Re: [gentoo-dev] Mailing list moderation and community openness

[Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org>]

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On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 1:36 AM, Eray Aslan <eras@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 10:28:48AM -0500, Matthew Thode wrote:
> > While I personally do no agree with mailing list moderation infra has
> > been tasked with moving forward on it.
>
> You can always resign from infra.
>

> That was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment but not wholly.  You cant
> cop out by saying it was an order from council.  I understand if you
> dont but do consider it.  Fight the good fight.
>

So when there is conflict its pretty often that you have 3 options.

1) Accept
2) Leave
3) Escalate

I'm not sure 3 is possible (the council is already the highest body). I
also think that as a organization this is how we
arranged it to be. Speaking for myself, this is not the worst issue I've
seen in Gentoo and so I thing doing 2 is probably
not very effective. Its also likely I can only do 2 once (because maybe I
would not be welcome'd back or want to contribute anymore.)

That leaves 1 and one interests me for many reasons.

a) as noted earlier, decisions are not set in stone. Its possible we could
turn on this whitelisting solution for a brief period and the decision is
overturned at the next council meeting, or perhaps at the next council
election once the existing council is replaced.
b) I am never afraid of making mistakes. I too think this is a mistake; but
I don't think its a critical mistake for the organization. Maybe I'm wrong
though.
c) I have a selfish interest to migrate off of mmlmj because I have an
intense dislike (of the software) and I think we need a "modernized" list
setup. So this effort is a driver to get some infra work done.
d) Infra as a organization wields a lot of power in Gentoo and I think its
organizationally dangerous to wield that power in this way. For example, if
the entire infra team retired rather than implement this solution; or even
worse, refused to retire but just didn't implement it. Ultimately
Infrastructure is here to meet the needs of the distribution and if we are
not doing that then we have failed as an organization.[1]
e) In the past, infra *has* wielded its power in a fashion that had
negative impacts on the distribution (e.g. arbitrarily removing commit
rights for developers with no warning, process, or oversight). I think
there is an additional focus in the the Infra team to avoid that sort of
activity and "inaction is still action" and I think it results in similar
repercussions.

[1] Which isn't to say that I would accept 'orders' to commit crimes, or
other obviously bad things. I'm again asserting that this idea is not
fundamentally bad. The community has a 'toxic people problem' and our
previous attempts at resolution have not really produced great results.
Will this also produce great results? Not sure. But willing to try it.

-A

>
> --
> Eray
>
>

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