[gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Benjamin Judas]

This is problably going to start a flamewar, but I am sick of such
(insert appropriate term for animal excrements here) on mailing lists,
forums and even websites.

It's okay to have dreams, they keep us working on the things we like.
But trying to force your dreams to come true annoys other people. If a
Gentoo-developer cannot advocate the heart of Gentoo - i.e. Portage -
and keeps bitching about it, then he or she should probably consider
retiring completely from Gentoo and/or fork Gentoo.

In no case, he or she should be talking bullshit (oops, I wrote it) in
official Gentoo-channels. This appears to users and other uninvolved
people like a kindergarden.

The reason for my mail is the following excerpt (Jun. 5th, time CEST)

--8<------------
21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
package manager on alpha
21:36 <@eroyf> yes
21:36 <@eroyf> like it is on mips
21:36  * eroyf giggles
21:36 <@eroyf> all the mips devs are using it anyways
21:37 <@spb> and of course the ultimate aim is to drop alpha keywords
from portage
-->8------------

Please people. It's good to have destinies, and everybody wants to build
his own very personal monument. We had Zynot, we had GenUX, and now we
have Paludis.

Please stop acting as if the project of a small scottish griper brain
was "The Standard(tm)"

It is not and hopefully will never be (because then the bitching and
whining will finally stop).


I'm waiting for the stinky comments from the usual corners.

Yours sincerly
Beejay


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Benjamin Judas]

This is problably going to start a flamewar, but I am sick of such
(insert appropriate term for animal excrements here) on mailing lists,
forums and even websites.

It's okay to have dreams, they keep us working on the things we like.
But trying to force your dreams to come true annoys other people. If a
Gentoo-developer cannot advocate the heart of Gentoo - i.e. Portage -
and keeps bitching about it, then he or she should probably consider
retiring completely from Gentoo and/or fork Gentoo.

In no case, he or she should be talking bullshit (oops, I wrote it) in
official Gentoo-channels. This appears to users and other uninvolved
people like a kindergarden.

The reason for my mail is the following excerpt (Jun. 5th, time CEST)

--8<------------
21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
package manager on alpha
21:36 <@eroyf> yes
21:36 <@eroyf> like it is on mips
21:36  * eroyf giggles
21:36 <@eroyf> all the mips devs are using it anyways
21:37 <@spb> and of course the ultimate aim is to drop alpha keywords
from portage
-->8------------

Please people. It's good to have destinies, and everybody wants to build
his own very personal monument. We had Zynot, we had GenUX, and now we
have Paludis.

Please stop acting as if the project of a small scottish griper brain
was "The Standard(tm)"

It is not and hopefully will never be (because then the bitching and
whining will finally stop).


I'm waiting for the stinky comments from the usual corners.

Yours sincerly
Beejay


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Stephen P. Becker]

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*snip*
> --8<------------
> 21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
> package manager on alpha
> 21:36 <@eroyf> yes
> 21:36 <@eroyf> like it is on mips
> 21:36  * eroyf giggles
> 21:36 <@eroyf> all the mips devs are using it anyways
> 21:37 <@spb> and of course the ultimate aim is to drop alpha keywords
> from portage
> -->8------------
> 
> Please people. It's good to have destinies, and everybody wants to
> build his own very personal monument. We had Zynot, we had GenUX, and
> now we have Paludis.
> 
> Please stop acting as if the project of a small scottish griper brain
> was "The Standard(tm)"
*snip*

Wow, did you really take that conversation seriously?  If so, I feel
sorry for you, as it is clearly joke.  Clean the sand out of your
pee-hole...

-Steve

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Benjamin Judas]

> > 21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
> > package manager on alpha
> 
> This is what is known as a joke. Most people can recognise it as such.

As is the whole discussion about this 'project'. Addionally, for this
topic the borderlines between "joke" and "serious" seem to have blurred
in the last few weeks.

I am sick of hearing such jokes.

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Peter Weller]

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On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:09:52 +0200
Benjamin Judas <benni@beejaysworld.de> wrote:

[..snip..]

Is it just me or did you send the same mail to the ML twice?

*sigh*

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Christian Hartmann]

> --8<------------
> 21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
> package manager on alpha
> 21:36 <@eroyf> yes
> 21:36 <@eroyf> like it is on mips
> 21:36  * eroyf giggles
> 21:36 <@eroyf> all the mips devs are using it anyways
> 21:37 <@spb> and of course the ultimate aim is to drop alpha keywords
> from portage
> -->8------------

eroyf retired anyways. - So what?

hmm.. just wondering why he's still got op in there. Seems like being fashion 
these days..

-- 
Christian Hartmann
http://www.gentoo.org/~ian/

PGP Key:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2154E5EE692A4865
Key fingerprint = 4544 EC0C BAE4 216F 5981  7F95 2154 E5EE 692A 4865

-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Stephen Bennett]

> 21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
> package manager on alpha

This is what is known as a joke. Most people can recognise it as such.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:29:02 +0200
Benjamin Judas <benni@beejaysworld.de> wrote:
> > > 21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
> > > package manager on alpha
> > 
> > This is what is known as a joke. Most people can recognise it as
> > such.
> 
> As is the whole discussion about this 'project'. Addionally, for this
> topic the borderlines between "joke" and "serious" seem to have
> blurred in the last few weeks.

That's an awfully vague and FUDdish claim. Care to elaborate?

> I am sick of hearing such jokes.

Then don't listen.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Petteri Räty]

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Christian Hartmann kirjoitti:
>> --8<------------
>> 21:36 <@spb> next step is making paludis the officially supported
>> package manager on alpha
>> 21:36 <@eroyf> yes
>> 21:36 <@eroyf> like it is on mips
>> 21:36  * eroyf giggles
>> 21:36 <@eroyf> all the mips devs are using it anyways
>> 21:37 <@spb> and of course the ultimate aim is to drop alpha keywords
>> from portage
>> -->8------------
> 
> eroyf retired anyways. - So what?
> 
> hmm.. just wondering why he's still got op in there. Seems like being fashion 
> these days..
> 

Because we give people some time to reconsider before going ahead with
the retirement process.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Gustavo Zacarias]

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Peter Weller wrote:


> Is it just me or did you send the same mail to the ML twice?

It's just you, there's no dupe.
It's just you, there's no dupe.

- --
- --
Gustavo Zacarias
Gustavo Zacarias
Gentoo/SPARC monkey
Gentoo/SPARC monkey
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-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning

[Roy Bamford]

On 2007.06.05 21:09, Benjamin Judas wrote:
> This is problably going to start a flamewar, but I am sick of such
> (insert appropriate term for animal excrements here) on mailing 
> lists,
[snip]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Please step back, take a deep breath and avoid posting to this thread 
for 24 hours.

For those of you not already 'in the know' humor is not universal.
It normally fails at language and cultural boundaries. 
For that reason alone, it should normally be avoided in international 
forums such as are provided by Gentoo. 

Regards,

Roy Bamford,
(NeddySeagoon on behalf of gentoo-proctors)
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:44:23 +0100
Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
> For that reason alone, it should normally be avoided in international 
> forums such as are provided by Gentoo. 

Why yes! Gentoo needs to be one hundred percent serious and entirely
not fun. Anyone saying anything remotely amusing needs to be shut down
by the proctors immediately. Please keep up the good work.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Christian Hartmann]

Am Dienstag 05 Juni 2007 22:37:25 schrieb Ciaran McCreesh:
> > I am sick of hearing such jokes.
>
> Then don't listen.

Nono. It's not that easy.

New users will have to listen as they have to take things seriously being said 
on official channels by developers.

I'm just telling you what new users tend to think about it.

Am Dienstag 05 Juni 2007 22:38:57 schrieb Petteri Räty:
> Because we give people some time to reconsider before going ahead with
> the retirement process.

And that's - out of question - actually a good thing.

-- 
Christian Hartmann
http://www.gentoo.org/~ian/

PGP Key:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2154E5EE692A4865
Key fingerprint = 4544 EC0C BAE4 216F 5981  7F95 2154 E5EE 692A 4865

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Raúl Porcel]

Peter Weller wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:09:52 +0200
> Benjamin Judas <benni@beejaysworld.de> wrote:
> 
> [..snip..]
> 
> Is it just me or did you send the same mail to the ML twice?
> 
> *sigh*

/me blames welp
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning

[Stephen P. Becker]

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On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:44:23 +0100
Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On 2007.06.05 21:09, Benjamin Judas wrote:
> > This is problably going to start a flamewar, but I am sick of such
> > (insert appropriate term for animal excrements here) on mailing 
> > lists,
> [snip]
> 
> Ladies and Gentlemen,
> 
> Please step back, take a deep breath and avoid posting to this thread 
> for 24 hours.
> 
> For those of you not already 'in the know' humor is not universal.
> It normally fails at language and cultural boundaries. 
> For that reason alone, it should normally be avoided in international 
> forums such as are provided by Gentoo. 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Roy Bamford,
> (NeddySeagoon on behalf of gentoo-proctors)

This is your official
"proctors-using-some-lame-excuse-to-try-and-rationalize-trollish-behavior"
response e-mail.

Wow, I couldn't disagree more with the proctor's stance on this one.
Benny's been around forever, has been involved in many jokes and
discussion, and I'm fully confident that he is perfectly capable of
telling the difference between that which is a joke and that which is
not.

Really, he just felt he would take a quote out of context with the
intention of starting a flamewar.  Don't play the "people can't tell
the difference" card on this one.

-Steve

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Stephen Bennett]

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:29:02 +0200
Benjamin Judas <benni@beejaysworld.de> wrote:

> I am sick of hearing such jokes.

Then ignore them, and don't blow them out of proportion so that
everyone else who didn't see them in its original context, and probably
doesn't particularly want to, has to see them in the middle of a
large thread on -dev. I really cannot see a single reason why starting
this thread is/was a remotely good idea.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[George Prowse]

Stephen Bennett wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:29:02 +0200
> Benjamin Judas <benni@beejaysworld.de> wrote:
> 
>> I am sick of hearing such jokes.
> 
> Then ignore them, and don't blow them out of proportion so that
> everyone else who didn't see them in its original context, and probably
> doesn't particularly want to, has to see them in the middle of a
> large thread on -dev. I really cannot see a single reason why starting
> this thread is/was a remotely good idea.

He thought that some good could have come from it, obviously.

Was your behaviour wrong? Not particularly. Was it in bad taste? 
Definitely. Could his email to the list stop others from making the same 
mistakes? Hopefully.

Seems simple to me...
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Wernfried Haas]

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On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 09:44:23PM +0100, Roy Bamford wrote:
> Please step back, take a deep breath and avoid posting to this thread 
> for 24 hours.

Folks, while we're cutting some slack to the people replying
somewhere else in the thread because they may not have gotten the mail
by Roy yet (and that time frame should be over any time now, too),
replying to this mail clearly shows you are not following our call to
do so.

So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.

cheers,
	Wernfried

-- 
Wernfried Haas (amne) - amne (at) gentoo.org
http://forums.gentoo.org   || http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/proctors/
forum-mods (at) gentoo.org || proctors (at) gentoo.org
#gentoo-forums             || #gentoo-proctors (freenode)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh]

Way to go Proctors! I think you just tipped few more people over the edge.

Wernfried Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 09:44:23PM +0100, Roy Bamford wrote:
>   
>> Please step back, take a deep breath and avoid posting to this thread 
>> for 24 hours.
>>     
>
> Folks, while we're cutting some slack to the people replying
> somewhere else in the thread because they may not have gotten the mail
> by Roy yet (and that time frame should be over any time now, too),
> replying to this mail clearly shows you are not following our call to
> do so.
>
> So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
> from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.
>
> cheers,
> 	Wernfried
>
>   

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Piotr Jaroszyński]

On Tuesday 05 of June 2007 23:13:48 Wernfried Haas wrote:
> So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
> from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.

Haven't roy just said that jokes "should normally be avoided in international 
forums such as are provided by Gentoo."?

-- 
Best Regards,
Piotr Jaroszyński
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Harald van Dijk]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 11:13:25PM +0200, Wernfried Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 09:44:23PM +0100, Roy Bamford wrote:
> > Please step back, take a deep breath and avoid posting to this thread 
> > for 24 hours.
> 
> Folks, while we're cutting some slack to the people replying
> somewhere else in the thread because they may not have gotten the mail
> by Roy yet (and that time frame should be over any time now, too),
> replying to this mail clearly shows you are not following our call to
> do so.
> 
> So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
> from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.

Please also suspend your own account. You're clearly replying to Roy's
message. It doesn't matter that you're not contributing to the original
discussion, because after Roy's message, neither did Ciaran. Feel free
to suspend my account as well.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Retiring (Was Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2)

[Jason Wever]

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On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Wernfried Haas wrote:

> So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
> from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.

Regardless of whether their postings are viewed as useful or not, this 
action has gone too far in my opinion.  As Gentoo now appears to condone 
this type of behavior when "dealing" with what are perceived to be 
problems, I no longer wish to be a part of Gentoo.

While at this point there is very little chance of anyone convincing me to 
return, I hope that the people who can still derive enjoyment from Gentoo 
continue to do so.

Infra, please remove my accounts at your earliest convenience.

Thanks,
- -- 
Jason Wever
Gentoo/Sparc Team Co-Lead
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Steev Klimaszewski]

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Piotr Jaroszyński wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 of June 2007 23:13:48 Wernfried Haas wrote:
>> So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
>> from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.
> 
> Haven't roy just said that jokes "should normally be avoided in international 
> forums such as are provided by Gentoo."?
> 
Actually, if you read the snippet from Roy, he points out that the start
of the mail says that it will likely start a flame war and requests that
people not respond to this thread for 24 hours.  I am responding, just
as you have, because apparently, neither of us can follow a simple
instruction.

/me heads back to kindergarten...
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Stephen Bennett]

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 23:22:04 +0200
"Fernando J. Pereda" <ferdy@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Common sense? Where the hell are you?

Common sense abandoned Gentoo months ago. Maybe years.

Unless it was the other way around, which seems more likely.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble

[Stephen Bennett]

On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 22:08:38 +0100
George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:

> Was your behaviour wrong? Not particularly. Was it in bad taste? 
> Definitely. Could his email to the list stop others from making the
> same mistakes? Hopefully.

Bad taste depends entirely upon context and upon the people reading it.
In the context that the original comment was made, everyone active at
the time recognised it for what it was, so it wasn't bad taste. On this
list, it is. The mistake was in taking a joke amongst a group of
friends out of that context and into a much wider one full of people
liable to get their panties in a twist.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Piotr Jaroszyński]

On Tuesday 05 of June 2007 23:45:22 Steev Klimaszewski wrote:
> as you have, because apparently, neither of us can follow a simple
> instruction.

I couldn't care less about proctors' instructions after their latest decision.

-- 
Best Regards,
Piotr Jaroszyński
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 21:52 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:44:23 +0100
> Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > For that reason alone, it should normally be avoided in international 
> > forums such as are provided by Gentoo. 
> 
> Why yes! Gentoo needs to be one hundred percent serious and entirely
> not fun. Anyone saying anything remotely amusing needs to be shut down
> by the proctors immediately. Please keep up the good work.

I really have to agree with you.  The proctors have completely lost
their way.  They are ineffective.  They tend to compound the problems
they were created to stop.  They are slow.  They have not prevented
anything, which was the reason for their creation.  Rather, what they
*have* done is stifle conversation, piss off people, get in the way of
Developer Relations reports, and otherwise making developers feel like
they don't want to participate in our official discussion channels.

What do I think needs to be done?

The proctors project needs to go away.  It simply wasn't implemented in
the way the Council had hoped and has proven to be more harmful than the
original problems to morale and inter-developer trust.  While the
individual members might be doing what they think is best and trying
their best, they've failed at the goals of improving our communications
channels.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 23:13 +0200, Wernfried Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 09:44:23PM +0100, Roy Bamford wrote:
> > Please step back, take a deep breath and avoid posting to this thread 
> > for 24 hours.
> 
> Folks, while we're cutting some slack to the people replying
> somewhere else in the thread because they may not have gotten the mail
> by Roy yet (and that time frame should be over any time now, too),
> replying to this mail clearly shows you are not following our call to
> do so.
> 
> So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
> from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.

As a member of the Council, I find it personally offensive that the
Proctors have taken this action on what wasn't even a "problem" thread.
I'm sick of this.  I call for the immediate disbanding of the Proctors.

As much as I dislike many of the posts from geoman/ciaranm, they really
had not done anything worthy of being banned.  I ask that this ban is
undone *immediately* and that the Proctors have their powers revoked.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: Retiring (Was Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2)

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 15:43 -0600, Jason Wever wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Wernfried Haas wrote:
> 
> > So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
> > from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.
> 
> Regardless of whether their postings are viewed as useful or not, this 
> action has gone too far in my opinion.  As Gentoo now appears to condone 
> this type of behavior when "dealing" with what are perceived to be 
> problems, I no longer wish to be a part of Gentoo.
> 
> While at this point there is very little chance of anyone convincing me to 
> return, I hope that the people who can still derive enjoyment from Gentoo 
> continue to do so.
> 
> Infra, please remove my accounts at your earliest convenience.

Jason,

If you leave, the plants win.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Richard Brown]

On 05/06/07, Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> As a member of the Council, I find it personally offensive that the
> Proctors have taken this action on what wasn't even a "problem" thread.
> I'm sick of this.  I call for the immediate disbanding of the Proctors.
>
> As much as I dislike many of the posts from geoman/ciaranm, they really
> had not done anything worthy of being banned.  I ask that this ban is
> undone *immediately* and that the Proctors have their powers revoked.

You are still on the council? Find someone else who is and make one of
your two man decision things.

Proctors: please let me know when my ban expires.

-- 
Richard Brown
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Wernfried Haas]

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On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 11:08:27PM +0100, Richard Brown wrote:
>  Proctors: please let me know when my ban expires.

You're not even banned?

-- 
Wernfried Haas (amne) - amne (at) gentoo.org
http://forums.gentoo.org   || http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/proctors/
forum-mods (at) gentoo.org || proctors (at) gentoo.org
#gentoo-forums             || #gentoo-proctors (freenode)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning

[Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh]

Perhaps it would be a good time to try another approach to the problem?
How about proctors that are responsible for ensuring any arguments stay
within bounds of technical discussion and formal logic rules?

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> I really have to agree with you.  The proctors have completely lost
> their way.  They are ineffective.  They tend to compound the problems
> they were created to stop.  They are slow.  They have not prevented
> anything, which was the reason for their creation.  Rather, what they
> *have* done is stifle conversation, piss off people, get in the way of
> Developer Relations reports, and otherwise making developers feel like
> they don't want to participate in our official discussion channels.
>
> What do I think needs to be done?
>
> The proctors project needs to go away.  It simply wasn't implemented in
> the way the Council had hoped and has proven to be more harmful than the
> original problems to morale and inter-developer trust.  While the
> individual members might be doing what they think is best and trying
> their best, they've failed at the goals of improving our communications
> channels.
>
>   

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: Retiring (Was Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2)

[Andrew Gaffney]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> Jason,
> 
> If you leave, the plants win.

That has just made my day.

-- 
Andrew Gaffney                                 http://dev.gentoo.org/~agaffney/
Gentoo Linux Developer             Catalyst/Installer + x86 release coordinator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning

[Wernfried Haas]

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On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 03:00:25PM -0700, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> I really have to agree with you.  The proctors have completely lost
> their way.  They are ineffective.  They tend to compound the problems
> they were created to stop.  They are slow.  They have not prevented
> anything, which was the reason for their creation.  Rather, what they
> *have* done is stifle conversation, piss off people, get in the way of
> Developer Relations reports, and otherwise making developers feel like
> they don't want to participate in our official discussion channels.

Thanks for your trust and not even consulting with me before stabbing
me in the back in public. I won't claim proctors has been perfect, but
which team in Gentoo is? Also i don't have even a remote clue what
half of your allegations are about, but frankly, i don't care any
more.
The council created this mess, and i've done my best to fix it.

cheers,
	Wernfried

-- 
Wernfried Haas (amne) - amne (at) gentoo.org
http://forums.gentoo.org   || http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/proctors/
forum-mods (at) gentoo.org || proctors (at) gentoo.org
#gentoo-forums             || #gentoo-proctors (freenode)

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Wernfried Haas]

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On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 03:00:28PM -0700, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> As much as I dislike many of the posts from geoman/ciaranm, they really
> had not done anything worthy of being banned.

1) Someone posts a thread which is about to go up in flames.
2) After a short period of time, the proctors post a note for people
to step away from it.
3) People still reply, directly to that post.
4) People get temporarily suspended to make sure they don't.

> I ask that this ban is undone *immediately*

*Immedeately* undone. Everyone, feel free to malign, degrade or
humiliate everyone on this list. You get a guilt free pass, at least
from me, i'm outta here.

> and that the Proctors have their powers revoked.

Here's my badge, here's my gun. Can i please keep at least the silly
hat?

cheers,
	Wernfried

-- 
Wernfried Haas (amne) - amne (at) gentoo.org
http://forums.gentoo.org
forum-mods (at) gentoo.org
#gentoo-forums

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning

[Richard Freeman]

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Wernfried Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 05, 2007 at 03:00:25PM -0700, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>> I really have to agree with you.  The proctors have completely lost
>> their way.  They are ineffective.  They tend to compound the problems
>> they were created to stop.  They are slow.  They have not prevented
>> anything, which was the reason for their creation.  Rather, what they
>> *have* done is stifle conversation, piss off people, get in the way of
>> Developer Relations reports, and otherwise making developers feel like
>> they don't want to participate in our official discussion channels.
> 
> Thanks for your trust and not even consulting with me before stabbing
> me in the back in public. I won't claim proctors has been perfect, but
> which team in Gentoo is? Also i don't have even a remote clue what
> half of your allegations are about, but frankly, i don't care any
> more.
> The council created this mess, and i've done my best to fix it.
> 

You'll certainly be missed by some of us (at least those who prefer not 
to read about the weekly flamewar over at slashdot)...  :)

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Re: Retiring (Was Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2)

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

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On Tue, 2007-06-05 at 15:43 -0600, Jason Wever wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Wernfried Haas wrote:
> 
> > So far we have temporarily suspended both ciaran's and geoman's account
> > from posting and encourage everyone to do as Roy initially suggested.
> 
> Regardless of whether their postings are viewed as useful or not, this 
> action has gone too far in my opinion.  As Gentoo now appears to condone 
> this type of behavior when "dealing" with what are perceived to be 
> problems, I no longer wish to be a part of Gentoo.
> 
> While at this point there is very little chance of anyone convincing me to 
> return, I hope that the people who can still derive enjoyment from Gentoo 
> continue to do so.
> 
> Infra, please remove my accounts at your earliest convenience.

Thank you for the work you've put into Gentoo Jason, and for the chance
I've had to get to know you. I have a great deal of respect for you and
I wish you all the best for the future. Don't be a stranger.

Christelx

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Re: Retiring (Was Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2)

[Peter Weller]

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On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 15:43:49 -0600 (MDT)
Jason Wever <weeve@gentoo.org> wrote:

[..snip..]

But who are people going to accidentally hilight now?! :'(

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Grant Goodyear]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote: [Tue Jun 05 2007, 05:00:28PM CDT]
> As a member of the Council, I find it personally offensive that the
> Proctors have taken this action on what wasn't even a "problem" thread.
> I'm sick of this.  I call for the immediate disbanding of the Proctors.
> 
> As much as I dislike many of the posts from geoman/ciaranm, they really
> had not done anything worthy of being banned.  I ask that this ban is
> undone *immediately* and that the Proctors have their powers revoked.

*Sigh*  I, too, was quite surprised to see people banned for what
appeared to be reasonable behavior (in this case).  That said, I wish
you'd started w/ a more temperate response, instead of going all nuclear
on the proctors.  It's likely to create some hard feelings, and that
just makes things harder to fix.

So, how about using this incident as an opportunity for a calm
discussion about the mandate and role of the proctors?  The proctors
clearly felt that they should shut down this thread _before_ things
got out of hand.  Perhaps the goal was laudable, but the methods were
not?  (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
be a proctor directive.)  Or are people really looking for the proctors
to get involved only when behavior is particularly egregious?  Is there
a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked entirely, as
has been suggested?  

Well reasoned thoughts and opinions welcome.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:29:47 -0500
Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> wrote:
> (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
> be a proctor directive.)

He changed the subject and signed "on behalf of gentoo-proctors".

> Is there a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked
> entirely, as has been suggested?  

The problem is not so much the system as a small number of the
proctors. Perhaps it should be restaffed with people who aren't so used
to wielding god-like powers on the forums, where anyone who dares say
anything that disagrees with a small clique's collective views can
be banned permanently with no accountability.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Steev Klimaszewski]

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Hash: SHA1

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:29:47 -0500
> Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
>> be a proctor directive.)
> 
> He changed the subject and signed "on behalf of gentoo-proctors".
> 
>> Is there a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked
>> entirely, as has been suggested?  
> 
> The problem is not so much the system as a small number of the
> proctors. Perhaps it should be restaffed with people who aren't so used
> to wielding god-like powers on the forums, where anyone who dares say
> anything that disagrees with a small clique's collective views can
> be banned permanently with no accountability.
> 
Or... perhaps when asked not to respond to a thread for 24 hours, you
could keep your fucking trap shut?
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:44:49 -0500
Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Or... perhaps when asked not to respond to a thread for 24 hours, you
> could keep your fucking trap shut?

If I'm asked by someone with a good reason, sure. If I'm told to by
someone on a power trip with a history of abusing authority who's making
insane claims about humour not being allowed and trying to achieve a
particular outcome to a discussion by censoring anyone who disagrees
with them, then no.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[expose]

Am Mittwoch 06 Juni 2007 17:42 schrieb Ciaran McCreesh:
> > Is there a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked
> > entirely, as has been suggested?
>
> The problem is not so much the system as a small number of the
> proctors.

I feel like _anyone_* who willingly acts against a 
dont-reply-warning/thread-time-out which was recognized as such are to be 
banned, and therefore I dont really see the problem, except that someone 
maybe did _not_ recognize the warning as such, although Roy changed topic and 
signed with proctors.
To fix this, one could additionally use proctors@gentoo.org or so, which 
should make it _very_ clear that this is not a personal "please, calm down 
everybody"-mail
It's different, of course, if someone didnt yet recieve the proctors warning, 
and sent a reply within minutes, which wasn't the case as the mails where 
sent as reply to Roys mail, so...

* council and proctors excepted
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Steev Klimaszewski]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:44:49 -0500
> Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Or... perhaps when asked not to respond to a thread for 24 hours, you
>> could keep your fucking trap shut?
> 
> If I'm asked by someone with a good reason, sure. If I'm told to by
> someone on a power trip with a history of abusing authority who's making
> insane claims about humour not being allowed and trying to achieve a
> particular outcome to a discussion by censoring anyone who disagrees
> with them, then no.
> 
Technical prowess you have immensely, which is good because it makes up
for your lack of common sense.  I am done, and you are now killfiled.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Marien Zwart]

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On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 10:29:47AM -0500, Grant Goodyear wrote:
> Chris Gianelloni wrote: [Tue Jun 05 2007, 05:00:28PM CDT]
> > As a member of the Council, I find it personally offensive that the
> > Proctors have taken this action on what wasn't even a "problem" thread.
> > I'm sick of this.  I call for the immediate disbanding of the Proctors.
> > 
> > As much as I dislike many of the posts from geoman/ciaranm, they really
> > had not done anything worthy of being banned.  I ask that this ban is
> > undone *immediately* and that the Proctors have their powers revoked.
> 
> *Sigh*  I, too, was quite surprised to see people banned for what
> appeared to be reasonable behavior (in this case).  That said, I wish
> you'd started w/ a more temperate response, instead of going all nuclear
> on the proctors.  It's likely to create some hard feelings, and that
> just makes things harder to fix.
> 
> So, how about using this incident as an opportunity for a calm
> discussion about the mandate and role of the proctors?  The proctors
> clearly felt that they should shut down this thread _before_ things
> got out of hand.  Perhaps the goal was laudable, but the methods were
> not?  (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
> be a proctor directive.)  Or are people really looking for the proctors
> to get involved only when behavior is particularly egregious?  Is there
> a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked entirely, as
> has been suggested?  
> 
> Well reasoned thoughts and opinions welcome.

I was originally planning to send this yesterday, but wanted to delay
it a bit because the list had just calmed down again.

I'm a recent addition to the proctors team, probably pulled in mainly
because I'm a #gentoo op, and have also been involved with conflict
resolution things for the userrel project. This was the first time I
was around as a proctor during an event involving proctors. A
disclaimer: I was a bit tired when I originally wrote this and have
not fully proofread this, so expect the grammar to be a bit bizarre in
places. I probably missed some relevant bits too, but this is more
than long enough already.

An attempt at a "timeline" of what happened with that thread:

An initial mail from Benjamin Judas is sent to the gentoo-dev list
(which is mainly a *technical* list), with a sent date of 20:09 UTC,
arriving in my inbox at 20:15 UTC. It contains pretty much no
technical content, and some things ("small scottish griper brain",
"I'm waiting for the stinky comments from the usual corners." that
seem likely to lead to flames.

The second mail is from Stephen P. Becker, dated 20:18 UTC (less than
10 minutes after the first), arriving in my inbox at 20:25 UTC. It
contains no technical content, but does contain "Clean the sand out of
your pee-hole...", which might be a joke but seems likely to fuel the
flames even if it was meant as one.

More mails follow, with pretty much no technical points in them. I'll
skip them, since they did not really affect the decisions that were
made.

Around this time a proctors member (NeddySeagoon) sends another mail
to the list asking people to stop replying. He was alerted to the
thread via irc at around 20:33 UTC (after which he still had to
actually read the start of the thread). His mail has a sent header of
20:44, arriving in my inbox at 20:55.

This gets two replies that both make it rather obvious they disagree
with this suggestion and definitely do not intend to stop posting to
the thread (one sent 20:52 (*before* Neddy's mail makes it to my
inbox) arriving in my inbox at 21:00, and one sent 21:00 arriving at
21:10). At this point the decision is made to *temporarily* disable ml
access for those two people in an attempt to let the thread die out
(mail from amne, 21:13 sent, 21:20 in my inbox).

Please take a look at the timestamps above. We spend some time reading
the mail sent to the list, discussing what to do, and typing in
replies. Add in the roughly ten minute lag between sending mail to the
list and it reaching most of the subscribers and we're continually
about 15 minutes "behind" no matter how quickly we try to react. And
we do try to react quickly, because it seems likely more flames are
being sent and making their way through the list software while we
decide what to do. Amne actually responded to the second reply to
NeddySeagoon's mail before I had the time to receive and read the
thing.

In hindsight it is obvious this attempt to stop the thread failed. A
flood of replies resulted, most of them taking apart the wording of
NeddySeagoon's original request to stop replying.

And some more flaming later we get the following from a council member
to the -dev list:

From Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org>:
> I really have to agree with you. The proctors have completely lost
> their way. They are ineffective. They tend to compound the problems
> they were created to stop.

Yes, they obviously did not manage to stop this particular thread. I
am not sure how they *could* have though. Had proctors done nothing,
would this thread have been much more peaceful?

> They are slow.

*Slow*? If anything the decisions were made too quickly. There were at
most minutes between receiving the inflammatory mails and responding
to them, and we needed *some* time to discuss things.

> They have not prevented anything, which was the reason for their
> creation. Rather, what they *have* done is stifle conversation

This is a *technical* list, or at least that's what it is supposed to
be. Do you really think this thread belonged on -dev?

My "background" is more on irc than on the ml. From an irc point of
view, the proctors are the people with +o who attempt to keep the
channel (list) mostly on-topic and somewhat polite. A couple of people
tried to start up a discussion that had nothing to do with the
technical discussions the list is meant for, attacking each other,
etc. Proctors reacted by (in irc terms) temporarily muting the people
in an attempt to move the discussion off the list.

As far as I can tell this is what the proctors team was meant to do:
keep the list usable for technical discussions. I'm not going to dig
up my council meeting logs right now, but if I remember at all
correctly the plan was for the council and infra to back proctors when
they made impopular decisions needed to keep the -dev ml on track.
Instead, what we get is a council member demanding the immediate
reversal of two temporary blocks of people making inflammatory posts,
and that proctors be disbanded. If this happens every time the
proctors actually try to enforce a decision then yes, they will be
ineffective.

People really need to make up their mind about what the -dev ml *is*.
If the proctors are not supposed to keep the discussions there mostly
focused on technical matters and keep people from attacking each other
(I quote again: "Clean the sand out of your pee-hole..."? does that
really belong on a technical list like this?) then that should be made
a lot more obvious than it currently is. Currently proctors believe
they should keep the list on technical matters, using (temporary)
access blocking if they consider it necessary, while most other people
seem to think any kind of access blocking is out of the question. We
cannot have it both ways. The council should remove the access *they*
gave proctors to block mailing list access if they do not want us to
*use* that access.

-- 
Marien.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[expose]

Am Mittwoch 06 Juni 2007 17:53 schrieb Ciaran McCreesh:
> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:44:49 -0500
>
> Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Or... perhaps when asked not to respond to a thread for 24 hours, you
> > could keep your fucking trap shut?
>
> If I'm asked by someone with a good reason, sure. If I'm told to by
> someone on a power trip with a history of abusing authority who's making
> insane claims about humour not being allowed and trying to achieve a
> particular outcome to a discussion by censoring anyone who disagrees
> with them, then no.

First:
Avoiding a flame war, and shutting it down as soon as it can clearly be seen 
it will become one, is a very good reason to most of us, i suppose.

Second:
Noone clamed humor would not be allowed.

Third:
There was no cencorship. There was a forced delay, after which anyone would 
have been free to spread his/her ideas again.

Last:
Just stop claiming others are insane, abusive power-trippers just because you 
did not abide by a rule and got your punishment for it. If you dont like the 
way things are, show well-reasons options out of the situation, write an 
eMail to the user-relations or the Council expressing your problem.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

[gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Wulf C. Krueger]

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On Wednesday, June 6, 2007 05:29:47 PM Grant Goodyear wrote:
[Proctor system]
> a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked entirely, as
> has been suggested?

Personally, I think we simply don't need the proctors. 

I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear 
guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and 
what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences etc. it's 
difficult to judge.

Furthermore, where do we need them? The Forums are moderated by an, IMHO, 
excellent team. IRC is more or less self-moderated.
That basically leaves the mailinglists and among those, the only one that 
*might* arguably need supervision could be -dev.

Do we really need moderation on the list? Or could we just literally 
moderate ourselves instead? Could we try and succeed to be just ignore 
some flames instead of adding oil to the fire?

And even if we can't: We still have DevRel we can complain to. Yes, DevRel 
is for inter-developer conflicts but let's look back in the archives a 
bit - do we really need more than that? Most conflicts arise between 
active developers and, well, one active retired-dev. 

Do we really need an entire team for dealing with one former dev in case 
he goes too far? Or could we just agree to ignore him if he again behaves 
inappropriately (or what some of us *feel* might be inappropriate)?

When I first read the CoC I had just read about the entire Ciaran-incident 
on the respective bugs, Forums, mailinglists, blogs and many other 
sources. CoC, while not bad in itself, seemed (and still seems) to me 
like a "Lex Ciaran" - a document with that what I had just read clearly 
in mind and targetted at preventing it. 

While preventing it is a good goal in itself, writing a CoC based on an 
actual case which has only recently occurred, usually leads to this 
result and damages the whatever good intentions were involved because 
other people will see the similarities as well.

More than that, it puts a strain on those who are entrusted with enforcing 
the CoC because they will try, with the best motives, to prevent anything 
like that happening again. And they will do it, as the proctors stated 
themselves, pro-actively. 

The problem is, though: In an asynchronous communications medium, you 
simply cannot pro-actively do anything without bordering on what some 
like to call censorship. You can only *re*act in such a situation.

Even *trying* to act pro-actively will lead to unrest as we've only very 
recently seen it. If we accept my hypothesis of asynchronous 
communication and the implications I described, we come to the conclusion 
that reaction is the most likely way not to open Pandora's Box.

That leads back to DevRel. We have them to deal reactively with conflicts 
after a complaint by either party involved. I stated, that on the 
mailinglists, we mainly see inter-developer conflicts and those can be 
handled by DevRel. 

A small improvement to DevRel might be achieved, at least from what I've 
seen by reading lots and lots of DevRel bugs, by taking action on 
unfounded complaints, too. I'm speaking of trivial complaints, of course. 

If, after both sides were investigated properly, the complaining party is 
found to be exaggerating or too easily offended, disciplinary action 
should be taken against it. Of course, this should be done light-handedly 
but it should give the complaining party some time to learn from their 
mistake. Maybe this is what's already intended - it's just that I haven't 
found any examples. :)

I apologise for the long mail but I wanted to state clearly and without 
too much emotions why I think we don't need the proctors and why we 
should thank them for attempting to bring some order to the chaos and 
give up on the concept as a whole.

Best regards, Wulf

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 18:08:30 +0200
expose@luftgetrock.net wrote:
> Just stop claiming others are insane, abusive power-trippers just
> because you did not abide by a rule and got your punishment for it.

I'm claiming it because plenty of other people agree. You *did* see the
response that the proctors got from various Gentoo developers, right?

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[expose]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> expose@luftgetrock.net wrote:
> > Just stop claiming others are insane, abusive power-trippers just
> > because you did not abide by a rule and got your punishment for it.
>
> I'm claiming it because plenty of other people agree. You *did* see the
> response that the proctors got from various Gentoo developers, right?

What I saw was a response to what you as one of the I-will-reply-anyway guys 
caused, and I bet if people had just stayed quiet for 24 hours the thread 
would have died out rather quickly.
The replys by other devs seem to be allmost exclusivly be based on the fact, 
that people like you did not take their time calming down, or if they were 
calm anyway, take their time to do whatever for 24 hours.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Mike Doty]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:29:47 -0500
> Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
>> be a proctor directive.)
> 
> He changed the subject and signed "on behalf of gentoo-proctors".
> 
>> Is there a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked
>> entirely, as has been suggested?  
> 
> The problem is not so much the system as a small number of the
> proctors. Perhaps it should be restaffed with people who aren't so used
> to wielding god-like powers on the forums, where anyone who dares say
> anything that disagrees with a small clique's collective views can
> be banned permanently with no accountability.
> 
Thanks for your wonderful insight, No one had any idea the proctors were
a group with no accountability.  When the council reviews everything
they've done in the past month, we're just joking around.

Back to reality, go take a long walk off a short pier.

-- 
=======================================================
Mike Doty                      kingtaco -at- gentoo.org
Gentoo Council
Gentoo Infrastructure
Gentoo/AMD64 Strategic Lead
GPG: E1A5 1C9C 93FE F430 C1D6  F2AF 806B A2E4 19F4 AE05
=======================================================
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:33:29 -0700
Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > The problem is not so much the system as a small number of the
> > proctors. Perhaps it should be restaffed with people who aren't so
> > used to wielding god-like powers on the forums, where anyone who
> > dares say anything that disagrees with a small clique's collective
> > views can be banned permanently with no accountability.
> > 
> Thanks for your wonderful insight, No one had any idea the proctors
> were a group with no accountability.  When the council reviews
> everything they've done in the past month, we're just joking around.

That wasn't what I said. What I said was that the forums staff have no
accountability, and that the proctors were suffering as a result of
containing too many of said forums staff.

Perhaps you should take the time to read things properly before
attempting sarcasm...

> Back to reality, go take a long walk off a short pier.

So now you're not content with filing hypocritical devrel bugs
complaining of people swearing in places you yourself regularly swear,
and are escalating the thread to ad hominem? (Note that it isn't ad
hominem if the claims are relevant to the matter at hand, so this
thread was previously ad hominem free.)

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Mike Doty]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 09:33:29 -0700
> Mike Doty <kingtaco@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> The problem is not so much the system as a small number of the
>>> proctors. Perhaps it should be restaffed with people who aren't so
>>> used to wielding god-like powers on the forums, where anyone who
>>> dares say anything that disagrees with a small clique's collective
>>> views can be banned permanently with no accountability.
>>>
>> Thanks for your wonderful insight, No one had any idea the proctors
>> were a group with no accountability.  When the council reviews
>> everything they've done in the past month, we're just joking around.
> 
> That wasn't what I said. What I said was that the forums staff have no
> accountability, and that the proctors were suffering as a result of
> containing too many of said forums staff.
> 
> Perhaps you should take the time to read things properly before
> attempting sarcasm...
> 
Perhaps you should go take a long walk off a short pier.
>> Back to reality, go take a long walk off a short pier.
> 
> So now you're not content with filing hypocritical devrel bugs
> complaining of people swearing in places you yourself regularly swear,
> and are escalating the thread to ad hominem? (Note that it isn't ad
> hominem if the claims are relevant to the matter at hand, so this
> thread was previously ad hominem free.)
> 
Oh, I'm so hurt.  You think I'm a hypocrite.  Man, what will I ever do?
Newsflash, I know I'm a hypocrite, which is a lot better than the
childish passive-aggressive asshole you are.


-- 
=======================================================
Mike Doty                      kingtaco -at- gentoo.org
Gentoo Council
Gentoo Infrastructure
Gentoo/AMD64 Strategic Lead
GPG: E1A5 1C9C 93FE F430 C1D6  F2AF 806B A2E4 19F4 AE05
=======================================================
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Steev Klimaszewski]

Mike Doty wrote:
> Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2007 10:29:47 -0500
>> Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
>>> be a proctor directive.)
>> He changed the subject and signed "on behalf of gentoo-proctors".
>>
>>> Is there a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked
>>> entirely, as has been suggested?  
>> The problem is not so much the system as a small number of the
>> proctors. Perhaps it should be restaffed with people who aren't so used
>> to wielding god-like powers on the forums, where anyone who dares say
>> anything that disagrees with a small clique's collective views can
>> be banned permanently with no accountability.

<snip>

> Back to reality, go take a long walk off a short pier.
> 

++
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Mauricio Lima Pilla]

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On Wednesday 06 June 2007 13:48:53 Ciaran McCreesh wrote:

> That wasn't what I said. What I said was that the forums staff have no
> accountability, and that the proctors were suffering as a result of
> containing too many of said forums staff.

That's bullshit. We are subject to the same rules as the other gentoo 
devs/staffs. Stop spreading your FUD around (I think I said that before).

As for the forum staff in the proctors, I think that some of us could be found 
in the proctors because we cared and we tried to do something to improve our 
communication media (if we had any success on it, that's another discussion). 
But the number of forum staff in the proctors has recently decreased, as 
amne, jmbsvicetto, and myself decided to step down and leave the proctors. 

Good luck for the remaining proctors, they will need as they aparently can't 
even expect any support from council members. 


Cheers

Pilla

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[expose]

Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
> I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear
> guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and
> what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences etc. it's
> difficult to judge.
The guideline, as far as I understood it, was (and is?) to ban people who dont 
abide by the time-outs.
And the guideline for time-outs, as far as I understood it, was (and is?) to 
use them when a thread, as obviously as this one, is neither technical, nor 
productive but a flame war.
And yes, in my opinion, it already was one to the time the warning was sent 
out.

> Do we really need moderation on the list? Or could we just literally
> moderate ourselves instead? Could we try and succeed to be just ignore
> some flames instead of adding oil to the fire?
As the incidents in the last few months showed, there is a handfull of people 
who seem to love flame wars, or dont have anything better to do, so:
No, ignoring them does not work, as it just is not what people are doing,
which is why proctors where brought into existence:
To make people calm down by forcing a delay, which likely will make them stop 
replying.

> When I first read the CoC I had just read about the entire Ciaran-incident
> on the respective bugs, Forums, mailinglists, blogs and many other
> sources. CoC, while not bad in itself, seemed (and still seems) to me
> like a "Lex Ciaran" - a document with that what I had just read clearly
> in mind and targetted at preventing it.
The CoC is the legal basis for the proctors (as well as the other teams).

> The problem is, though: In an asynchronous communications medium, you
> simply cannot pro-actively do anything without bordering on what some
> like to call censorship. You can only *re*act in such a situation.
The reaction was to delay the thread, and therefore pro-actively forcing 
people to calm down. There's the hidden pro-active part.
Of course, by anyone who felt the urgent need to reply anyway, this effect was 
destroyed.
Furthermore, it was reversed by those replys containing the self-fulfilling 
prophecy that there is no effect which got things really going.

> If, after both sides were investigated properly, the complaining party is
> found to be exaggerating or too easily offended, disciplinary action
> should be taken against it. 
I am strictly against any way to punish a complainer, except where it is 
slander or similar, where in turn, the slandered person might complain via 
the same way.
Punishment for exaggeration leads to arbitrariness.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Galevsky]

Hi all,

I am not a dev but a Gentoo-addicted user that would be interested in
getting involved. So I have no more situation awareness than the
website and this ML brought to me. But I have 2 cents I want to share
peacefully.

First, I am wondering about the exact role of what is known to be:

"The elected Gentoo Council decides on global issues and policies that
affect multiple projects in Gentoo. It also serves as an appeal court
for disciplinary decisions."

Many questions come up. How much powerful it is ? Why the council get
both a decisional role and a proctor one ? Why do the community of dev
needs such a council ? Well, even if I don't have the answers, what I
know is there is a need to explain, describe, and provide clear
information about this to the whole world. Neither
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/index.xml nor
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0039.html provides enough
information. Why it is a need ? Because lots of people want to know
where they are.

To keep on lack of communication, I would like to share one or two
suggestions. The glep page
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/glep/glep-0039.html lists some issues
about the TLPs...
and I come to that point: I don't know how the dev teams manage their
projects, deal with planning, call for new blood and so on... since I
just can have an external view, but it is possible to know why there
is no public information about Gentoo and its
packages/projects/needs/delays/status-of-whatever-that-needs-a-status
?

Right, there is an Online Package Database.... good. But definitely
insufficient. Can't we have a kind of  https://savannah.gnu.org/ for
Gentoo ? A web application providing information like status of
packages, needs of dev, planned delivery dates, delays, links  to
bugs, plus info on projects, stand-alone tasks, with related decisions
of the council and so on. What for ? just to have a better view of
Gentoo as a whole. The users could better know what is going on, how
previous issues turned out and many more info. The dev too, plus maybe
extra info that are not public. Because when I see email on this ML
like "package johndoe requires new dev", I think wtf this request is
not shared on a public location. When I also read the meeting logs of
the council, I am wondering about the fact that you need to be member
of the council to have a clear global view of the situation. But I
can't see why normal user and dev could not have it.

So, what's about the council ? A band of proctors, moderating the ML ?
Or a powerful and decisional group that leads Gentoo to the directions
these 7 devs choose, due to the global overview that only them have ?
Why not providing technical solutions to allow the whole dev community
to make choices, open new projects, closing others, and providing
these info to  the users ? What could be the council in such a
situation ?  I think we need such a council to handle TLPs for
example. The council could vote a list of TLPs, and take special care
of them, putting high priority (e.g. to make sure that the 2007.0
release project doest not lack devs ), providing official news, and so
on. Maybe a so big community of devs needs a secretary, some entity
that embodies the executive power, like in most of the democratic
regimes. But all the devs could be free to start project, join a dev
team or an existing project the way they want... as long as they
respect the CoC. For the TLPs, a minimum activity can be required, and
the dev responsible for the package/project can take decision to bring
solutions together, but not the proctors in their own since the
project manager know the devs working in his team and all the related
issues. It sounds sensible, isn't it? But I do not understand why 7
devs -even elected by the others- could make decisions on other
projects and are described as the group in charge of the 'global
issues and policies'.

Gal'


2007/6/6, Wulf C. Krueger <philantrop@gentoo.org>:
> On Wednesday, June 6, 2007 05:29:47 PM Grant Goodyear wrote:
> [Proctor system]
> > a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked entirely, as
> > has been suggested?
>
> Personally, I think we simply don't need the proctors.
>
> I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear
> guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and
> what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences etc. it's
> difficult to judge.
>
> Furthermore, where do we need them? The Forums are moderated by an, IMHO,
> excellent team. IRC is more or less self-moderated.
> That basically leaves the mailinglists and among those, the only one that
> *might* arguably need supervision could be -dev.
>
> Do we really need moderation on the list? Or could we just literally
> moderate ourselves instead? Could we try and succeed to be just ignore
> some flames instead of adding oil to the fire?
>
> And even if we can't: We still have DevRel we can complain to. Yes, DevRel
> is for inter-developer conflicts but let's look back in the archives a
> bit - do we really need more than that? Most conflicts arise between
> active developers and, well, one active retired-dev.
>
> Do we really need an entire team for dealing with one former dev in case
> he goes too far? Or could we just agree to ignore him if he again behaves
> inappropriately (or what some of us *feel* might be inappropriate)?
>
> When I first read the CoC I had just read about the entire Ciaran-incident
> on the respective bugs, Forums, mailinglists, blogs and many other
> sources. CoC, while not bad in itself, seemed (and still seems) to me
> like a "Lex Ciaran" - a document with that what I had just read clearly
> in mind and targetted at preventing it.
>
> While preventing it is a good goal in itself, writing a CoC based on an
> actual case which has only recently occurred, usually leads to this
> result and damages the whatever good intentions were involved because
> other people will see the similarities as well.
>
> More than that, it puts a strain on those who are entrusted with enforcing
> the CoC because they will try, with the best motives, to prevent anything
> like that happening again. And they will do it, as the proctors stated
> themselves, pro-actively.
>
> The problem is, though: In an asynchronous communications medium, you
> simply cannot pro-actively do anything without bordering on what some
> like to call censorship. You can only *re*act in such a situation.
>
> Even *trying* to act pro-actively will lead to unrest as we've only very
> recently seen it. If we accept my hypothesis of asynchronous
> communication and the implications I described, we come to the conclusion
> that reaction is the most likely way not to open Pandora's Box.
>
> That leads back to DevRel. We have them to deal reactively with conflicts
> after a complaint by either party involved. I stated, that on the
> mailinglists, we mainly see inter-developer conflicts and those can be
> handled by DevRel.
>
> A small improvement to DevRel might be achieved, at least from what I've
> seen by reading lots and lots of DevRel bugs, by taking action on
> unfounded complaints, too. I'm speaking of trivial complaints, of course.
>
> If, after both sides were investigated properly, the complaining party is
> found to be exaggerating or too easily offended, disciplinary action
> should be taken against it. Of course, this should be done light-handedly
> but it should give the complaining party some time to learn from their
> mistake. Maybe this is what's already intended - it's just that I haven't
> found any examples. :)
>
> I apologise for the long mail but I wanted to state clearly and without
> too much emotions why I think we don't need the proctors and why we
> should thank them for attempting to bring some order to the chaos and
> give up on the concept as a whole.
>
> Best regards, Wulf
>
>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Maurice van der Pot]

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On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 10:29:47AM -0500, Grant Goodyear wrote:
> > So, how about using this incident as an opportunity for a calm
> > discussion about the mandate and role of the proctors?  The proctors
> > clearly felt that they should shut down this thread _before_ things
> > got out of hand.  

I whole-heartedly agree with this.

It is probably safe to assume that everyone would like Gentoo to find a
system that works to prevent and/or put out flames. In the process of
figuring out the proper way, we are bound to make mistakes. We can't
expect ourselves to come up with a complete and perfect plan in advance 
and live happily ever after. 

Why not just assume a mistake was made when you don't agree with
something like this and then either wait for the specified period or go
to the proctors mailing list to explain how you think it could have been
better handled?

Why would an action by the proctors like this one make you want to quit
Gentoo altogether? Suppose that after discussion the proctors would
agree with you that it should have been handled differently and that
they made a mistake, would that have had a lasting effect on your
motivation? I can't imagine it would have.

On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 06:06:14PM +0200, Marien Zwart wrote:
> People really need to make up their mind about what the -dev ml *is*.
> If the proctors are not supposed to keep the discussions there mostly
> focused on technical matters and keep people from attacking each other
> (I quote again: "Clean the sand out of your pee-hole..."? does that
> really belong on a technical list like this?) then that should be made
> a lot more obvious than it currently is. 

I agree that the proctors should just use their best insight to
determine if something is ok for a technical list. This will inevitably
mean that sometimes some posts will be incorrectly tagged as over the
line, but the worst that will do is to ruin a joke. Of course you'll be
annoyed that your joke was misunderstood, but for the good of the list
just suck it up and move along. It will not prevent this list from 
fulfilling its purpose of being a place to discuss technical issues,
which is the most important thing if you ask me.

Regards,
Maurice.

-- 
Maurice van der Pot

Gentoo Linux Developer   griffon26@gentoo.org     http://www.gentoo.org
Creator of BiteMe!       griffon26@kfk4ever.com   http://www.kfk4ever.com


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Marijn Schouten (hkBst)]

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Mike Doty wrote:
> Perhaps you should go take a long walk off a short pier.
> [snip]
> Oh, I'm so hurt.  You think I'm a hypocrite.  Man, what will I ever do?
> Newsflash, I know I'm a hypocrite, which is a lot better than the
> childish passive-aggressive asshole you are.

Mike,

Please. You are counsel. Act like it. Stay civil. No matter what.

Marijn
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Wulf C. Krueger]

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On Wednesday, June 6, 2007 07:20:18 PM Josh Saddler wrote:
> Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
> > IRC is more or less self-moderated.
> I'd have to disagree, given the pure insanity and horsepiss the last 48
> hours have been. Clearly, we can't keep ourselves in line.

Well, yes, there are exceptions from the general rule, of course. We're 
still here, though, and will still be in spite of the "phenomena" you 
describe.

> > Do we really need moderation on the list? Or could we just literally
> > moderate ourselves instead? Could we try and succeed to be just
> > ignore some flames instead of adding oil to the fire?
> This doesn't seem possible. We don't seem to be able to moderate
> ourselves because it doesn't look like we have any authoritative
> figures...or people we listen to. Not often enough to make the
> slightest bit of difference, anyway.

We shouldn't really need authoritative figures. We've left kindergarden at 
least a few years ago.

If people can't moderate themselves, the rest of us who can should 
probably just ignore them completely. The trolls *will* give up then 
rather sooner than later. Believe me, I've seen this over the course of 
almost 20 years now in many communities I've been a part of and all of 
these survived quite a few more disgruntled former or even current 
members.

A thicker skin and letting things rest for a while really cools down one's 
temper. :-)

Best regards, Wulf

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Josh Sled]

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Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> writes:

> got out of hand.  Perhaps the goal was laudable, but the methods were
> not?  (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
> be a proctor directive.)  Or are people really looking for the proctors
> to get involved only when behavior is particularly egregious?  Is there

I find it disappointing (maybe "telling", if one is less charitable) that the
Proctors never censured the original poster for either the tone of the
message, nor the personal invective it contained, and still haven't.  I'd
imagine clear violations of the CoC to result in at least a public
admonishment and warning.

-- 
...jsled
http://asynchronous.org/ - a=jsled; b=asynchronous.org; echo ${a}@${b}

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Anders Hellgren]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:

> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:44:49 -0500
> Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Or... perhaps when asked not to respond to a thread for 24 hours, you
>> could keep your fucking trap shut?
>
> If I'm asked by someone with a good reason, sure. If I'm told to by
> someone on a power trip with a history of abusing authority who's making

NeddySeagoon has a history of abusing authority? Wow...

/Anders
-- 
Anders Hellgren (kallamej)
Gentoo Forums Administrator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Steev Klimaszewski]

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Josh Sled wrote:
> Grant Goodyear <g2boojum@gentoo.org> writes:
> 
>> got out of hand.  Perhaps the goal was laudable, but the methods were
>> not?  (As an aside, I didn't realize that Roy's e-mail was supposed to
>> be a proctor directive.)  Or are people really looking for the proctors
>> to get involved only when behavior is particularly egregious?  Is there
> 
> I find it disappointing (maybe "telling", if one is less charitable) that the
> Proctors never censured the original poster for either the tone of the
> message, nor the personal invective it contained, and still haven't.  I'd
> imagine clear violations of the CoC to result in at least a public
> admonishment and warning.
> 
The proctors have no power now, thanks to Chris publicly stabbing them
in the back after they tried to assert some of their powers - they
requested that no one respond to the thread for 24 hours, and people
couldn't respect that simple request - and now with what Chris said, it
just fuels the flames due to Council "backing" them - as Ciaran has
already asserted in a mail earlier in the thread.

Great job Chris, way to stick it to them.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[expose]

Josh Sled wrote:
> I find it disappointing (maybe "telling", if one is less charitable) that
> the Proctors never censured the original poster for either the tone of the
> message, nor the personal invective it contained, and still haven't.  I'd
> imagine clear violations of the CoC to result in at least a public
> admonishment and warning.

I feel like it was correct to adress the most pressing issue at first: An 
arising flame war, which, at the time, was still manageable.
The actions which followed, namely that certain people did not abide by the 
24-hour-delay, might well have made a planned warning for Benjamin Judas 
drawn in flames.

Note I neither have the insight to black up my thesis, nor to proof it wrong.
I just wanted to show there might well be another side, Josh maybe didnt know 
of. (By which, in turn, I dont want to claim he hasnt enough insight or 
whater.) </disclaimer>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[expose]

> drawn in flames.
drown, please excuse my spelling.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[George Prowse]

Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 6, 2007 05:29:47 PM Grant Goodyear wrote:
> [Proctor system]
>> a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked entirely, as
>> has been suggested?
> 
> Personally, I think we simply don't need the proctors. 

Nor do I. Every thread that has gone bad in the last 2 years has been 
because of the same people. Ban them from -dev and there is no need for 
the proctors.

If they weren't banned from the forums as well then they could have been 
directed there. It just goes to show how positive their influence on 
Gentoo is.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Jeffrey Gardner]

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Grant Goodyear wrote:
> 
> So, how about using this incident as an opportunity for a calm
> discussion about the mandate and role of the proctors? 
> 
> Well reasoned thoughts and opinions welcome.
> 
> -g2boojum-

Benjamin Judas has probably been walking on air these past 2 days
because his troll worked so easily.  Everyone here has intimate
knowledge of the ways in which mailing-lists/forums/irc work, so why do
people still insist on feeding the trolls? Let the bastards starve and
they will go away.

It's Internet #101 folks - Don't be a sucker by feeding the trolls.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

/me goes back to reading eclasses.....

- --
Jeffrey Gardner
Gentoo Developer
Public PGP Key ID: 4A5D8F23
hkp://pgpkeys.mit.edu
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Dawid Węgliński]

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Dnia 06-06-2007, śro o godzinie 18:32 +0200, expose@luftgetrock.net
napisał(a):
> Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> > expose@luftgetrock.net wrote:
> > > Just stop claiming others are insane, abusive power-trippers just
> > > because you did not abide by a rule and got your punishment for it.
> >
> > I'm claiming it because plenty of other people agree. You *did* see the
> > response that the proctors got from various Gentoo developers, right?
> 
> What I saw was a response to what you as one of the I-will-reply-anyway guys 
> caused, and I bet if people had just stayed quiet for 24 hours the thread 
> would have died out rather quickly.
> The replys by other devs seem to be allmost exclusivly be based on the fact, 
> that people like you did not take their time calming down, or if they were 
> calm anyway, take their time to do whatever for 24 hours.

Why to stop the topic? IMO it *is* important, and we should make a
correct decision. You blame beejey. Ok, blame him about what he said,
but paradoxically he uncovered that whole mess, that noone was talking
about before. 

++ for I-will-reply-anyway guys
-- 
,-----------------------------.
| Dawid Węgliński             |
| cla@gentoo.org              |
| cla @ irc.freenode.net      |
| GPG: 295E72D9               |
`-----------------------------'


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Richard Freeman]

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Galevsky wrote:
> But I do not understand why 7
> devs -even elected by the others- could make decisions on other
> projects and are described as the group in charge of the 'global
> issues and policies'.
> 

The logic is that most organizations are overseen by a board of 
directors.  This system is used in most corporations worldwide, most 
non-profits, and to some degree most governments.  The reason is simple 
- it generally works fairly well, although this is obviously limited by 
the makeup of the overall organization.

The concept is that the council provides oversight and high-level 
guidance.  If necessary they can step in and micromanage when necessary, 
but in theory they should be delegating their power whenever possible. 
The proctors are a body to which the council delegated day-to-day 
responsibility for enforcing the code of conduct.

In most companies if the head of an organization (who reports to the 
board of directors) makes a decision that a good chunk of the board 
disagrees with, the board does NOTHING in public.  At least not without 
careful thought.  Instead the board just sits down in private with the 
CEO/president/secretary/whatever and decides what to do about the 
disagreement.  This might ultimately lead to the appointment of a new 
CEO/president/secretary/whatever - usually without a whole lot of 
fanfare.  The reason for this is that the organization speaks with one 
voice at all times.  The board is in ultimate control, but they don't 
usually feel the need to step into the limelight.

What gentoo needs is a little more patience.  If somebody says/does 
something you disagree with, try talking to them in private about it. 
If necessary try talking to an appropriate moderator in private.  And 
don't expect a huge change within 8 hours....  And think about the good 
of the whole organization, even if you don't agree with every person who 
is in charge.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

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Anders Hellgren wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:44:49 -0500
>> Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> Or... perhaps when asked not to respond to a thread for 24 hours, you
>>> could keep your fucking trap shut?
>>
>> If I'm asked by someone with a good reason, sure. If I'm told to by
>> someone on a power trip with a history of abusing authority who's making
> 
> NeddySeagoon has a history of abusing authority? Wow...
> 
> /Anders

Ciaran,

I know how much you like the forums team, but as Anders has pointed,
you're stretching too far by accusing Roy of abusing authority. With all
the due respect I have for the other forums team members, Roy is
probably the most considerate, polite and helpful individual I've ever
met online.
He's currently the top poster in the forums and although I can't claim
to have read all his posts, I have read quite a few and I've never seen
any abuse of power by him.
Everyone else, I'm sorry to add one more mail to this thread, but I
couldn't remain silent about this accusation.

- --
Regards,

Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 18:10 +0200, Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 6, 2007 05:29:47 PM Grant Goodyear wrote:
> [Proctor system]
> > a way to fix the current system, or should it be chucked entirely, as
> > has been suggested?
> 
> Personally, I think we simply don't need the proctors.

As much as I was a part of the creation of the proctors, I agree.

> I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear 
> guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and 
> what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences etc. it's 
> difficult to judge.

Well, they've been asked to write guidelines for Council approval, as
well as changes to the Code of Conduct.  Neither of which have been
done.  As it stands now, there are no publicly available guidelines that
I am aware of for the proctors.

> Furthermore, where do we need them? The Forums are moderated by an, IMHO, 
> excellent team. IRC is more or less self-moderated.
> That basically leaves the mailinglists and among those, the only one that 
> *might* arguably need supervision could be -dev.

One thing I have started to really wonder about is this.

Why do we need the -dev mailing list?  How much real "development" (or
even discussion about it) happens on the mailing list?

Most of the traffic on this list is political in nature and simply
doesn't belong on this list.  Since we've pretty much shown over the
past couple years that the development list isn't being used properly,
why have it?

> Do we really need moderation on the list? Or could we just literally 
> moderate ourselves instead? Could we try and succeed to be just ignore 
> some flames instead of adding oil to the fire?

Do we really need the list?  We tried self-moderation and it simply
didn't work.  We know it won't work.  There's no point in trying again.
The situation isn't likely to change.

I mean no disrespect to people's age, but I think part of the problem
why we have such a hard time, collectively, acting like adults is we
aren't adults.  A very good number of our developers are in the high
school/college age range.  This means their life experience isn't as
high as a more seasoned adult.  They have no real experiences dealing
with adults in adult situations.  They're simply used to how things are
done with people their age.  It isn't their fault, it is just simply a
lack of life experience.  We simply cannot reasonably expect everyone to
act like a level-headed thirty year old computer professional.  I have
heard people say that our lack of being paid developers compounds this,
as we have people from all walks of life.  I don't think that I believe
that, but I do know that paid developers tend to be older and more
professional.  After all, if they constantly acted like a tool, they'd
be fired.

> And even if we can't: We still have DevRel we can complain to. Yes, DevRel 
> is for inter-developer conflicts but let's look back in the archives a 
> bit - do we really need more than that? Most conflicts arise between 
> active developers and, well, one active retired-dev.

Developer Relations has gone through a few good spots intermixed with
lots of failures.  They keep improving, but the trust level many
developers have with Developer Relations isn't very good.  With the
recent changes within the group, we might see improvement here, and I
think that we will.  I don't mean this to sound like I am throwing
devrel under the bus or anything.  I am not.  I know that those guys
work hard.  However, good intentions and hard work don't necessarily
make up for failing to attain goals.  Part of the problem has been the
fear that Developer Relations has rightly had in using their powers.  I
have always felt that a properly-running distribution should have the
need for a group whose purpose is to resolve internal conflict.  We will
always need recruiters, but the existence of a group just to make the
300 or so of us play nice together shows that our culture is broken.

> Do we really need an entire team for dealing with one former dev in case 
> he goes too far? Or could we just agree to ignore him if he again behaves 
> inappropriately (or what some of us *feel* might be inappropriate)?

Developer Relations does a bunch more than just deal with problems with
Gentoo developers and Ciaran.  If it really were just Ciaran that was
the cause (or catalyst) of all of our problems, it could be solved very
simply.  It isn't.

Developers simply aren't going to agree all the time.  No matter what,
there will end up being some group responsible for trying to resolve
interpersonal issues.  In companies, that would be the Human Resources
department.  When you think of devrel more as an HR department, you
realize there's more to it than dealing with problems.  After all,
Developer Relations does all the recruiting work.

> When I first read the CoC I had just read about the entire Ciaran-incident 
> on the respective bugs, Forums, mailinglists, blogs and many other 
> sources. CoC, while not bad in itself, seemed (and still seems) to me 
> like a "Lex Ciaran" - a document with that what I had just read clearly 
> in mind and targetted at preventing it.

The Code of Conduct was written with the hopes that its existence would
help to curb the flamewars and other general nastiness between people
within the community.  The proctors were created to enforce the Code of
Conduct.  Their mandate was to be very fast moving and to try to keep
flames from spreading.  For some time, I was working with the proctors.
I ended up disliking the bureaucratic direction they were taking and
chose to have myself removed from the group.  Since that time, I have
pretty much felt that the proctors *have* taken it upon themselves to
single out and target particular individuals.  Whether this was
intentional or not is really beside the point.  The perception is all
that really matters, as it is all that gets propagated to the world.  I
think this is something that people seem to forget.  It doesn't matter
what the real truth is for anything.  All that matters "to the world" is
what they perceive.  If the perception is that Gentoo is nothing but a
bunch of guys waiting to flame people, it doesn't matter that there
might be 98% of the developer pool that has never engaged in a flamewar.
(Numbers completely made up...)

> While preventing it is a good goal in itself, writing a CoC based on an 
> actual case which has only recently occurred, usually leads to this 
> result and damages the whatever good intentions were involved because 
> other people will see the similarities as well.

The Code of Conduct wasn't written in response to a particular case.
The timing suggests that it was written against Ciaran.  It wasn't.  I
know this will sound a bit harsh, but if we really were trying to just
get rid of Ciaran, we would have just banned him and been done with it.
There wouldn't have been a point in creating yet another project and
staffing it.  The goal *was* and still *is* to reduce the flames, no
matter what parties are involved.

> More than that, it puts a strain on those who are entrusted with enforcing 
> the CoC because they will try, with the best motives, to prevent anything 
> like that happening again. And they will do it, as the proctors stated 
> themselves, pro-actively.

No, re-actively.  If it were proactive, it would be done before the
flames started.  The proctors *have* tried to react as quickly as
possible.  The problem is that there are no published guidelines, and
decisions from the proctors are completely arbitrary to any outside
observer.  I think they've failed.  Again, I don't think that the guys
didn't have the best intentions, and I know that some people took my
voicing of their failure as a direct personal assault.  It wasn't meant
that way, but I'm not going to apologize for my observations.  I see no
point in apologizing for what *I* perceived, even if it does hurt a few
feelings.  I just think people are being overly-sensitive.  It's
Gentoo's curse.

> The problem is, though: In an asynchronous communications medium, you 
> simply cannot pro-actively do anything without bordering on what some 
> like to call censorship. You can only *re*act in such a situation.
> 
> Even *trying* to act pro-actively will lead to unrest as we've only very 
> recently seen it. If we accept my hypothesis of asynchronous 
> communication and the implications I described, we come to the conclusion 
> that reaction is the most likely way not to open Pandora's Box.

Attempts to become more proactive were dismissed.  One such attempt was
to enforce bans on all mediums.  For example, if someone is banned for
24 hours for their actions on IRC, they should be banned from all of our
media.  Why?  Because there's nothing keeping the person from just
moving "next door" and starting more problems.  We've even seen it
happen in at least one occasion that I am aware of with this list and
the forums.

> That leads back to DevRel. We have them to deal reactively with conflicts 
> after a complaint by either party involved. I stated, that on the 
> mailinglists, we mainly see inter-developer conflicts and those can be 
> handled by DevRel.

I think we mostly see developer<->user conflict.  That was one of the
reasons we created a new group to monitor our media.  We felt that
Developer Relations was *not* the group, since it dealt only with
inter-developer communications and we needed something broader.

> A small improvement to DevRel might be achieved, at least from what I've 
> seen by reading lots and lots of DevRel bugs, by taking action on 
> unfounded complaints, too. I'm speaking of trivial complaints, of course.

If Developer Relations were able to act fast, it would help immensely.
Again, we have tied ourselves in so much red tape and procedure, that
getting things done is now secondary to following protocol.  I am not
pointing fingers at devrel on this.  I think it is a failure across
most, if not all, of Gentoo.

> If, after both sides were investigated properly, the complaining party is 
> found to be exaggerating or too easily offended, disciplinary action 
> should be taken against it. Of course, this should be done light-handedly 
> but it should give the complaining party some time to learn from their 
> mistake. Maybe this is what's already intended - it's just that I haven't 
> found any examples. :)

It is actually what was intended.  The problem is that even the most
light-handed actions have been met with resignations, flames, people
being general assholes, and all kinds of other fun things that compound
the problems rather than resolve them.  I know that one of kloeri's
biggest fears as creating more problems than he solved, every time
devrel had to do just about anything.

We are an open source project that is completely community-based.  We
simply don't all think alike and can't expect that to ever change.

> I apologise for the long mail but I wanted to state clearly and without 
> too much emotions why I think we don't need the proctors and why we 
> should thank them for attempting to bring some order to the chaos and 
> give up on the concept as a whole.

We don't really have any sort of replacement for the proctors.  The
original User Relations was supposed to do that job, but that was before
Christel came around and reinvented userrel as a great
community<->developer gateway.  The problem was that we *needed* to have
the "old" userrel to compliment devrel.  The proctors were supposed to
fill in that gap.

I know I am planning on bringing up discussion on this at the next
Council meeting and we'll simply go from there.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 19:16 +0200, expose@luftgetrock.net wrote:
> Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
> > I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear
> > guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and
> > what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences etc. it's
> > difficult to judge.
> The guideline, as far as I understood it, was (and is?) to ban people who dont 
> abide by the time-outs.

What guideline?  Where is it?  When was it approved by the Council, like
we had said that proctors policy would need to be?

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 14:08 -0300, Mauricio Lima Pilla wrote:
> Good luck for the remaining proctors, they will need as they aparently can't 
> even expect any support from council members. 

There's a *BIG* difference between support and blind support.  Nobody
ever promised the proctors blind support.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 13:14 -0500, Steev Klimaszewski wrote:
> Great job Chris, way to stick it to them.

Yes.  It absolutely *is* a great job that I voiced my opinion in a
manner that I thought was most beneficial for Gentoo.  Shame on me for
ever thinking about what might be best for Gentoo.  Shame on me!  I
mean, we should never speak up when we think someone in authority is
doing wrong.  Yeah, I really stabbed someone in the back by vocalizing
my dissenting opinion, publicly, no less.  I would say that I am sorry
that certain proctors took my observations of the group as a whole
personally, but I am not.  I didn't mean it to be personal, and am not
going to waste my time holding people's hands when their feelings get
hurt because I expressed my opinion.  Sorry, but it just isn't going to
happen.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[George Prowse]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 19:16 +0200, expose@luftgetrock.net wrote:
>> Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
>>> I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear
>>> guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and
>>> what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences etc. it's
>>> difficult to judge.
>> The guideline, as far as I understood it, was (and is?) to ban people who dont 
>> abide by the time-outs.
> 
> What guideline?  Where is it?  When was it approved by the Council, like
> we had said that proctors policy would need to be?
> 

from http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/coc.xml

Consequences

Disciplinary action will be up to the descretion of the proctors. What 
is a proctor? A proctor is an official charged with the duty of 
maintaining good order. If discplinary measures are taken and the 
affected person wishes to appeal, appeals should be addressed to the 
Gentoo Council via email at council@gentoo.org. To prevent conflicts of 
interest, Council members may not perform the duties of a proctor.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2007-06-07 at 01:08 +0100, George Prowse wrote:
> from http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/coc.xml

Look at the Council logs from the CoC being approved and the ones since.
We asked for real guidelines so we could specifically avoid this sort of
problem from happening.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Living in a bubble [gentoo-proctor] Warning^2

[expose]

Dawid Węgliński wrote:
> Dnia 06-06-2007, śro o godzinie 18:32 +0200, expose@luftgetrock.net
>
> napisał(a):
> > Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> > > expose@luftgetrock.net wrote:
> > > > Just stop claiming others are insane, abusive power-trippers just
> > > > because you did not abide by a rule and got your punishment for it.
> > >
> > > I'm claiming it because plenty of other people agree. You *did* see the
> > > response that the proctors got from various Gentoo developers, right?
> >
> > What I saw was a response to what you as one of the I-will-reply-anyway
> > guys caused, and I bet if people had just stayed quiet for 24 hours the
> > thread would have died out rather quickly.
> > The replys by other devs seem to be allmost exclusivly be based on the
> > fact, that people like you did not take their time calming down, or if
> > they were calm anyway, take their time to do whatever for 24 hours.
>
> Why to stop the topic? IMO it *is* important, and we should make a
> correct decision. You blame beejey. Ok, blame him about what he said,
> but paradoxically he uncovered that whole mess, that noone was talking
> about before.
>
> ++ for I-will-reply-anyway guys

I admit that my wording is not good here, please let me rephrase it:
Instead of "thread would have died out rather quickly" read it as
"the flame-war part of the thread would have died out rather quickly"

What I tried to stress with my replies is, that there is no censorship, in 
contrast to a forced slow-down.

Imagine you are angry, but may only say one sentence per hour. A verbal fight 
should be harder, than it is in the world as we know it.
My own interpretation of what Roy wanted is, that he knew personal "Please 
calm down everyone"-mails don't help, and therefore he wanted to force people 
to do so, by delaying the thread for 24 hours.
This is not censoring, to my eyes, rather call it "de-escalation" or whatever 
you like best.
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[George Prowse]

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-06-07 at 01:08 +0100, George Prowse wrote:
>> from http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/council/coc.xml
> 
> Look at the Council logs from the CoC being approved and the ones since.
> We asked for real guidelines so we could specifically avoid this sort of
> problem from happening.
> 
Then the council are to blame for having the CoC readily available under 
their *own* project pages.

It has your's and most of the council's names as reviewers and after 3 
months nothing has been said about it. The lack of activity and where it 
is situated make it look like it is official policy.

All this is immaterial anyway because even if it had been extensively 
discussed at length then the proctors would still have acted the same, 
or would you have preferred that they held a meeting first and then a 
focus group and then a coffee morning before trying to stop a thread 
descending into anarchy? I cant see it would have gone any different to 
1) warning. 2) if ignored then act
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:15:58 +0100
George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:
> All this is immaterial anyway because even if it had been extensively 
> discussed at length then the proctors would still have acted the
> same

If that really were the case, it would just be an even stronger
argument for disbanding them.

> or would you have preferred that they held a meeting first and
> then a focus group and then a coffee morning before trying to stop a
> thread descending into anarchy?

The thread descended into anarchy because of the proctors.

> I cant see it would have gone any different to 1) warning. 2) if
> ignored then act

Perhaps if the proctors had discussed things first, they wouldn't have
made two major screwups that resulted in Gentoo losing yet another
developer.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Richard Freeman]

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Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> 
> Perhaps if the proctors had discussed things first, they wouldn't have
> made two major screwups that resulted in Gentoo losing yet another
> developer.
> 

Might I suggest that anybody who is waiting for "one last straw" go 
ahead and take a month or two off right now and save everybody the 
drama?  If I felt like I was in a position on a project where I was so 
fed-up that if anything serious happened I'd just quit, and I wasn't 
being paid at all, I'd take a vacation.  Relax!  Come back with an idea 
of why it is I'm participating in the project in the first place.  It 
would be better for myself and the project than doing something that 
will upset a lot of people and which I might regret down the road.  It 
might be harder in the "real world" if you need a steady income, but 
most of us at Gentoo have the liberty of taking time off without much of 
a drop in income...  :)

If the proctors overstepped their bounds I'm sure the council will talk 
to them about it in the appropriate forum, and straighten things out. 
Some general positive contribution as to what role if any proctors 
should have is also a good thing.  I've really only seen two roles 
advocated in this series of posts:

1.  They're essentially doing the right thing already - short-term bans 
are OK to enforce cooldown periods and stop off-topic flames.
2.  They really aren't needed at all.

The few posts that don't fall into those categories haven't really 
suggested anything else in-between as an alternative.  Personally I tend 
to fall into category #1 - maybe with the addition of sending private 
warnings before enforcing bans.  A better solution might be closing 
threads, but this probably isn't all that practical to accomplish in a 
mailing list without moderating the list with approval of all posts.

If somebody has a practical suggestion as to how the proctors can 
fulfill their mission without causing problems, I'm sure they're open to 
it.  I'm not sure I'd call the CoC a failure so much as a work in 
progress - it may already be causing an improvement in bugzilla or 
elsewhere even if not obviously on this list.  In any case, there really 
isn't anything in the CoC that isn't generally good-policy, so just 
having it acts as a warning to those who might later need to be dealt 
with simply for being super-obnoxious.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Alexandre Buisse]

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On Thu, Jun  7, 2007 at 12:20:07 +0200, George Prowse wrote:
> [...] before trying to stop a thread 
> descending into anarchy?

I wish it was descending into anarchy. Which is a highly organized
social system, and doesn't have anything to do with chaos. Anarchy is
just a system where there is no authority which hasn't been freely
accepted (and freely as in "you can refuse it without any consequence",
not freely as in "you can refuse it but then you won't be part of this
project").

So please, let's pay attention to the meaning of the words we are using.

/Alexandre
-- 
http://aperturefirst.effraie.org

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[George Prowse]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 11:15:58 +0100
> George Prowse <cokehabit@gmail.com> wrote:
>> All this is immaterial anyway because even if it had been extensively 
>> discussed at length then the proctors would still have acted the
>> same
> If that really were the case, it would just be an even stronger
> argument for disbanding them.
> 
You have to be joking, their actions were 100% what they should have 
been: thread was going downhill - they gave a warning - people ignored 
it - they acted. If you dont want to adhere to the rules, dont post to 
the list.

>> or would you have preferred that they held a meeting first and
>> then a focus group and then a coffee morning before trying to stop a
>> thread descending into anarchy?
> The thread descended into anarchy because of the proctors.
> 
No, the threat descended into anarchy because of your opportunistic 
nature. Every thread where there is a possibility of getting back at the 
Gentoo heirachy you jump in with both feet and pull your coven in with you.

Trying to get back at various people and groups in Gentoo because you 
feel embarrassed by your exclusion is no way for an adult to act, this 
isn't like carbon trading, you cant offset any good you do with the bad

>> I cant see it would have gone any different to 1) warning. 2) if
>> ignored then act
> Perhaps if the proctors had discussed things first, they wouldn't have
> made two major screwups that resulted in Gentoo losing yet another
> developer.
> 
That may have been the case if they acted inappropriately but as I have 
said, a warning and then a 24hr cooling off is all that is needed, the 
thread would have stopped dead then.

You must start to realise that whenever a touchy subject is brought up 
and you intervene the decibel level goes up 10x  by virtue of the fact 
that the pro-Ciaran and anti-Ciaran groups will immediately jump in with 
their voice. If you were really on these lists to help then you would 
keep quiet unless it is a 100% technical post so maybe the best idea is 
for you to teach yourself when to bite your lip.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[George Prowse]

Alexandre Buisse wrote:
> On Thu, Jun  7, 2007 at 12:20:07 +0200, George Prowse wrote:
>> [...] before trying to stop a thread 
>> descending into anarchy?
> 
> I wish it was descending into anarchy. Which is a highly organized
> social system, and doesn't have anything to do with chaos. Anarchy is
> just a system where there is no authority which hasn't been freely
> accepted (and freely as in "you can refuse it without any consequence",
> not freely as in "you can refuse it but then you won't be part of this
> project").
> 
> So please, let's pay attention to the meaning of the words we are using.
> 
> /Alexandre

Anarchy is when the individual as a law unto himself and there are no 
rules to force him to act appropriately - suitable word for the 
situation, thankyou.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Steev Klimaszewski]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:

<snip various good infos>


> The Code of Conduct was written with the hopes that its existence would
> help to curb the flamewars and other general nastiness between people
> within the community.  The proctors were created to enforce the Code of
> Conduct.  Their mandate was to be very fast moving and to try to keep
> flames from spreading.  For some time, I was working with the proctors.
> I ended up disliking the bureaucratic direction they were taking and
> chose to have myself removed from the group.  Since that time, I have
> pretty much felt that the proctors *have* taken it upon themselves to
> single out and target particular individuals.  Whether this was
> intentional or not is really beside the point.  The perception is all
> that really matters, as it is all that gets propagated to the world.  I
> think this is something that people seem to forget.  It doesn't matter
> what the real truth is for anything.  All that matters "to the world" is
> what they perceive.  If the perception is that Gentoo is nothing but a
> bunch of guys waiting to flame people, it doesn't matter that there
> might be 98% of the developer pool that has never engaged in a flamewar.
> (Numbers completely made up...)
>

Not everyone had your perception either - in fact, it would appear that
a lot of people have the same perception as me, which is that Neddy saw
the potential of this thread to do exactly what has happened, and asked
for people to NOT post for 24 hours.  Certain individuals decided to
respond anyways due to that being their nature, and they got banned.
Suddenly because those people have a tendency to do this "proctors are
out to get them" - perpetrated by the fact that it is them doing the
same thing time and again, it is *NOT* singling anyone out, it is simply
responding and attempting to curtail their efforts yet again.  So while
you have a certain perception - which appears to be the same as the ones
 the CoC was used against, whether that is good or bad, I have no idea -
doesn't mean that *everyone* has your perception.


>> While preventing it is a good goal in itself, writing a CoC based on an 
>> actual case which has only recently occurred, usually leads to this 
>> result and damages the whatever good intentions were involved because 
>> other people will see the similarities as well.
> 
> The Code of Conduct wasn't written in response to a particular case.
> The timing suggests that it was written against Ciaran.  It wasn't.  I
> know this will sound a bit harsh, but if we really were trying to just
> get rid of Ciaran, we would have just banned him and been done with it.
> There wouldn't have been a point in creating yet another project and
> staffing it.  The goal *was* and still *is* to reduce the flames, no
> matter what parties are involved.
> 
>> More than that, it puts a strain on those who are entrusted with enforcing 
>> the CoC because they will try, with the best motives, to prevent anything 
>> like that happening again. And they will do it, as the proctors stated 
>> themselves, pro-actively.
> 
> No, re-actively.  If it were proactive, it would be done before the
> flames started.  The proctors *have* tried to react as quickly as
> possible.  The problem is that there are no published guidelines, and
> decisions from the proctors are completely arbitrary to any outside
> observer.  I think they've failed.  Again, I don't think that the guys
> didn't have the best intentions, and I know that some people took my
> voicing of their failure as a direct personal assault.  It wasn't meant
> that way, but I'm not going to apologize for my observations.  I see no
> point in apologizing for what *I* perceived, even if it does hurt a few
> feelings.  I just think people are being overly-sensitive.  It's
> Gentoo's curse.
> 

Overly sensitive?  Perhaps you should go re-read your email.  And yes, I
do believe an apology IS in order.  Of course, my beliefs mean nothing,
I am a lowly developer, you are a high and mighty council member who is
above reproach for your actions.


>> The problem is, though: In an asynchronous communications medium, you 
>> simply cannot pro-actively do anything without bordering on what some 
>> like to call censorship. You can only *re*act in such a situation.
>>
>> Even *trying* to act pro-actively will lead to unrest as we've only very 
>> recently seen it. If we accept my hypothesis of asynchronous 
>> communication and the implications I described, we come to the conclusion 
>> that reaction is the most likely way not to open Pandora's Box.
> 
> Attempts to become more proactive were dismissed.  One such attempt was
> to enforce bans on all mediums.  For example, if someone is banned for
> 24 hours for their actions on IRC, they should be banned from all of our
> media.  Why?  Because there's nothing keeping the person from just
> moving "next door" and starting more problems.  We've even seen it
> happen in at least one occasion that I am aware of with this list and
> the forums.
> <more snippage of good informations>

> I know I am planning on bringing up discussion on this at the next
> Council meeting and we'll simply go from there.
> 

Good to know that it will be discussed.  Also, is there a place where we
can go to request a council member be removed before their term is up?
I do admit that I don't have the greatest of knowledge and due to how
"young" I was as a developer during the last election, I didn't vote as
I didn't know enough about any of the developers running, and I didn't
pay particular attention to the mailing list.  Now that I do, I am much
better informed and will be voting accordingly.
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Wulf C. Krueger]

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Hello Chris!

I'm shortening your mail greatly and respond to only a few aspects because 
the two of us seem to agree on a great deal of those points you made.

On Thursday, June 7, 2007 01:45:43 AM Chris Gianelloni wrote:
[Proctors]
> Well, they've been asked to write guidelines for Council approval, as
> well as changes to the Code of Conduct.  Neither of which have been
> done.  

I'm well aware of that. Of course, one could argue that the council should 
have a) set a fixed date for those tasks and b) monitored the 
progress. :-)

> Why do we need the -dev mailing list?  How much real "development" (or
> even discussion about it) happens on the mailing list?

Rarely any. We still need it, though, because it's the only 
development-related mailinglist that everyone may at least read.

That said, before I became a dev I've read this list but I've never posted 
to it because I felt it was inappropriate. I've contacted either 
individual devs or herds and that worked fairly well.

Users have lots of ways to communicate with us - our mail aliases, the 
other mailinglists, the forums and what not. So let's make this list 
read-only for anyone but devs and staff (as was suggested by others here 
as well) and keep it.

> Most of the traffic on this list is political in nature and simply
> doesn't belong on this list.  Since we've pretty much shown over the
> past couple years that the development list isn't being used properly,
> why have it?

Because devs will need a place to vent sometimes. -core is not the list 
for such purposes. Furthermore, we generally don't need to hide (and we 
shouldn't either) from our users. Thus, there should be a mailinglist for 
all to read. Just like we have #gentoo-dev on IRC.

> I mean no disrespect to people's age, but I think part of the problem
> why we have such a hard time, collectively, acting like adults is we
> aren't adults.  

Thank you for bringing this up. I didn't want to state it that clearly 
because some will feel it's unfair but I think that's indeed one of the 
problems.

> It isn't their fault, it is just simply a
> lack of life experience.  We simply cannot reasonably expect everyone
> to act like a level-headed thirty year old computer professional.  

Exactly. About ten to twelve years ago, I often reacted like Ciaran, too. 

Twice, I was almost fired because of that. Fortunately for me, there were 
two colleagues who were willing to tolerate me anyway and by just 
treating me much friendlier and more patiently than I did treat them, 
I've learned there are better ways to handle frustration and latent 
aggressions.

> I have heard people say that our lack of being paid developers compounds
> this, as we have people from all walks of life.  

The latter I definitely consider one of our strengths because we're *not* 
all from the isolated ebony towers of university. We're from all over the 
world and from all professions. 

> but I do know that paid developers tend to be older and 
> more professional.  After all, if they constantly acted like a tool,
> they'd be fired.

Of course.

> Developer Relations has gone through a few good spots intermixed with
> lots of failures.  

Yes, I agree. Of course, both of our views are highly subjective and some 
others may, as subjectively, feel that it's exactly the other way round.

> I have always felt that a properly-running distribution should have the
> need for a group whose purpose is to resolve internal conflict.  

I'm guessing you meant to write "should NOT have"?

> We will always need recruiters, but the existence of a group just 
> to make the 300 or so of us play nice together shows that our culture is
> broken.

No, I don't think so. The fact that we all come from different cultures, 
are aged from 15 or so up to 70 (? Neddy, correct me if I'm wrong. ;-) ) 
makes it impossible to avoid conflicts among ourselves. Thus, we'll 
always need some people to mediate.

Granted, personally, I don't need DevRel. I just ignore those who annoy me 
or I'll let them know what I think about them directly without making a 
public fuss about it. We can't expect that from others, though.

> > Do we really need an entire team for dealing with one former dev in
> > case he goes too far? Or could we just agree to ignore him if he
> > again behaves inappropriately (or what some of us *feel* might be
> > inappropriate)?

This was targetted at the proctors again, not DevRel. I should have made 
that clear, sorry.

> > When I first read the CoC I had just read about the entire
> > Ciaran-incident on the respective bugs, Forums, mailinglists, blogs
> > and many other sources. CoC, while not bad in itself, seemed (and
> > still seems) to me like a "Lex Ciaran" - a document with that what I
> > had just read clearly in mind and targetted at preventing it.
> The Code of Conduct was written with the hopes that its existence would
> help to curb the flamewars 

Yes, I know. I was sceptical about that when I first heard of it and I 
still am. :)

> The perception is all that really matters, as it is all that gets
> propagated to the world.  I think this is something that people seem 
> to forget.  It doesn't matter what the real truth is for anything.  
> All that matters "to the world" is what they perceive.  

Exactly! That's the point: In an ideal world, the absolute truth would be 
all that mattered. We all know, though, that neither the world outside 
the virtual walls of our electronic communications media is perfect nor 
that our own little Gentoo world is perfect. 

Thus, we really have to think about how we (and others) perceive what 
we're doing. 

> > While preventing it is a good goal in itself, writing a CoC based on
> > an actual case which has only recently occurred, usually leads to
> > this result and damages the whatever good intentions were involved
> > because other people will see the similarities as well.
> The Code of Conduct wasn't written in response to a particular case.

Yes, it was not intended to be but that's again a question of perception 
*and* one of the timing. Just look at the dates of both the incident in 
question and the time the CoC was written. 

Furthermore, lay both the DevRel bug and the CoC next to each other and 
compare the accusations and the CoC regulations with each other - even 
the ordering is pretty much the same. :-)

Of course, the CoC was not intended as a Ciaran-response but it was 
(probably even unintentionally) written with it in mind and it shows.

> The timing suggests that it was written against Ciaran.  It wasn't.  I
> know this will sound a bit harsh, but if we really were trying to just
> get rid of Ciaran, we would have just banned him and been done with it.

Don't worry about sounding harsh and I'll do the same: You wouldn't have 
gotten rid of him. If you were able to get rid of him, he wouldn't be 
able to post to this mailinglist.

Yesterday on IRC, I suggested banning Ciaran from here but, as I expected, 
that was met with enraged shouting about "censorship".

If we're not even able to deal with someone who has proven to me even (and 
I wasn't convinced retiring him was right after reading all I've listed 
in my previous mail) that he's a troublemaker above anything else, we 
aren't able to deal with anyone as decided as him.

> > More than that, it puts a strain on those who are entrusted with
> > enforcing the CoC because they will try, with the best motives, to
> > prevent anything like that happening again. And they will do it, as
> > the proctors stated themselves, pro-actively.
> No, re-actively.  

Agreed - they were talking about *pro*-actively themselves, though. :-)

> I think they've failed.  

I agree.

> voicing of their failure as a direct personal assault.  It wasn't meant
> that way, but I'm not going to apologize for my observations.  I see no
> point in apologizing for what *I* perceived, even if it does hurt a few
> feelings.  I just think people are being overly-sensitive.  It's
> Gentoo's curse.

Absolutely! That's exactly my feeling, too, and the reason why I've voiced 
my hope that people would finally grow a thicker skin as I put it.

> If Developer Relations were able to act fast, it would help immensely.

Define a right to a "speedy decision" and make that 30 days at most.

> > If, after both sides were investigated properly, the complaining
> > party is found to be exaggerating or too easily offended,
> > disciplinary action should be taken against it. Of course, this
> > should be done light-handedly but it should give the complaining
> > party some time to learn from their mistake. Maybe this is what's
> > already intended - it's just that I haven't found any examples. :)
> It is actually what was intended.  The problem is that even the most
> light-handed actions have been met with resignations, flames, people
> being general assholes, and all kinds of other fun things that compound
> the problems rather than resolve them.

Tough luck. Make DevRel a body that people are being elected to for, e. g. 
one year, and let people resign over their decisions if they feel they 
have to. It already happened and at least one dev came back after some 
rest.

You said it yourself: People are overly sensitive and DevRel must not hurt 
their feelings because of that? Sorry, that's not the way it works.

> We are an open source project that is completely community-based.  We
> simply don't all think alike and can't expect that to ever change.

No, of course not. But I've seen (and am a part of) much bigger projects 
survive for much longer (more than 20 years in one example) than Gentoo 
in spite of having basically the same problems we have.

> We don't really have any sort of replacement for the proctors.  

And we don't need one.

> original User Relations was supposed to do that job, 

I've never understood what that was about either but that's another 
story. :-)

> I know I am planning on bringing up discussion on this at the next
> Council meeting and we'll simply go from there.

That would be on the 14th this month, right?

Best regards, Wulf

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[gentoo-dev] Re: Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Duncan]

Steev Klimaszewski <steev@gentoo.org> posted 46680A01.9090801@gentoo.org,
excerpted below, on  Thu, 07 Jun 2007 08:37:05 -0500:

> Not everyone had your perception either - in fact, it would appear that
> a lot of people have the same perception as me, which is that Neddy saw
> the potential of this thread to do exactly what has happened, and asked
> for people to NOT post for 24 hours.  Certain individuals decided to
> respond anyways due to that being their nature, and they got banned.
> Suddenly because those people have a tendency to do this "proctors are
> out to get them" []

Agreed.  I believe I responded to one post in the thread, an entirely 
favorable response I don't believe anyone will have an issue with, BTW, 
because it showed up higher in my thread list than did the "please don't 
post for 24-hours" proctors' request.  Then I got to the proctor's 
request and felt a bit badly, that I had posted without yet seeing it.

Had I been banned for 24-hours as a result, with a (probably form, given 
the number of folks it would apply to) response to the effect that 
everyone posting was getting it, I'd have certainly been frustrated, but 
would have understood (tho admittedly it might have taken me a fair bit 
of that 24 hours /to/ understand).

Anyway, I think it has been 24-hours /now/, so I don't feel badly about 
posting again now...  not that there was anything I felt strongly and 
clearly enough to post on in the interim.

>> Attempts to become more proactive were dismissed.  One such attempt was
>> to enforce bans on all mediums.  For example, if someone is banned for
>> 24 hours for their actions on IRC, they should be banned from all of
>> our media.  Why?  Because there's nothing keeping the person from just
>> moving "next door" and starting more problems.  We've even seen it
>> happen in at least one occasion that I am aware of with this list and
>> the forums.
>> <more snippage of good informations>
> 
>> I know I am planning on bringing up discussion on this at the next
>> Council meeting and we'll simply go from there.
>> 
>> 
> Good to know that it will be discussed.

Agreed.

>From my perspective, I think the proctor thing is a good idea, and 
contrary to some, I'm /not/ of the opinion it has been deliberately used 
against certain people.

The problem, and I remember many people saying so at the time, was that 
the idea wasn't subject to the usual time limit impositions that most 
proposals go thru.  If it wasn't a response to the specific situation, 
and I'll trust Chris that it wasn't, it sure SEEMED like it was, and that 
it was rammed thru without proper debate and discussion.

That's really sad, IMO, because what's happening is what I believe a lot 
of people could have predicted would happen, given the way it was rammed 
thru.  What /was/ a great proposal in principle, ended up with a crappy 
implementation, without official public guidelines, with no way to answer 
allegations of favoritism (which were CERTAIN to come up) as a result of 
the lack of guidelines, perhaps with a bit of favoritism demonstrated, 
not deliberately, but /because/ of the same lack of guidelines... etc.

If it was /not/ a response to the specific incident, why then the rush?  
Why was it rammed thru as if the continuance of time itself was at 
stake?  Had it been done in the normal orderly way, the process itself 
would have taken care of these issues we are now dealing with, at least 
to the point there would have been some guidelines, some sort of answer 
that could be given referencing the official guidelines as to whether 
there was favoritism or not.  Whatever.  What's done is done, and we're 
living with the consequences.

I'm glad to see the decision is going to be reexamined.  As I stated 
above, I'm in favor of the idea.  It's just the birth of it that wasn't 
right.  Regardless of that, hopefully, our new baby isn't going to be 
thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak.  I'm honestly not sure it's 
possible now, but I'd love to see a proctor's project that could stand up 
with confidence and point not only to direct council authorization, but 
public guidelines also blessed by the council, so they could act with 
confidence, clear in the knowledge that they are within properly 
established guidelines, and that any challenge as to favoritism 
(deliberate or not) or the like can be met equally confidently.  Perhaps 
this baby, "bastard" tho he might have started, will now be given the 
chance to grow into a mature and respected member of the community. =8^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Jorge Manuel B. S. Vicetto]

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Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> > On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 18:10 +0200, Wulf C. Krueger wrote:
>> >> On Wednesday, June 6, 2007 05:29:47 PM Grant Goodyear wrote:

>> >> I'm sure they have the best intentions but I've never seen any clear
>> >> guidelines for them. They use their best judgement what to handle and
>> >> what not to but due to language barriers, cultural differences
etc. it's
>> >> difficult to judge.
> >
> > Well, they've been asked to write guidelines for Council approval, as
> > well as changes to the Code of Conduct.  Neither of which have been
> > done.  As it stands now, there are no publicly available guidelines that
> > I am aware of for the proctors.
> >

Yes, there are no approved guidelines. That doesn't mean that there was
no discussion about that. However, during that process, the little
feedback that came from the council seemed to indicate that in the end
those guidelines didn't needed to be approved by the council - the
proctors could just discuss them and present them as a matter of fact.
Chris, I should probably say this in private, but since you were the one
to opt for public discussion, I would like to rekindle your memory that
you decided to abandon the proctors@ alias during the discussion because
you felt you were being attacked - I would argue that you were being
*touchy*. After that, I sent a mail directly to you asking for your
opinion - I never got any reply.

For anyone interested in the type of discussion that was taking place at
the team, at least my contribution, please check the gentoo archives:
http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-proctors/

>> >> Furthermore, where do we need them? The Forums are moderated by
an, IMHO,
>> >> excellent team. IRC is more or less self-moderated.
>> >> That basically leaves the mailinglists and among those, the only
one that
>> >> *might* arguably need supervision could be -dev.

For the record, the council's reply to the proctors about this was that
the CoC should be enforced *everywhere*.

> > I mean no disrespect to people's age, but I think part of the problem
> > why we have such a hard time, collectively, acting like adults is we
> > aren't adults.  A very good number of our developers are in the high
> > school/college age range.  This means their life experience isn't as
> > high as a more seasoned adult.  They have no real experiences dealing
> > with adults in adult situations.  They're simply used to how things are
> > done with people their age.  It isn't their fault, it is just simply a
> > lack of life experience.  We simply cannot reasonably expect everyone to
> > act like a level-headed thirty year old computer professional.  I have
> > heard people say that our lack of being paid developers compounds this,
> > as we have people from all walks of life.  I don't think that I believe
> > that, but I do know that paid developers tend to be older and more
> > professional.  After all, if they constantly acted like a tool, they'd
> > be fired.
> >

I understand this reasoning and can in part agree with it, although
there's always some exceptions - a few people seem they'll be
mentally 5 year olds, even when they get to their 70s.

- -- Regards, Jorge Vicetto (jmbsvicetto) - jmbsvicetto at gentoo dot org
Gentoo- forums / Userrel
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