots of other areas of Gentoo.

> - What would such a ban include? Some ideas -- the person could not:
>   - Post to any gentoo mailing list;
>   - Post to gentoo bugzilla;
>   - Participate in #gentoo- IRC channels; 
>   - Contribute to gentoo (hence my corner case of a security fix) except 
>     perhaps through a proxy;
> 
> - Why would we do it?

don't know, I don't see the need. People play wanker on #gentoo -> they
get banned from that channel. People play wanker in the forums -> they
get a warning and finally their account will get locked. I think these
mechanisms are quite effective and proved to be good (tm), creating a
next step of a "full Gentoo ban" isn't needed (nor doable) from my pov.

> - Under whose authority would it happen?

As people who would be banned are no developers any more this clearly
falls under Userrels authority.

> - Would it be reversible? What conditions would cause this?

It needs to be reversible, people change, their attitude changes.
Therefore we would need to implement a process which allows every banned
user (after a fixed timeframe following the ban) to let userrel re-check
the ban.

>   Since the banned person couldn't participate in Gentoo, we'd never 
>   know whether anything changed.

They could still talk to people on IRC or via mail - or request to
re-check if their ban is still necessary or if they deserve a second
chance as described above.

> - How would one appeal this? Would there be a chance to respond before
>   the ban?

As such a ban would require fast intervention to just stop people
playing wankers we would need to have different steps of bans, temporary
bans followed by a longer ban and permanent bans as the last resort.
Having several steps (i.e. short bans for a few days or a week at last)
before someone gets banned permanently there's no need to be able to
appeal these decisions - except a permanent ban would require such a
process being in place.

> - Would moderating the gentoo-dev mailing list obsolete this concept?

It wouldn't obsolete this concept, but for now I see no need to ban
people from interacting with our (developer) community - besides that I
question if such a ban would be technically doable.
As we had the most problems with our dev-ml in the past (and we have
other working mechanisms like operators on #gentoo or mods in forums
already in place) putting the ml on moderation would help and *might*
obsolete the need for bans if the implementation works and will be
accepted.

  Tobias