From: "M. J. Everitt" <m.j.everitt@iee.org>
To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2018 03:21:10 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <8267424f-835c-e363-bcd5-c58811fda061@iee.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAGfcS_=wy70mVWtNCBCruWy-eA1TdKYGxX7VA6jWHTrAEcW_3g@mail.gmail.com>
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On 27/03/18 17:39, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de> wrote:
>> Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de> wrote:
>>>> It is about openness vs. isolation.
>>> I'm pretty sure most developers, myself included, want to welcome
>>> contributions.
>> Closing of the mailing list does not sound like that.
>>
> Sure, but it is actually part of the motivation.
>
> Consider this scenario.
>
> Fred is a community member. Fred consistently harasses and trolls new
> contributors in private. New contributors end up leaving because of
> Fred.
>
> Fred gets booted out as a result. No mention is made of why Fred as
> booted out, because everything happened in private.
>
> Now a bunch of community members get upset about Fred being booted out
> without reason. Fred claims it is because he disagrees with the
> leadership on something. People start arguing endlessly about
> openness.
>
> Ultimately the leaders just want Fred gone so that new contributors
> aren't getting driven away. They can't explain that because then they
> create potential civil liability for the project. The problem is that
> the debate goes on for over a year despite intervening elections and
> now this becomes the issue that is driving new contributors away.
>
> What solution would you propose for this problem? It isn't
> hypothetical at all - I can think of one case in Gentoo's past where
> this happened that I'm aware of, and I'd be shocked if it were the
> only one.
>
>> And anyway, you can be sure that the problem will appear again,
>> no matter how closed the list will be.
> Sure, but we can at least force the negative advertising of Gentoo to
> go elsewhere, rather than basically paying to run a negative PR
> campaign against ourselves.
>
>>> A lot of this comes down to considering that most people in these
>>> debates probably are well-intended.
>> Taking away freedom is never justified by good intention.
> You might want to choose a BSD-based distro then. :)
>
> And what about the freedom to endlessly troll and harass you and
> others? Is this truly a freedom we want to stand for? How about the
> freedom to harass members of legally-protected classes (something that
> also has happened historically in the community)?
>
> Surely Gentoo's mission isn't to run completely unrestricated forums
> for discussion of anything and everything. Our main purpose here is
> to maintain a Linux distro, not provide a platform for anybody who has
> an opinion on anything. Free expression has to be balanced against
> the interests of people who want to actually contribute to the distro
> without being endlessly trolled and harassed.
>
It sounds a lot to me like you're replacing one set of problems with
another .. solving not a lot. Whether you take action on "Fred" or not,
you're going to lose out, so what do you do... Where is the greater
damage, with one/two people, 10/20 people or 100/200 people .. its a
huge value judgement - certainly not one I'd like to make!
You may or may not have heard the expression "throwing out the baby with
the bathwater" .. alas I feel this measure is a good example of this. To
try to rid the mailing list of one or two bad apples, you've cut the
whole tree down so it can't bear fruit. I think this is a foolish step,
but only time will tell that for sure ... The next "logical" step would
simply be to delete the whole mailing list - I suppose that's the next
"measure" when the trolling from white-listed members resurfaces.... And
don't go telling me it doesn't exist .. set a bad example, others will
surely follow ...
Ooops, another $2 spent on a lost cause .. >,<
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-03-28 2:21 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 52+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-03-20 12:17 [gentoo-dev] Mailing list moderation and community openness Michael Palimaka
2018-03-20 12:22 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand
2018-03-20 12:26 ` Lars Wendler
2018-03-20 13:41 ` Gregory Woodbury
2018-03-20 16:09 ` [gentoo-project] " Rich Freeman
2018-03-20 15:28 ` Matthew Thode
2018-03-20 18:17 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand
2018-03-21 23:56 ` Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
2018-03-22 0:24 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand
2018-03-21 5:36 ` Eray Aslan
2018-03-21 11:07 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-21 14:44 ` Alec Warner
2018-03-21 16:31 ` Eray Aslan
2018-03-21 16:46 ` Alec Warner
2018-03-21 16:55 ` R0b0t1
2018-03-21 17:19 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-21 23:44 ` Gregory Woodbury
2018-03-22 5:24 ` [gentoo-dev] " Duncan
2018-03-20 15:44 ` [gentoo-dev] " Alexander Berntsen
2018-03-20 16:03 ` William Hubbs
2018-03-20 23:54 ` Benda Xu
2018-03-21 0:08 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-21 23:56 ` Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
2018-03-22 0:33 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand
2018-03-22 0:37 ` M. J. Everitt
2018-03-22 6:31 ` Benda Xu
2018-03-22 8:30 ` Alexander Berntsen
2018-03-22 11:38 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-22 12:07 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand
2018-03-27 1:19 ` kuzetsa
2018-03-27 1:26 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-27 2:38 ` kuzetsa
2018-03-27 7:35 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-27 7:34 ` [gentoo-dev] " Martin Vaeth
2018-03-27 12:55 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-27 16:12 ` Martin Vaeth
2018-03-27 16:39 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-28 2:21 ` M. J. Everitt [this message]
2018-03-28 2:55 ` R0b0t1
2018-03-28 4:41 ` Stephen Christie
2018-03-28 13:48 ` Michael Orlitzky
2018-03-28 11:03 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-28 6:11 ` Dawid Weglinski
2018-03-28 6:33 ` Martin Vaeth
2018-03-28 11:21 ` Rich Freeman
2018-03-29 7:13 ` Martin Vaeth
2018-06-11 1:55 ` R0b0t1
2018-03-20 15:53 ` [gentoo-dev] " Pengcheng Xu
2018-03-21 2:22 ` Paweł Hajdan, Jr.
2018-03-21 23:56 ` Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
2018-03-22 0:27 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand
2018-06-10 18:29 ` Tom Wijsman
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