[gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Donnie Berkholz]

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From this month's agenda:

  User Relations authority
  ------------------------

  Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
  Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?

  Preparation: Donnie will start a thread on the -council list. Post 
  your opinion there. If everyone's posted in advance of the meeting, 
  status check at meeting to see who's ready to vote.

  Goal: Reach a decision on-list no later than July 17.

Please respond with your thoughts.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On 22:49 Wed 09 Jul     , Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of 
>   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> 
> Please respond with your thoughts.

Here's my thoughts: yes.

I'd also like if they came up with some sort of reporting mechanism (CC 
on bug is good enough for me) to keep the council informed when action 
is actually taken if we or the broader community aren't already aware of 
it. Same goes for devrel, really.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

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Donnie Berkholz wrote:
| From this month's agenda:
|
|   User Relations authority
|   ------------------------
|
|   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
|   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?

Yes, it does and it always had. If people want to invoke history, I'll
notice that imo, it was an option not to exercise that power.

|   Preparation: Donnie will start a thread on the -council list. Post
|   your opinion there. If everyone's posted in advance of the meeting,
|   status check at meeting to see who's ready to vote.
|
|   Goal: Reach a decision on-list no later than July 17.
|
| Please respond with your thoughts.
|

Ferris McCormick wrote:
| On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 01:40 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
|> On 05:30 Tue 01 Jul     , Mike Frysinger wrote:
|> Here's the proposed agenda. Please respond if I forgot something, it's
|> unclear, or you have another suggestion. As before, since we have an
|> agenda in advance we won't be holding an open floor.
|
| I'll try to clarify my second agenda item on an absolute ban.  Also I
| might edit my private request to make it pure vanilla and send it out,
| too, so that people may cross check my summary if they wish.  If people
| want that, please respond saying so.
|
| 1.  Your summary in the agenda is a fair reading of my request.
| However, I don't think it's realistic to expect a decision within a week
| because I think instituting a policy and procedure allowing a complete
| ban forever from Gentoo requires at the least a change to the Code of
| Conduct and a review cycle for that.

Ferris, I know we disagree on this point, but my view is that this isn't
a new CoC, but instead a discussion on how to finally enforce the CoC in
extreme cases.
However, I agree with you that before we start doing it, we should have
clear rules and define procedures.

| 2.  I can't spell out exactly what people are thinking of when
| discussing absolute bans, because I get the sense that different people
| have different ideas about just what we would mean by that.  So I think
| the first step is for someone who advocates such a procedure needs to
| spell out exactly what it would be and why we would do it and under
| whose authority, etc.  As probably everyone knows, I am absolutely
| opposed to any such thing, so I am not the person to do this.

Then let me present my old proposal about this issue. The two relevant
posts at the time were:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46846
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46897

To summarize, my proposal was that we should have a method to "keep
away" people that do nothing but cause continuous issues - this is about
the "poisonous people" that are long-time and repeated offenders.
As I've stated back then "I believe that the greatest reward anyone can
have to participate in Gentoo is getting credit for work done on Gentoo.
As such, as a last measure, we must be ready to deny such contribution
from banned users."
As I've stated, that doesn't mean we don't accept the work someone does
upstream. Also, to avoid any doubts, I'm not suggesting we use someone's
work without giving him/her the credit - quite the opposite. Exactly
because of that, we must be ready to have additional work and not accept
their work and find an internal solution. About the security patches, if
they're provided by upstream or to upstream, there's no issue with them.
If they're provided directly to us, are we really that "bad" that in
such cases we're unable to find another contributor or to patch
ourselves the security flaw?

Let others present different proposals.

| 3.  So, I don't think we can reach a decision on anything until we are
| all clear on what we are deciding on.
|
| 4.  Here's what I think is meant by a complete ban.  *These are only my
| own inferences from reading between the lines and trying to put
| different comments together in some coherent fashion.*
|      Under some rather unclear conditions, some combination of
|      devrel/userrel/trustees/infra could decide to impose a complete,
|      permanent ban on a member (user or, I suppose developer) of our
|      community.  This would have the following effects:

Some people seem to support that userrel can make such decisions on its
own. As I've stated, as an userrel member, I was willing to involve
other teams. We also need to agree to which body should appeals be sent.

|        a.  The person could post to no gentoo mailing list;
|        b.  The person could not post to gentoo bugzilla;

check

|        c.  The person could not participate in #gentoo- IRC
|             channels (although this runs into conflict with individual
|             channel policy);

I think the proposal was more along #gentoo-dev, #gentoo and a few other
channels. This point was to prevent people from abusing irc channels and
in the case of #gentoo-dev to prevent other devs from giving +v on
moderated channels to people that keep abusing them.

|        d.   The person could not contribute to gentoo (hence my corner
|             case of a security fix) except perhaps through a proxy;

See the above reasoning for my proposal

|        e.   (Perhaps any upstream projects in which the person banned
|             would be notified of the ban??? --- I'm not sure).

My comment about this has always been that in extreme cases and if we
have a close partnership with upstream, we might want to share with them
our decision and let them judge for themselves if the actions that made
such person be banned on Gentoo are relevant to them or not.

| 5.  I am told that nothing is forever, and that if whatever problems
| triggered such a ban were corrected, the ban might be lifted.  I note,
| however, that since the banned person could not participate in Gentoo
| things, as a practical matter we'd never know if anything was corrected
| or not.  (Except through 3rd parties.)

The point here is that such a decision is not terminal. If people feel
more comfortable about it, don't call it permanent bans, but call it a
ban until further notice.

| 6.  Presumably, all of this would be done in secret and whoever is being
| hit by such a ban would have no opportunity to respond before the ban's
| imposition.  I suppose there would be a right to appeal to council,
| assuming council took no part in deciding on the ban.

I assume what you mean here is that there would be no attempt of
mediation with said person. As my proposal states this is an *extreme*
decision meant only for *long-time* and *repeated* offenders. When we
get there, there's no possibility for mediation - that's something that
would have been tried a long time before we get there.

| 7.  [Argument] I view this as a pretty major change in how Gentoo
| operates.  So someone needs to clarify my inferences in paragraph 4, and
| then we should think very carefully about it before allowing for any
| such practice.

I've replied above.

| 8.  [Argument]  I note that we are likely to institute some form of
| possible moderation for the gentoo-dev mailing list (presumably based on
| Code of Conduct violations), and if we do that, it effectively satisfies
| the intent of any absolute ban, but is not nearly so traumatic to the
| system.  I note that this is a minority view among those who have
| discussed this.

Ferris, I do hope the moderation will prevent so many abuses on the mls,
but it alone won't change people's mindsets and actions. Although posts
can be moderated, it doesn't mean that people will stop trying to send
abusive mails and that a few might even get to the lists. Also, it
doesn't address irc, bugzilla and other mediums abuse.

| Donnie,
|   I don't know if that clarifies anything or just makes things more
| confusing.  It's the best I can come up with.
|
| Regards,
| Ferris

- --
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel / SPARC / KDE
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-- 
gentoo-council@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Ferris McCormick]

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On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> From this month's agenda:
> 
>   User Relations authority
>   ------------------------
> 
>   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
>   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> 
>   Preparation: Donnie will start a thread on the -council list. Post 
>   your opinion there. If everyone's posted in advance of the meeting, 
>   status check at meeting to see who's ready to vote.
> 
>   Goal: Reach a decision on-list no later than July 17.
> 
> Please respond with your thoughts.

I didn't even remember that I had asked this, but here are my thoughts.

1.  Yes, Userrel has (or should have) that authority;
2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind it,
and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to help
enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);
3.  Thus, I think bugzilla bugs for Code of Conduct violations miss much
of the point.
4.  That is, we (devrel, userrel, averyone else perhaps) should use Code
of Conduct to stop elaborate flame wars before they can burn out of
control.  Whether a flame war ever merits a bug will vary from situation
to situation, but generally if we have a flame war and wish to impose
some sort of sanctions because of it, we really need to be hitting
several people or none with warnings or brief "vacations."

5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we wish
to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it, and that
sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to help make it
more effectively used in the rather narrow context for which it was
designed before we consider extending its reach.
6.  For example, I think we could put some sort of limited moderation
onto the -dev mailing list, citing the current Code of Conduct as
authority, any time we wanted.  And I do not think the Code of Conduct
as currently envisioned has much reach into the past (one or two days,
probably; one or two weeks, perhaps; one or two months, no; one or two
years, certainly not).

I hope you get the idea.  Although I advocate brevity, I have problems
practicing it.

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Ferris McCormick]

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How big is gentoo-council@?  Do we want this discussion there or on
gentoo-dev@?  I'd like this to reach a majority of our community because
I think it has global implications.

On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 11:49 +0000, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
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> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> | From this month's agenda:
> |
> |   User Relations authority
> |   ------------------------
> |
> |   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
> |   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> 
> Yes, it does and it always had. If people want to invoke history, I'll
> notice that imo, it was an option not to exercise that power.
> 
> |   Preparation: Donnie will start a thread on the -council list. Post
> |   your opinion there. If everyone's posted in advance of the meeting,
> |   status check at meeting to see who's ready to vote.
> |
> |   Goal: Reach a decision on-list no later than July 17.
> |
> | Please respond with your thoughts.
> |
> 
> Ferris McCormick wrote:
> | On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 01:40 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> |> On 05:30 Tue 01 Jul     , Mike Frysinger wrote:
> |> Here's the proposed agenda. Please respond if I forgot something, it's
> |> unclear, or you have another suggestion. As before, since we have an
> |> agenda in advance we won't be holding an open floor.
> |
> | I'll try to clarify my second agenda item on an absolute ban.  Also I
> | might edit my private request to make it pure vanilla and send it out,
> | too, so that people may cross check my summary if they wish.  If people
> | want that, please respond saying so.
> |
> | 1.  Your summary in the agenda is a fair reading of my request.
> | However, I don't think it's realistic to expect a decision within a week
> | because I think instituting a policy and procedure allowing a complete
> | ban forever from Gentoo requires at the least a change to the Code of
> | Conduct and a review cycle for that.
> 
> Ferris, I know we disagree on this point, but my view is that this isn't
> a new CoC, but instead a discussion on how to finally enforce the CoC in
> extreme cases.
> However, I agree with you that before we start doing it, we should have
> clear rules and define procedures.
> 
> | 2.  I can't spell out exactly what people are thinking of when
> | discussing absolute bans, because I get the sense that different people
> | have different ideas about just what we would mean by that.  So I think
> | the first step is for someone who advocates such a procedure needs to
> | spell out exactly what it would be and why we would do it and under
> | whose authority, etc.  As probably everyone knows, I am absolutely
> | opposed to any such thing, so I am not the person to do this.
> 
> Then let me present my old proposal about this issue. The two relevant
> posts at the time were:
> 
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46846
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/46897
> 
> To summarize, my proposal was that we should have a method to "keep
> away" people that do nothing but cause continuous issues - this is about
> the "poisonous people" that are long-time and repeated offenders.
> As I've stated back then "I believe that the greatest reward anyone can
> have to participate in Gentoo is getting credit for work done on Gentoo.
> As such, as a last measure, we must be ready to deny such contribution
> from banned users."

I don't think I've ever seen anyone at all who does nothing but
continually causs "issues" and so qualifies as poisonous.  We have a
large community and everyone is abrasive at times, and everyone gets
abuse at times (even me, but probably not from people you have in mind
as "poisonous", if you have any).  But I consider this just a normal
part of doing business and can't imagine what it would take to get me to
make a formal complaint about it.

For example, I have had little contact with Linus Torvalds, but I have
had a fair amount of contact with David Miller (davem --- the sparc
kernel developer).  I'm pretty sure that davem would seem more
"poisonous" to us than anyone we've ever seen in Gentoo, and by
reputation, Linus makes davem look like a pussy cat.  (Although davem
seems to be mellowing.)  But I rather doubt that if for some reason
either one started participating in Gentoo that we'd consider banning
them or refusing their contributions. :)

> As I've stated, that doesn't mean we don't accept the work someone does
> upstream. Also, to avoid any doubts, I'm not suggesting we use someone's
> work without giving him/her the credit - quite the opposite. Exactly
> because of that, we must be ready to have additional work and not accept
> their work and find an internal solution. About the security patches, if
> they're provided by upstream or to upstream, there's no issue with them.
> If they're provided directly to us, are we really that "bad" that in
> such cases we're unable to find another contributor or to patch
> ourselves the security flaw?
> 

How do we or anyone else gain from that?  Personally, I think we should
be open to improvements from anyone wishing to provide them as long as
we don't run into trademark or copyrignt or licensing issues.


> Let others present different proposals.
> 
> | 3.  So, I don't think we can reach a decision on anything until we are
> | all clear on what we are deciding on.
> |
> | 4.  Here's what I think is meant by a complete ban.  *These are only my
> | own inferences from reading between the lines and trying to put
> | different comments together in some coherent fashion.*
> |      Under some rather unclear conditions, some combination of
> |      devrel/userrel/trustees/infra could decide to impose a complete,
> |      permanent ban on a member (user or, I suppose developer) of our
> |      community.  This would have the following effects:
> 
> Some people seem to support that userrel can make such decisions on its
> own. As I've stated, as an userrel member, I was willing to involve
> other teams. We also need to agree to which body should appeals be sent.
> 

I would not support giving userrel that authority or userrel+devrel that
authority.  Now, I oppose this absolutely.  But in general I don't thing
any group(s) in gentoo should have such sweeping authority to make such
major decisions secretely in private.  If we want to impose such a ban
on someone, we really should have the courage and resolve to work in
public.

I really hate "Star Chamber" like actions, and especially in a volunteer
organization like Gentoo which prides itself in being open.


> |        a.  The person could post to no gentoo mailing list;
> |        b.  The person could not post to gentoo bugzilla;
> 
> check
> 
> |        c.  The person could not participate in #gentoo- IRC
> |             channels (although this runs into conflict with individual
> |             channel policy);
> 
> I think the proposal was more along #gentoo-dev, #gentoo and a few other
> channels. This point was to prevent people from abusing irc channels and
> in the case of #gentoo-dev to prevent other devs from giving +v on
> moderated channels to people that keep abusing them.
> 
> |        d.   The person could not contribute to gentoo (hence my corner
> |             case of a security fix) except perhaps through a proxy;
> 
> See the above reasoning for my proposal
> 
> |        e.   (Perhaps any upstream projects in which the person banned
> |             would be notified of the ban??? --- I'm not sure).
> 
> My comment about this has always been that in extreme cases and if we
> have a close partnership with upstream, we might want to share with them
> our decision and let them judge for themselves if the actions that made
> such person be banned on Gentoo are relevant to them or not.
> 
Why?  It's hardly our concern who participates upstream.

> | 5.  I am told that nothing is forever, and that if whatever problems
> | triggered such a ban were corrected, the ban might be lifted.  I note,
> | however, that since the banned person could not participate in Gentoo
> | things, as a practical matter we'd never know if anything was corrected
> | or not.  (Except through 3rd parties.)
> 
> The point here is that such a decision is not terminal. If people feel
> more comfortable about it, don't call it permanent bans, but call it a
> ban until further notice.

What's the practical difference?  And why not make it something sensible
and definite?  The authority to lift an indefinite ban most likely rests
with whoever imposed it in the first place, and that doesn't provide for
much.

> 
> | 6.  Presumably, all of this would be done in secret and whoever is being
> | hit by such a ban would have no opportunity to respond before the ban's
> | imposition.  I suppose there would be a right to appeal to council,
> | assuming council took no part in deciding on the ban.
> 
> I assume what you mean here is that there would be no attempt of
> mediation with said person. As my proposal states this is an *extreme*
> decision meant only for *long-time* and *repeated* offenders. When we
> get there, there's no possibility for mediation - that's something that
> would have been tried a long time before we get there.

See above.  And as i said, I've never seen anyone who fits such a
profile, so perhaps we're spending a lot of time here defining how we
treat the empty set.

> 
> | 7.  [Argument] I view this as a pretty major change in how Gentoo
> | operates.  So someone needs to clarify my inferences in paragraph 4, and
> | then we should think very carefully about it before allowing for any
> | such practice.
> 
> I've replied above.
> 
> | 8.  [Argument]  I note that we are likely to institute some form of
> | possible moderation for the gentoo-dev mailing list (presumably based on
> | Code of Conduct violations), and if we do that, it effectively satisfies
> | the intent of any absolute ban, but is not nearly so traumatic to the
> | system.  I note that this is a minority view among those who have
> | discussed this.
> 
> Ferris, I do hope the moderation will prevent so many abuses on the mls,
> but it alone won't change people's mindsets and actions. Although posts
> can be moderated, it doesn't mean that people will stop trying to send
> abusive mails and that a few might even get to the lists. Also, it
> doesn't address irc, bugzilla and other mediums abuse.
> 

If we have your hypothetical poisonous person running around loose
somewhere and put him (or her) into a must-be-moderated list for
gentoo-dev, the problem there should disappear because posts will be
shunted to the moderators.  #gentoo-dev is a more general concern than
just a few specific people and falls generally under Code of Conduct for
immediate correction.  Bugzilla looks like a bigger problem than it is,
because when it explodes it can be spectacular.  But it is not limited
to one or two people, either (even I have lost control on bugzilla, and
I generally appear pretty calm and rational, I think).

> | Donnie,
> |   I don't know if that clarifies anything or just makes things more
> | confusing.  It's the best I can come up with.
> |
> | Regards,
> | Ferris
> 
> - --
> Regards,
> 
> Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
> Gentoo- forums / Userrel / SPARC / KDE
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Jorge, you know, if you and I were both forced to come up with a list of
five poisonous people to consider for application of such a ban, I
suspect their intersection might be empty.  What then?

It is my view that both userrel and devrel may enforce the Code of
Conduct, but also Code of Conduct should be limited to quick response to
immediate situations.

I think devrel and userrel are the wrong bodies to be rooting around in
the past if that's what you are proposing.  Neither of us is set up to
do that.  We act on current behavior, and if discipline is warranted,
then we can take to past behavior for guidance if we wish.  I don't
think anyone in Gentoo currently has the charter to look at the
community and say "X has been causing trouble long enough --- let's just
boot X."  Nor do I think we want anyone to have such authority ---
surely we're more tolerant and flexible than that.

I've gone on too long once again.  Others, please respond.

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Luca Barbato]

Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> From this month's agenda:
> 
>   User Relations authority
>   ------------------------
> 
>   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
>   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?

Yes, I don't see why not: the CoC applies inside Gentoo spaces: our 
house, our rules.

-- 

Luca Barbato
Gentoo Council Member
Gentoo/linux Gentoo/PPC
http://dev.gentoo.org/~lu_zero

-- 
gentoo-council@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Petteri Räty]

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Ferris McCormick kirjoitti:
> How big is gentoo-council@?  Do we want this discussion there or on
> gentoo-dev@?  I'd like this to reach a majority of our community because
> I think it has global implications.
> 

And how is this issue technical?

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On 13:55 Thu 10 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 11:49 +0000, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
> > To summarize, my proposal was that we should have a method to "keep
> > away" people that do nothing but cause continuous issues - this is about
> > the "poisonous people" that are long-time and repeated offenders.
> > As I've stated back then "I believe that the greatest reward anyone can
> > have to participate in Gentoo is getting credit for work done on Gentoo.
> > As such, as a last measure, we must be ready to deny such contribution
> > from banned users."
> 
> I don't think I've ever seen anyone at all who does nothing but 
> continually causs "issues" and so qualifies as poisonous.  We have a 
> large community and everyone is abrasive at times, and everyone gets 
> abuse at times (even me, but probably not from people you have in mind 
> as "poisonous", if you have any).  But I consider this just a normal 
> part of doing business and can't imagine what it would take to get me 
> to make a formal complaint about it.
> 
> For example, I have had little contact with Linus Torvalds, but I have
> had a fair amount of contact with David Miller (davem --- the sparc
> kernel developer).  I'm pretty sure that davem would seem more
> "poisonous" to us than anyone we've ever seen in Gentoo, and by
> reputation, Linus makes davem look like a pussy cat.  (Although davem
> seems to be mellowing.)  But I rather doubt that if for some reason
> either one started participating in Gentoo that we'd consider banning
> them or refusing their contributions. :)

I agree that the Linux kernel community has different standards and 
expectations than the Gentoo community, and that's exactly the point. 
You act within the context of your community. I don't care if people in 
northern Canada practice cannibalism, it's not OK around these parts.

> > | 4.  Here's what I think is meant by a complete ban.  *These are only my
> > | own inferences from reading between the lines and trying to put
> > | different comments together in some coherent fashion.*
> > |      Under some rather unclear conditions, some combination of
> > |      devrel/userrel/trustees/infra could decide to impose a complete,
> > |      permanent ban on a member (user or, I suppose developer) of our
> > |      community.  This would have the following effects:
> > 
> > Some people seem to support that userrel can make such decisions on its
> > own. As I've stated, as an userrel member, I was willing to involve
> > other teams. We also need to agree to which body should appeals be sent.
> 
> I would not support giving userrel that authority or userrel+devrel that
> authority.  Now, I oppose this absolutely.  But in general I don't thing
> any group(s) in gentoo should have such sweeping authority to make such
> major decisions secretely in private.  If we want to impose such a ban
> on someone, we really should have the courage and resolve to work in
> public.

I dislike your use of emotional words to imply that anyone you disagree 
with is cowardly.

> > My comment about this has always been that in extreme cases and if we
> > have a close partnership with upstream, we might want to share with them
> > our decision and let them judge for themselves if the actions that made
> > such person be banned on Gentoo are relevant to them or not.
> > 
> Why?  It's hardly our concern who participates upstream.

I agree with this, as I mentioned above with the context of the 
community.

> > The point here is that such a decision is not terminal. If people feel
> > more comfortable about it, don't call it permanent bans, but call it a
> > ban until further notice.
> 
> What's the practical difference?  And why not make it something sensible
> and definite?  The authority to lift an indefinite ban most likely rests
> with whoever imposed it in the first place, and that doesn't provide for
> much.

I dislike the implication that anything else is not sensible.

> > I assume what you mean here is that there would be no attempt of
> > mediation with said person. As my proposal states this is an *extreme*
> > decision meant only for *long-time* and *repeated* offenders. When we
> > get there, there's no possibility for mediation - that's something that
> > would have been tried a long time before we get there.
> 
> See above.  And as i said, I've never seen anyone who fits such a
> profile, so perhaps we're spending a lot of time here defining how we
> treat the empty set.

I think it's clear that your opinion does not necessarily represent the 
opinions of everyone else in Gentoo, so arguing that your empty set is 
Gentoo's empty set is not valid.

> > | 8.  [Argument]  I note that we are likely to institute some form of
> > | possible moderation for the gentoo-dev mailing list (presumably based on
> > | Code of Conduct violations), and if we do that, it effectively satisfies
> > | the intent of any absolute ban, but is not nearly so traumatic to the
> > | system.  I note that this is a minority view among those who have
> > | discussed this.
> > 
> > Ferris, I do hope the moderation will prevent so many abuses on the mls,
> > but it alone won't change people's mindsets and actions. Although posts
> > can be moderated, it doesn't mean that people will stop trying to send
> > abusive mails and that a few might even get to the lists. Also, it
> > doesn't address irc, bugzilla and other mediums abuse.
> 
> If we have your hypothetical poisonous person running around loose
> somewhere and put him (or her) into a must-be-moderated list for
> gentoo-dev, the problem there should disappear because posts will be
> shunted to the moderators.  #gentoo-dev is a more general concern than
> just a few specific people and falls generally under Code of Conduct for
> immediate correction.  Bugzilla looks like a bigger problem than it is,
> because when it explodes it can be spectacular.  But it is not limited
> to one or two people, either (even I have lost control on bugzilla, and
> I generally appear pretty calm and rational, I think).

I don't think moderation is the answer, because it's a very small group 
of people who become regular, recurring problems.

> Jorge, you know, if you and I were both forced to come up with a list of
> five poisonous people to consider for application of such a ban, I
> suspect their intersection might be empty.  What then?
> 
> It is my view that both userrel and devrel may enforce the Code of
> Conduct,

I agree.

> but also Code of Conduct should be limited to quick response to 
> immediate situations.

I do not agree. Just because something happened in the past does not 
mean it never happened and should not be considered.

> I think devrel and userrel are the wrong bodies to be rooting around in
> the past if that's what you are proposing.  Neither of us is set up to
> do that.  We act on current behavior, and if discipline is warranted,
> then we can take to past behavior for guidance if we wish.  I don't
> think anyone in Gentoo currently has the charter to look at the
> community and say "X has been causing trouble long enough --- let's just
> boot X."  Nor do I think we want anyone to have such authority ---
> surely we're more tolerant and flexible than that.

Again I dislike your implications that anyone who would act on past 
behavior is intolerant and inflexible. Please stop using implications 
like this.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On 12:26 Thu 10 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> 2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
> all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
> is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
> pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind it,
> and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to help
> enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);

The concepts of poisonous people and repeat offenders are explicitly 
mentioned numerous times in the 20070308 council meeting. Here are some 
examples:

<wolf31o2|mobile> kloeri: banning people from the lists, not 
necessarily... but reducing the requirements on devrel to suspend 
"repeat offenders" might just make them think about their actions before 
doing them, and that could decrease the flames a bit

<kloeri> there's some devs that are persistently poisoning the project 
that I want to deal with but that's not just related to mailinglists

<wolf31o2|mobile> christel: agreed... I think we need to be a bit more 
strict on our developers... after all, in the flames involving users, 
developers are just as much at fault as the users... perhaps if the devs 
didn't respond in kind, the flames would subside much quicker, etc

<kloeri> I don't want to ban anybody but I do want to be much harder on 
devs poisoning things consistently and I'm going to file at least one 
devrel bug in that regard

<kloeri> I don't think we can force people to follow netiquette in 
general but we can do more to smack devs up when they're constantly 
being a pain in the ass


On the topic of userrel's power to ban people from lists, which is a 
long-term action:

<robbat2> on the side of devrel not having 'teeth' - kloeri mentioned 
before that infra previously wasn't very responsive to requests to do 
things (he cited a userrel request to remove user from the ML)

<christel> i have a question, if we are to start enforcing etiquette 
policy, i think we may want to ensure we have one which also cover users

> 4.  That is, we (devrel, userrel, averyone else perhaps) should use Code
> of Conduct to stop elaborate flame wars before they can burn out of
> control.  Whether a flame war ever merits a bug will vary from situation
> to situation, but generally if we have a flame war and wish to impose
> some sort of sanctions because of it, we really need to be hitting
> several people or none with warnings or brief "vacations."

I agree that we should attempt to take short-term actions in response to 
immediate offenses.

> 5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
> I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we wish
> to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it, and that
> sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to help make it
> more effectively used in the rather narrow context for which it was
> designed before we consider extending its reach.

On the topic of trying to write down every possible way to go about 
this, I also agree with them:

<g2boojum> christel: I actually think you want it to be more vague than 
specific.  "Don't be a jerk."  Please don't define "jerk", or you get a 
five-page treatise on why the bahavior doesn't really fit the 
definition.

<seemant> we really need to be careful in adopting document upon 
document upon document

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Thomas Anderson]

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On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 09:24:53PM -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > > | 4.  Here's what I think is meant by a complete ban.  *These are only my
> > > | own inferences from reading between the lines and trying to put
> > > | different comments together in some coherent fashion.*
> > > |      Under some rather unclear conditions, some combination of
> > > |      devrel/userrel/trustees/infra could decide to impose a complete,
> > > |      permanent ban on a member (user or, I suppose developer) of our
> > > |      community.  This would have the following effects:
> > > 
> > > Some people seem to support that userrel can make such decisions on its
> > > own. As I've stated, as an userrel member, I was willing to involve
> > > other teams. We also need to agree to which body should appeals be sent.
> > 
> > I would not support giving userrel that authority or userrel+devrel that
> > authority.  Now, I oppose this absolutely.  But in general I don't thing
> > any group(s) in gentoo should have such sweeping authority to make such
> > major decisions secretely in private.  If we want to impose such a ban
> > on someone, we really should have the courage and resolve to work in
> > public.
> 
> I dislike your use of emotional words to imply that anyone you disagree 
> with is cowardly.

I'm going to argue from the perspective of the community here...

It seems to me that in the past the Gentoo community has always been
open to the community. We've accepted patches from many people, despite
their perhaps abrasive attitude towards us. Yet now, some are leaning towards
refusing patches from certain people, based not on their merit but on
their origin? In other words, a person's point on a mailing list may be
entirely valid and entirely undisputed, but since a subset of the community
holds that person in "contempt" or "poisonous", everyone has to simply
ignore the person's valid point? Doesn't this go against the "open
community" aspect of Gentoo, which has always been heralded as the
hallmark of our community?

> I think it's clear that your opinion does not necessarily represent the 
> opinions of everyone else in Gentoo, so arguing that your empty set is 
> Gentoo's empty set is not valid.

It certainly represents mine.

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Ferris McCormick]

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I'm CC-ing gentoo-project on this, because some Council members and
perhaps others seemed to indicate a preference for moving the discussion
there.  This response turns out to be much longer than I had intended
because I always try to follow my reasoning to see where it goes,
whether I like the conclusions or not.

On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 21:54 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> On 12:26 Thu 10 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > 2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
> > all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
> > is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
> > pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind it,
> > and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to help
> > enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);
> 
> The concepts of poisonous people and repeat offenders are explicitly 
> mentioned numerous times in the 20070308 council meeting. Here are some 
> examples:
> 
> <wolf31o2|mobile> kloeri: banning people from the lists, not 
> necessarily... but reducing the requirements on devrel to suspend 
> "repeat offenders" might just make them think about their actions before 
> doing them, and that could decrease the flames a bit
> 
> <kloeri> there's some devs that are persistently poisoning the project 
> that I want to deal with but that's not just related to mailinglists
> 
> <wolf31o2|mobile> christel: agreed... I think we need to be a bit more 
> strict on our developers... after all, in the flames involving users, 
> developers are just as much at fault as the users... perhaps if the devs 
> didn't respond in kind, the flames would subside much quicker, etc
> 
> <kloeri> I don't want to ban anybody but I do want to be much harder on 
> devs poisoning things consistently and I'm going to file at least one 
> devrel bug in that regard
> 
> <kloeri> I don't think we can force people to follow netiquette in 
> general but we can do more to smack devs up when they're constantly 
> being a pain in the ass
> 
> 
> On the topic of userrel's power to ban people from lists, which is a 
> long-term action:
> 
> <robbat2> on the side of devrel not having 'teeth' - kloeri mentioned 
> before that infra previously wasn't very responsive to requests to do 
> things (he cited a userrel request to remove user from the ML)
> 
> <christel> i have a question, if we are to start enforcing etiquette 
> policy, i think we may want to ensure we have one which also cover users
> 
> > 4.  That is, we (devrel, userrel, averyone else perhaps) should use Code
> > of Conduct to stop elaborate flame wars before they can burn out of
> > control.  Whether a flame war ever merits a bug will vary from situation
> > to situation, but generally if we have a flame war and wish to impose
> > some sort of sanctions because of it, we really need to be hitting
> > several people or none with warnings or brief "vacations."
> 
> I agree that we should attempt to take short-term actions in response to 
> immediate offenses.
> 
> > 5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
> > I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we wish
> > to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it, and that
> > sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to help make it
> > more effectively used in the rather narrow context for which it was
> > designed before we consider extending its reach.
> 
> On the topic of trying to write down every possible way to go about 
> this, I also agree with them:
> 
> <g2boojum> christel: I actually think you want it to be more vague than 
> specific.  "Don't be a jerk."  Please don't define "jerk", or you get a 
> five-page treatise on why the bahavior doesn't really fit the 
> definition.
> 
> <seemant> we really need to be careful in adopting document upon 
> document upon document
> 

I note two things.  (1) As I read this, no one here is arguing for
anything like a permanent ban; (2) The main thrust in this appears to
address *poisonous developers* except for christel who advocates
including non-developer users as well.  And I don't see anything
suggesting that wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant are discussing
permanent action, although I don't have the complete context.

So, I don't think I have any argument with
wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant here, but I think what you cited
*supports* my view.  Let me quote kloeri again, because he seems to be
the strictest among them:

<kloeri>:   there's some devs that are persistently poisoning the
 project that I want to deal with but that's not just related to
mailinglists

<kloeri>: I don't want to ban anybody but I do want to be much harder
 on devs poisoning things consistently and I'm going to file at least
 one devrel bug in that regard
 ....

In case you are misunderstanding me (well, from you other response I
know you are;  I'll try to address that once again below):  I don't mind
being more vague than specific (I don't ask for a definition of "Don't
be a jerk", really).  My concern goes more to who determines "jerk-ness"
and what we do about it.  And it bothers me a lot that a small number of
people believe themselves qualified to make that decision in secret.
Code of Conduct seems to require that the people applying it are
actively working with the "jerks" involved.  Even kloeri said he was
opening a bug on some developer for all to see.

As for seemant's "document on document" --- I agree.  But I do insist
that our policy documents reflect what we can do and why.  Nothing in
our current documentation that I can see indicates that we should have a
group of people rooting through our archives in order to put together a
case for imposing a permanent ban on someone, and if you are really
suggesting any such thing, *something* needs to be updated in order to
put the community on notice.

There's a difference between "document on document" and a real change in
policy/procedure without and document changes at all.

Please resist the urge to dismiss my description as ad hominum.  When I
say "root through the archives" I realize that that is not a neutral
description of what people have in mind.  But I think it is completely
accurate.

====================================================================
Now, I'm going to change the topic slightly and explain what I think the
context of Jorge's proposals is.  I ask him to set me straight if I'm
getting it wrong.

As I understand it, these proposals fit into the context of the Code of
Conduct, and no matter what you say, I am certain that the Code of
Conduct was put in place to address problems as they occur in order cut
off and prevent brush fires.  In this context, his permanent ban
proposals would be the final sanction after quite a long run of working
with someone through the Code of Conduct itself.  And I have never seen
anything suggesting nor anyone proposing that the Code of Conduct has a
long reach into the past to apply to someone now.  Code of Conduct
addresses current conduct; it does not address past conduct except in
the context of what is going on now.  I ask Roy or Jorge please to
correct me on this.

So, if we were to add Jorge's proposals to the Code of Conduct, they
would fall into that context, and would never come into play at all
unless triggered by some sequence of Code of Conduct violations starting
at the time they were adopted.  Personally, I would probably not support
that, but you might be able to talk me around.

Now, as I have said, I think providing for moderating the -dev mailing
list fits much more neatly into the Code of Conduct, and I had thought
we would have this in place by now (although the push for that seems to
have died --- it's sort of funny that right now I'm the one pushing it).
As I see it, this would give us the option of shunting all posts from
someone to a group of moderators who would either pass the posts or
bounce them with an explanation.  We already do this on at least one of
our mailing lists (gentoo-dev-announce?) so it is nothing new and it
works well in the Code of Conduct context.  It also solves the problem
of future posts from "poisonous people."

Donnie suggests elsewhere that moderation is not the answer because the
number of "poisonous people" is small and the group tends to be the
same, but I don't understand the point.  All that says is that the list
of people being moderated would be pretty static.  To that I answer (1)
So what?  Does it matter that the moderators have a static list rather
than a dynamic one? (2) That's invalid anyway because we've never tried
it.  We don't know how anyone would react to constant requests to modify
a post.  So to reject a solution to a perceived problem because "we know
it won't work" even though it fits nicely into the Code of Conduct and
instead put in place a policy of pre-emptively banning so-called trouble
makers strikes me as ill-conceived and premature.

Oh, yes.  I'm going to stand by my statement that imposing permanent
bans in secret without involving the parties involved is cowardly.  If
we are willing to take such extreme measures against people, we should
be willing to face them to discuss the problems and to negotiate less
extreme alternatives.  It's easy to write an email to someone saying
"You're banned from all things Gentoo";  it's somewhat harder to talk to
that person about it.

I'm also going to stand by my statements that the intent behind the Code
of Conduct has always been to provide a way to react quickly to problems
as they unfold.  This is not explicit in the Code of Conduct, but I
think it is a fair inference from the discussions leading up to it.  I
ask Roy or Jorge to correct me if I am wrong.  Or we could just ask
Christel; she wrote it and she knows what she had in mind.  (Actually, I
guess I'll ask Christel if no one else does.)

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Roy Bamford]

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Hash: SHA1

On 2008.07.11 13:47, Ferris McCormick wrote:
[snip]
> ====================================================================
> Now, I'm going to change the topic slightly and explain what I think
> the
> context of Jorge's proposals is.  I ask him to set me straight if I'm
> getting it wrong.
> 
> As I understand it, these proposals fit into the context of the Code
> of
> Conduct, and no matter what you say, I am certain that the Code of
> Conduct was put in place to address problems as they occur in order
> cut
> off and prevent brush fires.  In this context, his permanent ban
> proposals would be the final sanction after quite a long run of
> working
> with someone through the Code of Conduct itself.  And I have never
> seen
> anything suggesting nor anyone proposing that the Code of Conduct has
> a
> long reach into the past to apply to someone now.  Code of Conduct
> addresses current conduct; it does not address past conduct except in
> the context of what is going on now.  I ask Roy or Jorge please to
> correct me on this.
[snip]

All,

- From memory, the CoC was not intended to change *rels authority or 
scope of action in any way at all. It was intended to document some 
behaviours that anyone at all could use as a reference to remind other 
participants in a medium that they we not behaving as other users had a

right to expect. I recall it was based on some of the concepts behind 
freenodes catalyst idea.

See dberkholzs' earlier ideas on CoC enforcement - anyone can do it.

There was no statute of limitations implied with the creation of the 
CoC. While the CoC was being drafted, it was recognised that many CoC 
breaches come from anger/emotion/misunderstandings and their writers 
not sleeping on a post before they make it. 
It was also recognised that *rel take in comparison to these 
outbursts, a long time to act. The Proctors was created at the same 
time as the CoC as a rapid reaction group to deal with rapidly 
developing situations and calm things down, leaving *rel to deal with 
the persistent offenders in slower time as they always had done.

In short, the publishing of the CoC changed nothing, it only documented
something that had always been implied previously. 

Note that the Forums mods and #gentoo channel ops had been enforcing 
the standards in the CoC long before it was written. It follows that 
the CoC is just documenting a part of what had been Gentoos' common 
law. 

- -- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(NeddySeagoon) a member of
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
treecleaners
trustees
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--
gentoo-council@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Alec Warner]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 5:47 AM, Ferris McCormick <fmccor@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I'm CC-ing gentoo-project on this, because some Council members and
> perhaps others seemed to indicate a preference for moving the discussion
> there.  This response turns out to be much longer than I had intended
> because I always try to follow my reasoning to see where it goes,
> whether I like the conclusions or not.
>
> On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 21:54 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>> On 12:26 Thu 10 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
>> > On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
>> > 2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
>> > all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
>> > is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
>> > pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind it,
>> > and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to help
>> > enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);
>>
>> The concepts of poisonous people and repeat offenders are explicitly
>> mentioned numerous times in the 20070308 council meeting. Here are some
>> examples:
>>
>> <wolf31o2|mobile> kloeri: banning people from the lists, not
>> necessarily... but reducing the requirements on devrel to suspend
>> "repeat offenders" might just make them think about their actions before
>> doing them, and that could decrease the flames a bit
>>
>> <kloeri> there's some devs that are persistently poisoning the project
>> that I want to deal with but that's not just related to mailinglists
>>
>> <wolf31o2|mobile> christel: agreed... I think we need to be a bit more
>> strict on our developers... after all, in the flames involving users,
>> developers are just as much at fault as the users... perhaps if the devs
>> didn't respond in kind, the flames would subside much quicker, etc
>>
>> <kloeri> I don't want to ban anybody but I do want to be much harder on
>> devs poisoning things consistently and I'm going to file at least one
>> devrel bug in that regard
>>
>> <kloeri> I don't think we can force people to follow netiquette in
>> general but we can do more to smack devs up when they're constantly
>> being a pain in the ass
>>
>>
>> On the topic of userrel's power to ban people from lists, which is a
>> long-term action:
>>
>> <robbat2> on the side of devrel not having 'teeth' - kloeri mentioned
>> before that infra previously wasn't very responsive to requests to do
>> things (he cited a userrel request to remove user from the ML)
>>
>> <christel> i have a question, if we are to start enforcing etiquette
>> policy, i think we may want to ensure we have one which also cover users
>>
>> > 4.  That is, we (devrel, userrel, averyone else perhaps) should use Code
>> > of Conduct to stop elaborate flame wars before they can burn out of
>> > control.  Whether a flame war ever merits a bug will vary from situation
>> > to situation, but generally if we have a flame war and wish to impose
>> > some sort of sanctions because of it, we really need to be hitting
>> > several people or none with warnings or brief "vacations."
>>
>> I agree that we should attempt to take short-term actions in response to
>> immediate offenses.
>>
>> > 5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
>> > I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we wish
>> > to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it, and that
>> > sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to help make it
>> > more effectively used in the rather narrow context for which it was
>> > designed before we consider extending its reach.
>>
>> On the topic of trying to write down every possible way to go about
>> this, I also agree with them:
>>
>> <g2boojum> christel: I actually think you want it to be more vague than
>> specific.  "Don't be a jerk."  Please don't define "jerk", or you get a
>> five-page treatise on why the bahavior doesn't really fit the
>> definition.
>>
>> <seemant> we really need to be careful in adopting document upon
>> document upon document
>>
>
> I note two things.  (1) As I read this, no one here is arguing for
> anything like a permanent ban; (2) The main thrust in this appears to
> address *poisonous developers* except for christel who advocates
> including non-developer users as well.  And I don't see anything
> suggesting that wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant are discussing
> permanent action, although I don't have the complete context.
>
> So, I don't think I have any argument with
> wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant here, but I think what you cited
> *supports* my view.  Let me quote kloeri again, because he seems to be
> the strictest among them:
>
> <kloeri>:   there's some devs that are persistently poisoning the
>  project that I want to deal with but that's not just related to
> mailinglists
>
> <kloeri>: I don't want to ban anybody but I do want to be much harder
>  on devs poisoning things consistently and I'm going to file at least
>  one devrel bug in that regard
>  ....
>
> In case you are misunderstanding me (well, from you other response I
> know you are;  I'll try to address that once again below):  I don't mind
> being more vague than specific (I don't ask for a definition of "Don't
> be a jerk", really).  My concern goes more to who determines "jerk-ness"
> and what we do about it.  And it bothers me a lot that a small number of
> people believe themselves qualified to make that decision in secret.
> Code of Conduct seems to require that the people applying it are
> actively working with the "jerks" involved.  Even kloeri said he was
> opening a bug on some developer for all to see.

So to play the other side; if not *rel to determine 'jerk-ness' who would it be?

You speak of secrecy where I don't think anyone intends any (well
perhaps a few do; but
I humbly expect them to not get their way).

>
> As for seemant's "document on document" --- I agree.  But I do insist
> that our policy documents reflect what we can do and why.  Nothing in
> our current documentation that I can see indicates that we should have a
> group of people rooting through our archives in order to put together a
> case for imposing a permanent ban on someone, and if you are really
> suggesting any such thing, *something* needs to be updated in order to
> put the community on notice.

I find this under the realm of existing abilities of the *rel groups;
but feel free to stop talking about it
and just update the damn docs if you are concerned; feel free to email
the diff to the parties involved.
I'm sure if there is a disagreement with wording it can be worked out.

>
> There's a difference between "document on document" and a real change in
> policy/procedure without and document changes at all.
>
> Please resist the urge to dismiss my description as ad hominum.  When I
> say "root through the archives" I realize that that is not a neutral
> description of what people have in mind.  But I think it is completely
> accurate.

Yes, worst case and all that.

>
> ====================================================================
> Now, I'm going to change the topic slightly and explain what I think the
> context of Jorge's proposals is.  I ask him to set me straight if I'm
> getting it wrong.
>
> As I understand it, these proposals fit into the context of the Code of
> Conduct, and no matter what you say, I am certain that the Code of
> Conduct was put in place to address problems as they occur in order cut
> off and prevent brush fires.  In this context, his permanent ban
> proposals would be the final sanction after quite a long run of working
> with someone through the Code of Conduct itself.  And I have never seen
> anything suggesting nor anyone proposing that the Code of Conduct has a
> long reach into the past to apply to someone now.  Code of Conduct
> addresses current conduct; it does not address past conduct except in
> the context of what is going on now.  I ask Roy or Jorge please to
> correct me on this.
>
> So, if we were to add Jorge's proposals to the Code of Conduct, they
> would fall into that context, and would never come into play at all
> unless triggered by some sequence of Code of Conduct violations starting
> at the time they were adopted.  Personally, I would probably not support
> that, but you might be able to talk me around.
>
> Now, as I have said, I think providing for moderating the -dev mailing
> list fits much more neatly into the Code of Conduct, and I had thought
> we would have this in place by now (although the push for that seems to
> have died --- it's sort of funny that right now I'm the one pushing it).
> As I see it, this would give us the option of shunting all posts from
> someone to a group of moderators who would either pass the posts or
> bounce them with an explanation.  We already do this on at least one of
> our mailing lists (gentoo-dev-announce?) so it is nothing new and it
> works well in the Code of Conduct context.  It also solves the problem
> of future posts from "poisonous people."

Moderating -dev has not died.  However our mailing list software needs
some features
added and neither I nor robbat2 has implemented them yet.

>
> Donnie suggests elsewhere that moderation is not the answer because the
> number of "poisonous people" is small and the group tends to be the
> same, but I don't understand the point.  All that says is that the list
> of people being moderated would be pretty static.  To that I answer (1)
> So what?  Does it matter that the moderators have a static list rather
> than a dynamic one? (2) That's invalid anyway because we've never tried
> it.  We don't know how anyone would react to constant requests to modify
> a post.  So to reject a solution to a perceived problem because "we know
> it won't work" even though it fits nicely into the Code of Conduct and
> instead put in place a policy of pre-emptively banning so-called trouble
> makers strikes me as ill-conceived and premature.
>
> Oh, yes.  I'm going to stand by my statement that imposing permanent
> bans in secret without involving the parties involved is cowardly.  If
> we are willing to take such extreme measures against people, we should
> be willing to face them to discuss the problems and to negotiate less
> extreme alternatives.  It's easy to write an email to someone saying
> "You're banned from all things Gentoo";  it's somewhat harder to talk to
> that person about it.

You imply that no one will talk to the bannee about his/her problems
and I believe
that to be wholly false.

>
> I'm also going to stand by my statements that the intent behind the Code
> of Conduct has always been to provide a way to react quickly to problems
> as they unfold.  This is not explicit in the Code of Conduct, but I
> think it is a fair inference from the discussions leading up to it.  I
> ask Roy or Jorge to correct me if I am wrong.  Or we could just ask
> Christel; she wrote it and she knows what she had in mind.  (Actually, I
> guess I'll ask Christel if no one else does.)

The Code of Conduct was to stop people from being dicks and to spell out what
we as the community expect out of our members.  I don't think your
statements are correct.

>
> Regards,
> Ferris
> --
> Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
> Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)
>
-- 
gentoo-council@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

RE: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Chrissy Fullam]

> On 22:49 Wed 09 Jul     , Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> >   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
> >   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> >
> > Please respond with your thoughts.
> 
> Here's my thoughts: yes.
> 
> I'd also like if they came up with some sort of reporting mechanism (CC on
> bug is good enough for me) to keep the council informed when action is
> actually taken if we or the broader community aren't already aware of it.
> Same goes for devrel, really.

Absolute agreement here.


Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | Gentoo Public Relations 




-- 
gentoo-council@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

RE: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Chrissy Fullam]

Top posting ... I agree with dberkholz in every comment. 

Let's try to leave such strong emotions and implications at the door while
we appreciate that everyone can have an opinion but said opinion is their
own or potentially that of a small group. None of us speaks for everyone and
we'll never reach 100% community agreement on any topic. Council was however
elected by the developers so while they cannot speak for everyone perhaps I
should clarify that they can make decisions on our behalf and I for one
appreciate that they value our thoughts. :)

Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | Gentoo Public Relations 


> Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> On 13:55 Thu 10 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> > On Thu, 2008-07-10 at 11:49 +0000, Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto wrote:
> > > To summarize, my proposal was that we should have a method to "keep
> > > away" people that do nothing but cause continuous issues - this is
> > > about the "poisonous people" that are long-time and repeated
> offenders.
> > > As I've stated back then "I believe that the greatest reward anyone
> > > can have to participate in Gentoo is getting credit for work done on
> Gentoo.
> > > As such, as a last measure, we must be ready to deny such
> > > contribution from banned users."
> >
> > I don't think I've ever seen anyone at all who does nothing but
> > continually causs "issues" and so qualifies as poisonous.  We have a
> > large community and everyone is abrasive at times, and everyone gets
> > abuse at times (even me, but probably not from people you have in mind
> > as "poisonous", if you have any).  But I consider this just a normal
> > part of doing business and can't imagine what it would take to get me
> > to make a formal complaint about it.
> >
> > For example, I have had little contact with Linus Torvalds, but I have
> > had a fair amount of contact with David Miller (davem --- the sparc
> > kernel developer).  I'm pretty sure that davem would seem more
> > "poisonous" to us than anyone we've ever seen in Gentoo, and by
> > reputation, Linus makes davem look like a pussy cat.  (Although davem
> > seems to be mellowing.)  But I rather doubt that if for some reason
> > either one started participating in Gentoo that we'd consider banning
> > them or refusing their contributions. :)
> 
> I agree that the Linux kernel community has different standards and
> expectations than the Gentoo community, and that's exactly the point.
> You act within the context of your community. I don't care if people in
> northern Canada practice cannibalism, it's not OK around these parts.
> 
> > > | 4.  Here's what I think is meant by a complete ban.  *These are
> > > | only my own inferences from reading between the lines and trying
> > > | to put different comments together in some coherent fashion.*
> > > |      Under some rather unclear conditions, some combination of
> > > |      devrel/userrel/trustees/infra could decide to impose a
> complete,
> > > |      permanent ban on a member (user or, I suppose developer) of our
> > > |      community.  This would have the following effects:
> > >
> > > Some people seem to support that userrel can make such decisions on
> > > its own. As I've stated, as an userrel member, I was willing to
> > > involve other teams. We also need to agree to which body should
> appeals be sent.
> >
> > I would not support giving userrel that authority or userrel+devrel
> > that authority.  Now, I oppose this absolutely.  But in general I
> > don't thing any group(s) in gentoo should have such sweeping authority
> > to make such major decisions secretely in private.  If we want to
> > impose such a ban on someone, we really should have the courage and
> > resolve to work in public.
> 
> I dislike your use of emotional words to imply that anyone you disagree
> with is cowardly.
> 
> > > My comment about this has always been that in extreme cases and if
> > > we have a close partnership with upstream, we might want to share
> > > with them our decision and let them judge for themselves if the
> > > actions that made such person be banned on Gentoo are relevant to them
> or not.
> > >
> > Why?  It's hardly our concern who participates upstream.
> 
> I agree with this, as I mentioned above with the context of the community.
> 
> > > The point here is that such a decision is not terminal. If people
> > > feel more comfortable about it, don't call it permanent bans, but
> > > call it a ban until further notice.
> >
> > What's the practical difference?  And why not make it something
> > sensible and definite?  The authority to lift an indefinite ban most
> > likely rests with whoever imposed it in the first place, and that
> > doesn't provide for much.
> 
> I dislike the implication that anything else is not sensible.
> 
> > > I assume what you mean here is that there would be no attempt of
> > > mediation with said person. As my proposal states this is an
> > > *extreme* decision meant only for *long-time* and *repeated*
> > > offenders. When we get there, there's no possibility for mediation -
> > > that's something that would have been tried a long time before we get
> there.
> >
> > See above.  And as i said, I've never seen anyone who fits such a
> > profile, so perhaps we're spending a lot of time here defining how we
> > treat the empty set.
> 
> I think it's clear that your opinion does not necessarily represent the
> opinions of everyone else in Gentoo, so arguing that your empty set is
> Gentoo's empty set is not valid.
> 
> > > | 8.  [Argument]  I note that we are likely to institute some form
> > > | of possible moderation for the gentoo-dev mailing list (presumably
> > > | based on Code of Conduct violations), and if we do that, it
> > > | effectively satisfies the intent of any absolute ban, but is not
> > > | nearly so traumatic to the system.  I note that this is a minority
> > > | view among those who have discussed this.
> > >
> > > Ferris, I do hope the moderation will prevent so many abuses on the
> > > mls, but it alone won't change people's mindsets and actions.
> > > Although posts can be moderated, it doesn't mean that people will
> > > stop trying to send abusive mails and that a few might even get to
> > > the lists. Also, it doesn't address irc, bugzilla and other mediums
> abuse.
> >
> > If we have your hypothetical poisonous person running around loose
> > somewhere and put him (or her) into a must-be-moderated list for
> > gentoo-dev, the problem there should disappear because posts will be
> > shunted to the moderators.  #gentoo-dev is a more general concern than
> > just a few specific people and falls generally under Code of Conduct
> > for immediate correction.  Bugzilla looks like a bigger problem than
> > it is, because when it explodes it can be spectacular.  But it is not
> > limited to one or two people, either (even I have lost control on
> > bugzilla, and I generally appear pretty calm and rational, I think).
> 
> I don't think moderation is the answer, because it's a very small group of
> people who become regular, recurring problems.
> 
> > Jorge, you know, if you and I were both forced to come up with a list
> > of five poisonous people to consider for application of such a ban, I
> > suspect their intersection might be empty.  What then?
> >
> > It is my view that both userrel and devrel may enforce the Code of
> > Conduct,
> 
> I agree.
> 
> > but also Code of Conduct should be limited to quick response to
> > immediate situations.
> 
> I do not agree. Just because something happened in the past does not mean
> it never happened and should not be considered.
> 
> > I think devrel and userrel are the wrong bodies to be rooting around
> > in the past if that's what you are proposing.  Neither of us is set up
> > to do that.  We act on current behavior, and if discipline is
> > warranted, then we can take to past behavior for guidance if we wish.
> > I don't think anyone in Gentoo currently has the charter to look at
> > the community and say "X has been causing trouble long enough ---
> > let's just boot X."  Nor do I think we want anyone to have such
> > authority --- surely we're more tolerant and flexible than that.
> 
> Again I dislike your implications that anyone who would act on past
> behavior is intolerant and inflexible. Please stop using implications like
> this.
> 
> --
> Thanks,
> Donnie
> 
> Donnie Berkholz
> Developer, Gentoo Linux
> Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

-- 
gentoo-council@lists.gentoo.org mailing list

RE: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Chrissy Fullam]

Sorry, this is long. I hate long emails but find the topic to be one
warranting discussion.

<snip out Council log comments>
> I note two things.  (1) As I read this, no one here is arguing for
> anything like a permanent ban; (2) The main thrust in this appears to
> address *poisonous developers* except for christel who advocates including
> non-developer users as well.  And I don't see anything suggesting that
> wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant are discussing permanent action, although
> I don't have the complete context.

Lack of an idea previously does not nullify the validity of the idea now.
They were however discussing the root cause, repeat offenders who continued
to have negative effects on the community and isn't that at the heart of the
matter here?

> So, I don't think I have any argument with
> wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant here, but I think what you cited
> *supports* my view.  Let me quote kloeri again, because he seems to be the
> strictest among them:
> 
> <kloeri>:   there's some devs that are persistently poisoning the
>  project that I want to deal with but that's not just related to
> mailinglists
 
I read 'not just' to mean not exclusive, as in people do it in places other
than solely on mailing lists, such as IRC channels perhaps. 

> My concern goes more to who determines "jerk-ness"
> and what we do about it.  And it bothers me a lot that a small number of
> people believe themselves qualified to make that decision in secret.

Not sure who said they wanted to make any such decisions in secret. As an
active participant in this discussion since the beginning I know secrecy was
not my intent.

> Code of Conduct seems to require that the people applying it are actively
> working with the "jerks" involved.  Even kloeri said he was opening a bug
> on some developer for all to see.

<kloeri>: I don't want to ban anybody but I do want to be much harder on
devs poisoning things consistently and I'm going to file at least one devrel
bug in that regard  ....

Actually fmccor, kloeri did not state for all to see. He could have opened a
private bug and closed it for only Dev Rel to see for example. That would
also fit with his above quote.

> Nothing in our
> current documentation that I can see indicates that we should have a group
> of people rooting through our archives in order to put together a case for
> imposing a permanent ban on someone, and if you are really suggesting any
> such thing, *something* needs to be updated in order to put the community
> on notice.

I think if someone were to be rooting through archives it would be to
supplement a case, not base one solely on something that happened long ago.
If it were last week I would not consider that to be rooting through
archives, personally last week's emails are readily accessible.
 
> As I understand it, these proposals fit into the context of the Code of
> Conduct, and no matter what you say, I am certain that the Code of Conduct
> was put in place to address problems as they occur in order cut off and
> prevent brush fires.  

As someone who was regularly consulted by Council for the creation and
editing of the original CoC I feel I can appropriately comment here. It was
not put in place to only handle something that just happened, it simply was
not deemed a relevant point of discussion as we felt people were competent
enough to make appropriate decisions. Its intent was to be put in place as
an extension of Dev Rel policy and to be applied to developers and users
alike. The discussion regarding time as I recall was limited to how we would
not want to apply it to someone who since changed his/her ways in their
communications and made the desired improvements... such an act would then
be vengeful. 

> In this context, his permanent ban proposals would
> be the final sanction after quite a long run of working with someone
> through the Code of Conduct itself.  

It was not designed to replace common sense nor to nullify previous efforts
if they were made after this lovely document; if anything it was deemed the
documentation of what was perceived to be common sense when we found that
sense may not be as common as we would have liked. ;-)

> Now, as I have said, I think providing for moderating the -dev mailing
> list fits much more neatly into the Code of Conduct, and I had thought we
> would have this in place by now 

These are two separate items and both are good solid items for discussion.
Discussing one does not mean the other is not relevant or desirable. 

>(although the push for that seems to have
> died --- it's sort of funny that right now I'm the one pushing it).

Not dead in the least. As I understood it infra was looking into the
practical implementation though can appreciate the confusion as we rather
froze the 'who should moderate' discussion after realizing that many of us
could not agree on the who... though tsunam and myself as User Rel and Dev
Rel leads did say that we would be more than willing to discuss implementing
the tasks into our respective groups as a collaborative effort.

> Donnie suggests elsewhere that moderation is not the answer because the
> number of "poisonous people" is small and the group tends to be the same,
> but I don't understand the point.  

I recall Donnie being in favor of both moderation as well as banning. Donnie
can comment best to his views though.

> All that says is that the list of
> people being moderated would be pretty static.  To that I answer (1) So
> what?  Does it matter that the moderators have a static list rather than a
> dynamic one? 

Sure it does, in the sense that a repeat offender should be reviewed as to
why we allow them to take up our time instead of following processes that we
are currently discussing to put in place in conjunction with the moderation.

> (2) That's invalid anyway because we've never tried it.  

It's not invalid. It's why we talk about ways to implement things. As you
likely agree, policies and documents require updating so let's talk about
different ways and determine the one we wish to try. Nothing is concrete.
One doesn't work, try another. We're fluid like that. 

> Oh, yes.  I'm going to stand by my statement that imposing permanent bans
> in secret without involving the parties involved is cowardly.  

Who the heck said they wanted to do everything in private? I'm not even sure
where you got this notion from, though you have used it repeatedly on this
and similar threads and that's the only reference I can find. If I'm missing
something, please tell me.

> I'm also going to stand by my statements that the intent behind the Code
> of Conduct has always been to provide a way to react quickly to problems
> as they unfold.  ...  Or we could just ask Christel; she
> wrote it and she knows what she had in mind.  (Actually, I guess I'll ask
> Christel if no one else does.)

Actually while Christel undoubtedly worked hard, this is not how this
happened at all. A group consisting largely of Council but some external
parties... hell I even brought in a professional PR person as part of the
process... held the discussion and Christel was elected to draft up the
thoughts and agreed upon ideas into a more comprehensive document which the
group agreed to name Code of Conduct. 


Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | Gentoo Public Relations 




-- 
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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Mark Loeser]

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Ferris McCormick <fmccor@gentoo.org> said:
> 
> On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > From this month's agenda:
> > 
> >   User Relations authority
> >   ------------------------
> > 
> >   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
> >   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> > 
> >   Preparation: Donnie will start a thread on the -council list. Post 
> >   your opinion there. If everyone's posted in advance of the meeting, 
> >   status check at meeting to see who's ready to vote.
> > 
> >   Goal: Reach a decision on-list no later than July 17.
> > 
> > Please respond with your thoughts.
> 
> I didn't even remember that I had asked this, but here are my thoughts.
> 
> 1.  Yes, Userrel has (or should have) that authority;

Cool, we agree that userrel has this authority.

> 2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
> all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
> is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
> pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind it,
> and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to help
> enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);

I think we should then make it so that userrel and devrel have the
authority and/or power to respond immediately to problems in real time.
Why isn't devrel set up to respond to problems "real time"?

> 3.  Thus, I think bugzilla bugs for Code of Conduct violations miss much
> of the point.

If someone is abusing bugzilla to berate people, they should be
punished.

> 5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
> I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we wish
> to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it, and that
> sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to help make it
> more effectively used in the rather narrow context for which it was
> designed before we consider extending its reach.

I'm not sure exactly what these statements mean.  Could you please
elaborate on how you support it currently?  And what sort of changes you
would like to avoid before you support the CoC further?

> 6.  For example, I think we could put some sort of limited moderation
> onto the -dev mailing list, citing the current Code of Conduct as
> authority, any time we wanted.  And I do not think the Code of Conduct
> as currently envisioned has much reach into the past (one or two days,
> probably; one or two weeks, perhaps; one or two months, no; one or two
> years, certainly not).

So you wish to limit the reach of its timeframe?  Could you please
elaborate on what you mean here?  I'm not sure what you are trying to
express.

Thanks,

-- 
Mark Loeser
email         -   halcy0n AT gentoo DOT org
email         -   mark AT halcy0n DOT com
web           -   http://www.halcy0n.com

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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Ferris McCormick]

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On Tue, 2008-07-22 at 02:43 -0400, Mark Loeser wrote:
> Ferris McCormick <fmccor@gentoo.org> said:
> > 
> > On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > > From this month's agenda:
> > > 
> > >   User Relations authority
> > >   ------------------------
> > > 
> > >   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
> > >   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> > > 
> > >   Preparation: Donnie will start a thread on the -council list. Post 
> > >   your opinion there. If everyone's posted in advance of the meeting, 
> > >   status check at meeting to see who's ready to vote.
> > > 
> > >   Goal: Reach a decision on-list no later than July 17.
> > > 
> > > Please respond with your thoughts.
> > 
> > I didn't even remember that I had asked this, but here are my thoughts.
> > 
> > 1.  Yes, Userrel has (or should have) that authority;
> 
> Cool, we agree that userrel has this authority.
> 
> > 2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
> > all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
> > is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
> > pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind it,
> > and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to help
> > enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);
> 
> I think we should then make it so that userrel and devrel have the
> authority and/or power to respond immediately to problems in real time.
> Why isn't devrel set up to respond to problems "real time"?
> 

Historical reasons and lack of resources, I think.  As far as I know, we
(devrel) have always reacted mostly to complaints and sometimes
violations if we see them.  But we generally don't look.  You'd have to
check with christel, kloeri, and the 2006 Council generally, but I think
one reason for writing down the Code of Conduct and setting up the
proctors was to provide an alternative to the rather slow but
potentially serious devrel procedure for specific situations.  Most day
to day problems generally result just from loss of temper or personality
conflicts, and for those we wanted a way to act immediately but not with
starting up a lot of "machinery" or process.  Thus, the proctors were
supposed to take immediate action such as warnings, brief mediation, or
perhaps brief suspensions.

There was a fair amount of discussion about whether we should do this at
all, and whether it should become a devrel function.  Consensus was (1)
we needed it; (2) it should be done outside of devrel.

My original reaction was (1) No; (2) No.  I was mistaken on (1), and I'm
undecided on (2).  I *think* in (2) I'd probably give it to userrel.  As
someone pointed out, developers are users, too, and Code of Conduct is
supposed to apply uniformly across the board no matter who is in
violation.  Hence, userrel is probably better positioned to handle the
brief, sharp exchanges to calm them down before they erupt.

> > 3.  Thus, I think bugzilla bugs for Code of Conduct violations miss much
> > of the point.
> 
> If someone is abusing bugzilla to berate people, they should be
> punished.
> 

I agree, I think, but you misunderstand me.  What I meant to say was
that if someone opens a bug complaining about a code of conduct
violation, it's too late.  Process has broken down, because if we are
functioning correctly, most Code of Conduct violations should have been
snipped off before they can reach the open-a-bug-for-devrel/userrel
stage.

> > 5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
> > I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we wish
> > to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it, and that
> > sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to help make it
> > more effectively used in the rather narrow context for which it was
> > designed before we consider extending its reach.
> 
> I'm not sure exactly what these statements mean.  Could you please
> elaborate on how you support it currently?  And what sort of changes you
> would like to avoid before you support the CoC further?
> 

By "support" I meant that I now agree with the principle behind it.  I
r4eally don't do much myself to enforce it, because I hardly ever see a
violation soon enough to react to it.  Everything else i said was out of
ignorance --- I don't know the current state of much of anything
regarding the Code of Conduct, but I am willing to help to make it a
real tool we can use.

> > 6.  For example, I think we could put some sort of limited moderation
> > onto the -dev mailing list, citing the current Code of Conduct as
> > authority, any time we wanted.  And I do not think the Code of Conduct
> > as currently envisioned has much reach into the past (one or two days,
> > probably; one or two weeks, perhaps; one or two months, no; one or two
> > years, certainly not).
> 
> So you wish to limit the reach of its timeframe?  Could you please
> elaborate on what you mean here?  I'm not sure what you are trying to
> express.
> 
> Thanks,

Sure.  The Code of Conduct/Proctors structure was set up to handle
problems as they occur.  Others involved in the initial concept might
have viewed it differently, but I always have viewed the whole idea to
be simply to keep Gentoo as civil as practical on a day to day basis.
True, repeated violations could result in increasingly severe sanctions.
But the idea as I have always viewed it was to address today's fires
today.  Not yesterday's fires today, not today's fires tomorrow.  This
requires a quick reaction team, and that's what the proctors were for.

Hope this helps,
If I'm still confusing people, please just ping me.  I'll try to clear
up anything on IRC if you wish (but no need for any of this to be
private; #gentoo-qa or #gentoo-userrel would either be fine).

Regards,
Ferris

-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)

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RE: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Chrissy Fullam]

> Mark Loeser wrote:
> > Ferris McCormick <fmccor@gentoo.org> said:
> > > On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > > From this month's agenda:
> > >
> > >   User Relations authority
> > >   ------------------------
> > >
> > >   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
> > >   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> > I didn't even remember that I had asked this, but here are my thoughts.
> > 1.  Yes, Userrel has (or should have) that authority;
> Cool, we agree that userrel has this authority.
> 
> > 2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
> > all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
> > is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
> > pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind
> > it, and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to
> > help enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);
> 
> I think we should then make it so that userrel and devrel have the
> authority and/or power to respond immediately to problems in real time.
> Why isn't devrel set up to respond to problems "real time"?

I believe when fmccor states that 'devrel is not set up for immediate
responses' he is referring to the fact that devrel is a small team without
members in every major time zone. That alone makes it hard to have an
immediate reaction to something. For example fmccor and myself are in the
states, it is less likely that we will be actively online at 03h reading
-dev emails. Such a time would be more appropriately covered by a few folks
in the EU. An increase in recruiting that led to additional devrel staffing
would assist in this area so the problem is NOT without a resolution.

However I do disagree with fmccor on the topic of CoC is for only immediate
response to an action. Let's be realistic here, if you did something
yesterday it does not mean that it is no longer a bad thing and that your
slate should be wiped clean today. I see nothing wrong with pursuing an
issue that took place a few days ago. I would agree with fmccor if he meant
we should not wait four weeks to discuss with the person or suddenly punish
the person for a CoC violation that took place, for example, four weeks ago.
Though I see nothing wrong with talking to such a person and saying
something to effect of "look, that was wrong, you know it, do it again and
we may need to pursue disciplinary action."

> > 5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
> > I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we
> > wish to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it,
> > and that sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to
> > help make it more effectively used in the rather narrow context for
> > which it was designed before we consider extending its reach.

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/coc.xml
The link is readily available off the Council project page.

I appreciate fmccor's volunteering for doing the actual editing of the
document. I cant really understand what he means when he says we must revise
it before we consider modifying it, but suspect that was just a slip in
thinking. I agree that we should revise it as our needs change, which is
also why the disclaimer was put on that page to indicate that the document
would always be subject to growth and revision.
 
> > 6.  For example, I think we could put some sort of limited moderation
> > onto the -dev mailing list, citing the current Code of Conduct as
> > authority, any time we wanted.  

Makes sense.

> > And I do not think the Code of Conduct
> > as currently envisioned has much reach into the past (one or two days,
> > probably; one or two weeks, perhaps; one or two months, no; one or two
> > years, certainly not).
> So you wish to limit the reach of its timeframe?  Could you please
> elaborate on what you mean here?  I'm not sure what you are trying to
> express.

Some things take time so let's think about this. Say someone is on vacation
and unresponsive to communication attempts for two weeks. Doesn't mean that
the attempts were not made nor that the person should come back and say "hey
it's been two weeks, you cant touch me now." There are lots of variables to
be considered and this is why the CoC was created the way it was, without
absolute clarity in every regard because doing so would have made it a 40
page document written in a legal sense that most of us wouldn't want to
read.


Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | Gentoo Public Relations 

Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Petteri Räty]

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Donnie Berkholz kirjoitti:
> From this month's agenda:
> 
>   User Relations authority
>   ------------------------
> 
>   Ferris asks: Does userrel have the authority to enforce the Code of
>   Conduct on users in the same way devrel does for developers?
> 

How active is the userrel team in the first place? If they are equipped 
to handle things I don't see why not. I don't see why we would let 
people rampage on our infra without taking action. Of course for forums 
we already have mods.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Donnie Berkholz]

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On 15:21 Fri 11 Jul     , Roy Bamford wrote:
> - From memory, the CoC was not intended to change *rels authority or 
> scope of action in any way at all. It was intended to document some 
> behaviours that anyone at all could use as a reference to remind other 
> participants in a medium that they we not behaving as other users had a
> right to expect. I recall it was based on some of the concepts behind 
> freenodes catalyst idea.
> 
> See dberkholzs' earlier ideas on CoC enforcement - anyone can do it.
> 
> There was no statute of limitations implied with the creation of the 
> CoC. While the CoC was being drafted, it was recognised that many CoC 
> breaches come from anger/emotion/misunderstandings and their writers 
> not sleeping on a post before they make it. 
> It was also recognised that *rel take in comparison to these 
> outbursts, a long time to act. The Proctors was created at the same 
> time as the CoC as a rapid reaction group to deal with rapidly 
> developing situations and calm things down, leaving *rel to deal with 
> the persistent offenders in slower time as they always had done.
> 
> In short, the publishing of the CoC changed nothing, it only documented
> something that had always been implied previously. 
> 
> Note that the Forums mods and #gentoo channel ops had been enforcing 
> the standards in the CoC long before it was written. It follows that 
> the CoC is just documenting a part of what had been Gentoos' common 
> law. 

Yes. =) Thank you for this well-constructed email, Roy.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

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