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

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 10:38 PM, kuzetsa <kuzetsa@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think this may be a misunderstanding? no? there might be some mailing
> list jargon term: "moderation" which I was unaware of:
>

Historically moderation meant having list traffic held prior to
distribution for approval from a moderator.

> I've never used mailing list software which has that feature (I think
> that may be what you're referring to) - I mostly meant someone (or a
> team) with the specific duty to hold people accountable for their posts
> (since the list is public-facing, this should include @gentoo.org devs
> too because it sets a weird precedent to have disparate enforcement)

Well, ultimately the question is whether unverified members of the
community can post or not.  If they can, then there is no way to hold
anybody accountable for anything, because they can just create a new
email address to continue posting.

If you require verification prior to posting it gives everybody a
reputation to have to be concerned about.

> the "require whitelist / default deny" version of having a closed list
> seems the same - expecting users to contact a dev to relay messages, or
> go through the dubiously [un]documented process of getting whitelisted.

The process is simple, and certainly could be documented on the wiki
(it was already described in emails).  Get a dev to whitelist you.  It
can be any dev, and it is up to that dev to agree to the request or
not.

> unless that process has a standardized format, it seems worse than the
> greylist because individual developers have the autonomy to [not]
> sponsor people for whitelist, or approve posting on a user's behalf.

I'd consider that a feature, not a bug.  Gentoo has well over 100
developers.  All it takes is the approval of any one of them to be
whitelisted.  That is a very permissive system.  If every single one
of them is unwilling to whitelist somebody, is it really necessary to
have every single one of them make some kind of case for their
individual decisions?  Who would even judge such a case, considering
that all of comrel and the council (and even the current Trustees) are
all developers who presumably could have done the whitelisting
themselves?

You could still layer something like the proctors or comrel on top of
this, and they would presumably be a bit more formalized in how they
operate.  (The typical conception is that Proctors would have a lot of
discretion but would generally only enforce short-term "punishments"
like bans of a few days, warnings, and so on.  On the other hand
comrel would be much more formalized but would be able to take
long-term action.  The goal of course would be for Proctors to defuse
situations before they ever get to Comrel.)

-- 
Rich