[gentoo-dev] Mailing list moderation and community openness

[gentoo-dev] Mailing list moderation and community openness

[Michael Palimaka]

I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
not "approved" will have their mail rejected).

Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
core tenets of an open and inclusive community?

1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964

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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

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On 03/20/2018 01:17 PM, Michael Palimaka wrote:
> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
> 
> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
> 
> 1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964
> 

The correct place to have pointed this out would have been during the
previous ML discussions, and in particular ahead of either of the two
council meetings on the matter where it was clearly put on the agenda.
The bug in question is just a technical matter of implementing a final
decision.

-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Mailing list moderation and community openness

[Lars Wendler]

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On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 23:17:52 +1100 Michael Palimaka wrote:

>I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
>implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
>not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
>
>Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
>core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
>
>1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964
>

+1

This is ridiculous and council should be ashamed of this decision.

-- 
Lars Wendler
Gentoo package maintainer
GPG: 21CC CF02 4586 0A07 ED93  9F68 498F E765 960E 9B39

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

[Gregory Woodbury]

On gentoo-dev list: k_f
points out that this should have been talked about during previous
discussion periods...

It was discussed "to death" over and over, and many argued against it
till they were blue in the face.
Their concerns were ignored, and Gentoo lost a lot more of the "Free
and Open" reputation it theoretically
prides itself on.

-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury
redwolfe@gmail.com

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

[Matthew Thode]

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On 18-03-20 23:17:52, Michael Palimaka wrote:
> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
> 
> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
> 
> 1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964
> 

While I personally do no agree with mailing list moderation infra has
been tasked with moving forward on it.  In that vein, this is what we
are proposing.

Install and configure mailman3/hyperkitty/postorius once they all
support python3.  Specifically we wish to use docker-mailman for this so
we can easilly redeploy this on diferent machines as needed.

mailman3 gives us two good things, it has support for moderation (for
better or worse) and it handles senders using dmarc.

There are still some issues with it infra side (archiving will still
have to use the old system) and moving mailing lists is going to be fun,
but them the breaks.

-- 
Matthew Thode (prometheanfire)

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

[Alexander Berntsen]

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On 20/03/18 13:17, Michael Palimaka wrote:
> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
It's fairly simple to produce a justification of the decision. I can
think of several ways of doing so. One is through an appeal to some
notion of community health improvement from impeding toxic contributors.
In this strategy, the argument would be something pertaining to how
allowing these toxic posters free rein on the mailing list would
contradict the core tenet of an open and inclusive community. There are
several more ways to rationalise the decision.

But you won't buy into either of those purported vindications of this
decision. (I won't either.) So don't bother requesting them. Another
aimless (and thus endless) back and forth in Jackal language isn't
likely to achieve anything worthwhile beyond what the initial exchange
achieved.
-- 
Alexander
bernalex@gentoo.org
https://secure.plaimi.net/~alexander


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

[Pengcheng Xu]

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I can understand the need to reduce meaningless spams on the dev list,
but seems like general rejection of posts from non-developers would
distract the idea of this being an open mailing list: a list that one can’t
post to effectively decays to something like a bulletin board, and obviously
the developing process shouldn’t be kept in a showcase, which would greatly
discourage people who are not part of the dev team, yet still wanting to
get involved in the discussing, maybe even decision-making.

Pengcheng Xu
i@jsteward.moe



> H30/03/20 20:17、Michael Palimaka <kensington@gentoo.org>のメール:
> 
> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
> 
> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
> 
> 1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964
> 


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

[William Hubbs]

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On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 04:44:26PM +0100, Alexander Berntsen wrote:
> On 20/03/18 13:17, Michael Palimaka wrote:
> > Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> > core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
> It's fairly simple to produce a justification of the decision. I can
> think of several ways of doing so. One is through an appeal to some
> notion of community health improvement from impeding toxic contributors.
> In this strategy, the argument would be something pertaining to how
> allowing these toxic posters free rein on the mailing list would
> contradict the core tenet of an open and inclusive community. There are
> several more ways to rationalise the decision.
> 
> But you won't buy into either of those purported vindications of this
> decision. (I won't either.) So don't bother requesting them. Another
> aimless (and thus endless) back and forth in Jackal language isn't
> likely to achieve anything worthwhile beyond what the initial exchange
> achieved.

As the council member who voted against this decision, I am going to
express my opinion, even though it will be unpopular with the majority of
the council and probably others as well.

I do feel that this decision reflects badly on us as a community and
should be reversed immediately. The proper way to deal with people who
have bad behavior is to deal with them individually and not put a
restriction on the community that is not necessary.

William


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

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 9:41 AM, Gregory Woodbury <redwolfe@gmail.com> wrote:
> On gentoo-dev list: k_f
> points out that this should have been talked about during previous
> discussion periods...
>
> It was discussed "to death" over and over, and many argued against it
> till they were blue in the face.

Indeed, it will probably still be discussed over and over up until the
point where those who disagree are either unable to post on the lists,
or told that it is off-topic and will result in them losing access to
post on the lists.

Seriously, everything that has been said today in this thread was said
in the last thread on this topic.  The whole reason we have GLEP 39 is
that there are simply topics that not everybody will agree on...

-- 
Rich

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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

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On 03/20/2018 04:28 PM, Matthew Thode wrote:
> On 18-03-20 23:17:52, Michael Palimaka wrote:
>> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
>> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
>> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
>>
>> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
>> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
>>
>> 1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964
>>
> While I personally do no agree with mailing list moderation infra has
> been tasked with moving forward on it.  In that vein, this is what we
> are proposing.
> 
> Install and configure mailman3/hyperkitty/postorius once they all
> support python3.  Specifically we wish to use docker-mailman for this so
> we can easilly redeploy this on diferent machines as needed.
> 
> mailman3 gives us two good things, it has support for moderation (for
> better or worse) and it handles senders using dmarc.
> 
> There are still some issues with it infra side (archiving will still
> have to use the old system) and moving mailing lists is going to be fun,
> but them the breaks.

Switching to mailman might have some good merits on its own, but as I
understand it it isn't necessary for the proposal at hand, that can be
solved using access control lists in mlmmj-process?

-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3


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

[Benda Xu]

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William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> writes:

> I do feel that this decision reflects badly on us as a community and
> should be reversed immediately. The proper way to deal with people who
> have bad behavior is to deal with them individually and not put a
> restriction on the community that is not necessary.

I agree with William.  Dealing with individuals makes more sense.

It boils down to an attitude of assuming outsiders are good (blacklist
to ML) or bad (whitelist to ML) by default.

Benda

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 7:54 PM, Benda Xu <heroxbd@gentoo.org> wrote:
> William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> writes:
>
>> I do feel that this decision reflects badly on us as a community and
>> should be reversed immediately. The proper way to deal with people who
>> have bad behavior is to deal with them individually and not put a
>> restriction on the community that is not necessary.
>
> I agree with William.  Dealing with individuals makes more sense.
>
> It boils down to an attitude of assuming outsiders are good (blacklist
> to ML) or bad (whitelist to ML) by default.

Actually, I think it is more of a technical constraint.  It is
basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
all they need to do is roll up a new email address.

I can think of various arguments for whitelisting or not whitelisting,
but it seems silly to blacklist.

-- 
Rich

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

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

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On 20/03/2018 05:17, Michael Palimaka wrote:
> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
> 
> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
> 
> 1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964

This is a controversial topic which continues to be rehashed.

I think it'd be good for people opposing it (I share at least some of
your concern) to make sure they read the following resources and suggest
the best means to keep our community a nice place.

<https://www.slideshare.net/vishnu/how-to-protect-yourhow-to-protect-your-open-source-project-from-poisonous-people>

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/>

Paweł


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

[Eray Aslan]

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.

-- 
Eray

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

[Rich Freeman]

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.
>
> 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.

Interesting.  When exactly should we all start ignoring the Council,
and when should we do what they say?  And what is the likely result of
that?

For all the complaining of "cabals" in Gentoo it seems odd to suggest
putting the final decisions of the one group that is about the least
democratic in the organization.

(That isn't really intended as a criticism: there are a lot of
practical reasons why infra operates as it does and I've yet to come
up with any better approach.  With the council/trustees the authority
comes from the collective, and nobody would pay attention to a
directive that didn't have a majority backing or the appearance of due
process.  With any other project the decisions are appealable to
council.  With infra one guy with the root password can cause a lot of
havoc, and the computer isn't going to stop and question what they're
doing.  That creates a lot of incentive to minimize the number of
people who are trusted.  In any case, I think it makes the most sense
to do the decision-making in more open/democratic processes, and then
minimize the execution footprint that requires "cabals.")

As I've commented elsewhere [1] I think an issue here is that we just
don't have enough of a critical mass to be able to afford to split
along ideological lines.  The set of developers interested in a
source-based distro is barely sufficient to create a viable
source-based distro.  If you split it into the subsets who prefer open
vs closed mailing lists on top of this then the individual groups lack
critical mass.  And so we're forced to co-exist, and agree on one or
the other, or some kind of compromise.

1 - https://rich0gentoo.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/gentoo-ought-to-be-about-choice/

-- 
Rich

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

[Alec Warner]

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

[Eray Aslan]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 10:44:48AM -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> [1] Which isn't to say that I would accept 'orders' to commit crimes, or
> other obviously bad things.

This is the crux of the problem.  There are certain lines you will not
cross.  I am saying that my line is different and by voicing that,
hopefully, making you re-consider yours.

> 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.

Openness, transparency, inclusiveness.  Those are some pretty
fundemental values.  Reconsider.  But if you decide to go ahead, I am
not going to judge you.  You (or the council members who voted yes) are
not bad persons.  Just somewhat different values - which is surprising
in a sad way.

-- 
Eray

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

[Alec Warner]

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On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 12:31 PM, Eray Aslan <eras@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 10:44:48AM -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> > [1] Which isn't to say that I would accept 'orders' to commit crimes, or
> > other obviously bad things.
>
> This is the crux of the problem.  There are certain lines you will not
> cross.  I am saying that my line is different and by voicing that,
> hopefully, making you re-consider yours.
>
> > 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.
>
> Openness, transparency, inclusiveness.  Those are some pretty
> fundemental values.  Reconsider.  But if you decide to go ahead, I am
> not going to judge you.  You (or the council members who voted yes) are
> not bad persons.  Just somewhat different values - which is surprising
> in a sad way.
>

I think of my aim is just playing a longer field here. I've been a part of
Gentoo for a long time. I've considered leaving numerous
times for a variety of reasons; yet I remain.

I don't disagree that the issue is important, but leaving an organization
really changes the velocity and direction of influence one
can have on it. Traditionally I have not seen external contributors have a
strong influence in Gentoo; so leaving to me implies a
loss of influence. If my goal is to have a good outcome; I'm not convinced
leaving accomplishes it. If I leave, will the council change their mind?
Why would they?

Perhaps you think myself (and other developers) should do more and I think
that is a reasonable thing to advocate for; but I'm also fairly happy with
a timeline
of:

1) We add moderation in ~April.
2) Council election happens in summer (I expect something of a strong
reckoning here, in terms of council makeup.)
3) Council` repeals the previous decision and we undo the moderation[1].

I tend to like this approach because I feel like its how the organization
was designed to work. I think alternatives involve essentially
'protesting'. E.g. I could propose the council discuss this topic at every
meeting. I could try to use my developer-ship to force extra council
meetings (emergency meetings perhaps.) I could collect signatures. I'm
still not convinced these things would be vehicles for change though.

[1] There is of course the risk that this doesn't come about, either
because the same council is re-elected or because the new council chooses
not to repeal. But I accept this risk willingly.


> --
> Eray
>
>

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

[R0b0t1]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 9:44 AM, Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> The community has a 'toxic people problem'

Maybe certain people who feel they are being attacked are idiots and
don't like hearing it? I can't tell, and I suspect other people can't
either.

Respectfully,
     R0b0t1

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 12:55 PM, R0b0t1 <r030t1@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I can't tell, and I suspect other people can't either.
>

This is the crux of the issue.  Decisions involving people issues are
made behind closed doors, which means that others are not free to
confirm for themselves whether those actions are correct.  This tends
to lead to ongoing debate over whether those decisions were
appropriate, with everybody arguing from their own knowledge, and the
only ones who know the information used to make the decision are
barred from talking about it.  This is basically a debate where
participation is limited to the ignorant, at least as far as the
particular details go (the general principles are debated by all).

That said, even if the decisions were made in the open I wouldn't
expect all to agree with them.

Ultimately though there are pros and cons to making these kinds of
decisions in the open, and there is not universal agreement regarding
how these situations ought to be handled.  We can either fight about
it until the end of time, or we can agree on some way to determine
what approach we are going to take and then support it (perhaps
begrudgingly).  Right now the mechanism that we have in place is the
Council.  The only other mechanism I could see that would make any
sense would be a referendum on the issue.  That gets unwieldy if we
try to apply it to every little decision, but maybe for the big
picture issues it would make sense.

However, I think a lot of people would be surprised at the outcome.
We all assume that we're all here for the same reasons, but as I
commented on my blog Gentoo is a bit unique among distros and many of
us are here for very different reasons, and have different priorities.
Also, there is sometimes a tendency to assume that all FOSS projects
work the same way.  When I was listening to a talk about how one of
the BSDs dealt with these kinds of issues I was shocked to discover
that much of their dev communications happens on completely closed
lists (not just closed to posting, but to reading as well).  Gentoo
has the gentoo-core list but it is very low traffic and it tends to be
used for things like swapping cell phone numbers before conferences.
When anything substantive comes up there are usually several people
who chime in to rightly point out that this talk belongs on a public
list.

Bottom line is that there are a lot of different ways projects can
run, and they all have their pros and cons.  A lot of the FOSS we
depend on actually gets built or discussed behind closed doors.  I
doubt many of us want Gentoo to go that far, but I suspect there is a
lot of interest in taking smaller steps in that general direction.

-- 
Rich

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

[Gregory Woodbury]

John Levine, author of "The Internet For Dummies," once set up a robo-moderation
process for the Usenet newsgroup soc.religion.unitarian-univ
(Unitarian Universalists).
The group, along with most of Usenet, ultimately "died" due to lack of
attention from
the moderators, who failed to curb one of their own.

However, the robo-moderator worked quite well, and still is
technically in-place. The
first post by a person generated an email to the poster to verify the
email addres,
and required the poster to reply with a confirmation. The posts then
went through
without anyone having to approve or whilelist things.  If a poster subsequently
became a "problem" their postings could be placed in a moderation
required status,
and some human would evelute the posts and handle the quelling of off-topic or
flame generating posts. In extreme cases, posters could be banned for
varying periods
of time.

The programs where quite powerful, and amazingly simple and elegant to implent.
The source is available, and should be easily adapted for practically
any system with
bash shell hook capabilities. The infra team might want to look at
that code and try
something like it.  Some addresses can be injected at setup time requiring human
action before posts are approved (Rejected posts would be sent back to the perp
requesting re-writing or abandoning.

The moderators did not have to login anywhere to work with the bot,
all interactions
were done via email.  The system is/was quite nice, and my mangled memories
should not be the deciding factors when looking at it.

Such a system might well serve as a means of allowing fully free entry into the
list, while still providing the ability to control things if it gets
out of hand.

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 1:19 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 12:55 PM, R0b0t1 <r030t1@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I can't tell, and I suspect other people can't either.
>>
>
> This is the crux of the issue.  Decisions involving people issues are
> made behind closed doors, which means that others are not free to
> confirm for themselves whether those actions are correct.  This tends
> to lead to ongoing debate over whether those decisions were
> appropriate, with everybody arguing from their own knowledge, and the
> only ones who know the information used to make the decision are
> barred from talking about it.  This is basically a debate where
> participation is limited to the ignorant, at least as far as the
> particular details go (the general principles are debated by all).
>
> That said, even if the decisions were made in the open I wouldn't
> expect all to agree with them.
>
> Ultimately though there are pros and cons to making these kinds of
> decisions in the open, and there is not universal agreement regarding
> how these situations ought to be handled.  We can either fight about
> it until the end of time, or we can agree on some way to determine
> what approach we are going to take and then support it (perhaps
> begrudgingly).  Right now the mechanism that we have in place is the
> Council.  The only other mechanism I could see that would make any
> sense would be a referendum on the issue.  That gets unwieldy if we
> try to apply it to every little decision, but maybe for the big
> picture issues it would make sense.
>
> However, I think a lot of people would be surprised at the outcome.
> We all assume that we're all here for the same reasons, but as I
> commented on my blog Gentoo is a bit unique among distros and many of
> us are here for very different reasons, and have different priorities.
> Also, there is sometimes a tendency to assume that all FOSS projects
> work the same way.  When I was listening to a talk about how one of
> the BSDs dealt with these kinds of issues I was shocked to discover
> that much of their dev communications happens on completely closed
> lists (not just closed to posting, but to reading as well).  Gentoo
> has the gentoo-core list but it is very low traffic and it tends to be
> used for things like swapping cell phone numbers before conferences.
> When anything substantive comes up there are usually several people
> who chime in to rightly point out that this talk belongs on a public
> list.
>
> Bottom line is that there are a lot of different ways projects can
> run, and they all have their pros and cons.  A lot of the FOSS we
> depend on actually gets built or discussed behind closed doors.  I
> doubt many of us want Gentoo to go that far, but I suspect there is a
> lot of interest in taking smaller steps in that general direction.
>
> --
> Rich
>



-- 
G.Wolfe Woodbury
redwolfe@gmail.com

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

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Michael Palimaka schrieb:
> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
> 
> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?

(I do not intend to single out your post, just replying to the thread in
general here)

I would like to ask people to stay respectful in their disagreement towards
the Council and their decision here. You might not agree with the decision,
but the Council is an elected body and was given these powers by the
developer community which they represent. Also I have no doubt that Council
members who voted for -dev moderation are aware of the counter arguments and
honestly expect a net positive effect from this.

If you dislike mailing list moderation, campaign and/or vote in the next
period for candidates who want to reverse this decision.


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

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

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Kristian Fiskerstrand schrieb:

> Switching to mailman might have some good merits on its own, but as I
> understand it it isn't necessary for the proposal at hand, that can be
> solved using access control lists in mlmmj-process?

I would advise caution that Council better not try to micro-manage Infra here.


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

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

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Rich Freeman schrieb:

> Actually, I think it is more of a technical constraint.  It is
> basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
> all they need to do is roll up a new email address.
> 
> I can think of various arguments for whitelisting or not whitelisting,
> but it seems silly to blacklist.

And how often did it actually happen that blacklisting was evaded on -dev
mailing list?


Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

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On 03/22/2018 12:56 AM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
> Kristian Fiskerstrand schrieb:
> 
>> Switching to mailman might have some good merits on its own, but as I
>> understand it it isn't necessary for the proposal at hand, that can be
>> solved using access control lists in mlmmj-process?
> 
> I would advise caution that Council better not try to micro-manage Infra here.

By all means, infra should do what they think is right, but this
particular decision doesn't force infra to switch mailing list
infrastructure. If they believe there are reasons to do so, by all
means, but the decision doesn't result in

On 03/20/2018 04:28 PM, Matthew Thode wrote:
> There are still some issues with it infra side (archiving will still
> have to use the old system) and moving mailing lists is going to be fun,
> but them the breaks.


-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3


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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1471 bytes --]

On 03/22/2018 12:56 AM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
> Michael Palimaka schrieb:
>> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
>> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
>> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
>>
>> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
>> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
> 
> (I do not intend to single out your post, just replying to the thread in
> general here)
> 
> I would like to ask people to stay respectful in their disagreement towards
> the Council and their decision here. You might not agree with the decision,
> but the Council is an elected body and was given these powers by the
> developer community which they represent. Also I have no doubt that Council
> members who voted for -dev moderation are aware of the counter arguments and
> honestly expect a net positive effect from this.
> 
> If you dislike mailing list moderation, campaign and/or vote in the next
> period for candidates who want to reverse this decision.

+1 for this, and also note that the whitelisting approach allows for
those opposing to start a project for -dev ML moderation that is similar
to editbugs and proxy maintenance as we currently have in the project.


-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3


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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1225 bytes --]

On 03/22/2018 12:56 AM, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
> Rich Freeman schrieb:
> 
>> Actually, I think it is more of a technical constraint.  It is
>> basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
>> all they need to do is roll up a new email address.
>>
>> I can think of various arguments for whitelisting or not whitelisting,
>> but it seems silly to blacklist.
> 
> And how often did it actually happen that blacklisting was evaded on -dev
> mailing list?

we are aware of at least one case of evasion like this within the
relatively near past, but it is more a matter of principle as we don't
know if there are sock-puppets etc around.

The main things is really, the bar for whiltelisting is very low, you
just need a current dev to vouch for you, which is similiar to editbugs
and the #-dev channel on IRC. Most discussion should anyways happen on
-project ML, whereby the -dev ML is technical in nature. So there isn't
any real restriction being imposed here.

Most contributions should happen via patches on b.g.o

-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3


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

[M. J. Everitt]

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On 22/03/18 00:33, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote:
> <snip>
> Most contributions should happen via patches on b.g.o
>
Who was lamenting about the every-increasing bug queue on this Very list
recently?

And what about those 5+ year old bugs that are rotting for packages long
last-rited from the tree ?


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

[Duncan]

Alec Warner posted on Wed, 21 Mar 2018 10:44:48 -0400 as excerpted:

> 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

Wise words.

Here the context was/is infra, but they apply to general devs and users 
who disagree with this as well, thus my own personal interest, altho I'm 
not so much a "disagree" as a "concerned and sad it has to come to this", 
as I see both sides.

[Note:  I intend this to be my only post to this thread, unless a reply 
calls for further reply on my part.  It's my position of record on the 
moderation/whitelisting and may also be my last to the list before it 
goes moderated.  If that's not of interest to you I'd rather you skip the 
rest of the post and use the time for something you consider more 
constructive.  =:^) ]

> 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.

Astute observation.

> 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.)

Also astute.

I'm ignoring my urge to point to "real world" examples as this list is 
*definitely* not the place, but in the safer general realm it can simply 
be observed that there's /always/ a leave/stay-and-accept (if only 
temporarily/strategically) argument to be made, even in the /worst/ cases 
(which must here be left to imagination and history) where arguably 
"leave" is the only morally acceptable alternative.

Fortunately, I believe most will agree this isn't a "worst" case in that 
regard, tho it may be bad enough that some find they must leave.

But for both users and devs there remain the practical questions:

Where else would I go?  Is that alternative actually practically viable?  
Would I be more effective there than here, hoping to eventually reverse 
the decision (or for those like me more on the sad-it-came-to-this-but-I-
see-why-some-believe-it-has side, hoping a short trial is demonstration 
enough of capacity and that it lowers the threat to where even those that 
agree it has to come to that now feel comfortable in reverting it, tho 
possibly retaining the capacity to reimpliment if necessary)?

In practice, there are certainly from-source alternatives.  However, 
again practically, gentoo does seem to be the biggest, and most others 
seem to either be mostly-compatible offshoots such as funtoo and exherbo 
that to some degree still depend on the larger gentoo tree and community, 
or to make choices that put them to one side or the other of gentoo's 
"automated/scripted from-source" approach (arch's core-binary approach on 
the toward-binaries side, and lfs/linux-from-scratch's much more manual-
but-still-guided, approach on the other).

There's also the very practical "but I already know and am familiar with 
gentoo and how it works (both technically and socially) and would have to 
learn the others" factor.

For both those reasons and I suppose others, gentooers who have been 
around a few years, at least long enough to develop that familiarity, 
tend to stay around as long as they remain interested in gentoo's general 
automated-from-source approach (tho many ultimately lose that interest 
and go binary-distro or leave the FLOSS community entirely), unless of 
course forced out as incompatible with continuing community interest, in 
which case, given little choice, they often land at one of those 
alternatives.

> 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.

Agreed.  I've already mentioned what I believe would be my ideal outcome, 
above.  Try the whitelisting as proposed for awhile, then having 
demonstrated the capacity/threat, relax things, while maintaining the 
capacity, such that hopefully the toxic people that created the initial 
need will not find it worth their while to be toxic here once again, but 
with the capacity to reinstitute should they do so.

(Yes, I know that unused tools fall into disrepair over time, but often, 
repair, or even redo if necessary, is easier the second time around.  So 
hopefully the capacity would remain available or at least easier to 
implement again, if again needed.)

(Points B and C omitted as infra specific, because I've nothing to add.)

> 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. [...]
> 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).

Having lived thru much of that, I 100% agree that it's not something 
gentoo should ever want to go back to.  While individuals are certainly 
free to resign should they feel the need, having even infra subject to an 
_elected_ council is a _good_ thing!


Meanwhile, I've already stated my position.  I'm sad to see it come to 
this, and hope it to be eventually reversed, but the elected council has 
spoken, I understand the events that lead to their decision, and remain 
and abide is my chosen option.

And as for the effect on my own posts as a non-dev, personally...

* My posting intent on any list, including this one, is positive 
contribution.  Should I ever believe my posts have ceased to be that, 
I'll immediately apologize if it was one-off/short-term, or stop posting 
if I don't believe my posts to be a positive contribution going forward.

(I've often spent quite some time composing a post, only to ultimately 
close the window without sending, because on consideration before hitting 
send, I decided it wasn't unquestionably a positive contribution to the 
list/discussion in question.  Sometimes just writing it for me was what I 
needed to do.  Sometimes I simply thought better of it, period.)

* I'm acutely mindful of the fact that this _is_ gentoo-*dev*, and that 
as a user, not a dev, I'm but a guest here.

(And yes, that sometimes influences my "don't send it after all" 
decision.)

* While there are complaints of my verbosity, I've never been /banned/ 
and I'm proud of that.

* I've had personal offers to whitelist, for which I am grateful.  

(The given reason was that while I'm often too wordy, I often do have a 
valid point/question, that may not have been brought up by others.  I do 
struggle with the wordiness, believe me, but I'm grateful that at least 
some devs consider my posts a positive enough contribution to extend the 
whitelisting offer.)

* For the time being, I've thanked, but turned down that whitelisting 
offer.  When I'd otherwise post, I'm going to take the opportunity to 
reconsider the positive contribution of my posts even more, try again to 
whittle down the wordiness further, and then, if I still consider it 
worth the effort, I'm going to forward the post to the person I'm 
replying to or possibly to someone else (like the person who offered the 
whitelisting), asking them to forward it... but *only* if they too 
consider it a positive contribution to the current discussion.

Tho I may eventually request whitelisting, in the mean time I intend to 
learn what I can from the forward/rejection/rejection-with-feedback on 
those attempted contributions, to try to make future attempted 
contributions even better! =:^)

That's keeping in mind that as a user not a dev, I /do/ consider myself a 
guest on this list, and arguably, posting to it has /always/ been a 
privilege, not a right.  And given the coming whitelisting, devs, thru 
their elected council, have clearly expressed their desire to cut down 
the outside noise from "guests", ensuring that any such "guest posts" 
allowed thru are signal, not noise, or worse yet, negative signal.

As one of those guests, abiding by that expressed intent to the best of 
my ability is my goal, and I intend to take the presented opportunity to 
try to improve my own attempts at contribution!

-- 
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

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

[Benda Xu]

Hi Rich,

Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> writes:

> Actually, I think it is more of a technical constraint.  It is
> basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
> all they need to do is roll up a new email address.

> I can think of various arguments for whitelisting or not whitelisting,
> but it seems silly to blacklist.

Okay, I see your argument.


Just a random bikeshedding.  We might be able to require GPG signed
email to make a post.  Then we can blacklist the GPG identity?

To think of it further, the web of trust is basically a whitelist.  But
it has the flexibility to chain the trust from a Gentoo dev by several
'hops'.

Benda

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

[Alexander Berntsen]

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On 22/03/18 07:31, Benda Xu wrote:
> We might be able to require GPG signed email to make a post.
Almost definitely.

But before bikeshedding that, it would be advisable to find out whether
it would be a good idea in the first place. Unless you want only
prospective developers to be able to contribute to the ML (maybe you do
want that?), it seems like a poor idea to unnecessarily exclude anyone
who doesn't care (nor want to care) about OpenPGP.
-- 
Alexander
bernalex@gentoo.org
https://secure.plaimi.net/~alexander


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

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 4:30 AM, Alexander Berntsen <bernalex@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 22/03/18 07:31, Benda Xu wrote:
>> We might be able to require GPG signed email to make a post.
> Almost definitely.
>
> But before bikeshedding that, it would be advisable to find out whether
> it would be a good idea in the first place. Unless you want only
> prospective developers to be able to contribute to the ML (maybe you do
> want that?), it seems like a poor idea to unnecessarily exclude anyone
> who doesn't care (nor want to care) about OpenPGP.

That, and getting yourself whitelisted by a dev is gong to be a lower
barrier than having to meet one in-person to have a key signed.  That
is unless devs just start signing keys for people they've never met
(which honestly doesn't really bother me much as I don't put much
faith in the WoT anyway), in which case it turns into a whitelist that
only comrel can un-whitelist since I don't think you can revoke a
signature.

Plus signing emails is a pain if you don't use an MUA that has this
feature, and the web-based ones which do aren't very good.

-- 
Rich

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

[Kristian Fiskerstrand]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1694 bytes --]

On 03/22/2018 12:38 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 4:30 AM, Alexander Berntsen <bernalex@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 22/03/18 07:31, Benda Xu wrote:
>>> We might be able to require GPG signed email to make a post.
>> Almost definitely.
>>
>> But before bikeshedding that, it would be advisable to find out whether
>> it would be a good idea in the first place. Unless you want only
>> prospective developers to be able to contribute to the ML (maybe you do
>> want that?), it seems like a poor idea to unnecessarily exclude anyone
>> who doesn't care (nor want to care) about OpenPGP.
> 
> That, and getting yourself whitelisted by a dev is gong to be a lower
> barrier than having to meet one in-person to have a key signed.  That
> is unless devs just start signing keys for people they've never met
> (which honestly doesn't really bother me much as I don't put much
> faith in the WoT anyway), in which case it turns into a whitelist that
> only comrel can un-whitelist since I don't think you can revoke a
> signature.

The one issuing the signature can also revoke it (see revsig in --edit-key).

That said, I'd rather focus on our own devs having WoT and requiring it
to become a developer long before we require it to be part of a mailing
list. If anything the technical complexity of verifying it doesn't make
much sense to me vs a simple whitelist.

> 
> Plus signing emails is a pain if you don't use an MUA that has this
> feature, and the web-based ones which do aren't very good.
> 


-- 
Kristian Fiskerstrand
OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net
fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3


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

[kuzetsa]

On 03/20/2018 08:08 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 7:54 PM, Benda Xu <heroxbd@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> writes:
>>
>>> I do feel that this decision reflects badly on us as a community and
>>> should be reversed immediately. The proper way to deal with people who
>>> have bad behavior is to deal with them individually and not put a
>>> restriction on the community that is not necessary.
>>
>> I agree with William.  Dealing with individuals makes more sense.
>>
>> It boils down to an attitude of assuming outsiders are good (blacklist
>> to ML) or bad (whitelist to ML) by default.
> 
> Actually, I think it is more of a technical constraint.  It is
> basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
> all they need to do is roll up a new email address.
> 
> I can think of various arguments for whitelisting or not whitelisting,
> but it seems silly to blacklist.
> 

require active stewardship (moderation, blacklisting, etc.)

entry barriers to participation (default deny / require whitelist)

if there are limitations on free speech, someone has to bear the burden.
for gentoo to have list moderation (blacklist approach) which isn't
dysfunctional, the main barrier to resources will be the human resources
end of things, not technical constraints. The tools themselves are easy
enough to use, but people who are willing and able to use them, and with
a clear guideline for how it needs done is a comrel issue which the
foundation needs to sort out.

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 9:19 PM, kuzetsa <kuzetsa@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/20/2018 08:08 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>
>>
>> Actually, I think it is more of a technical constraint.  It is
>> basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
>> all they need to do is roll up a new email address.
>>
>> I can think of various arguments for whitelisting or not whitelisting,
>> but it seems silly to blacklist.
>>
>
> require active stewardship (moderation, blacklisting, etc.)
>
> entry barriers to participation (default deny / require whitelist)
>
> if there are limitations on free speech, someone has to bear the burden.
> for gentoo to have list moderation (blacklist approach) which isn't
> dysfunctional, the main barrier to resources will be the human resources
> end of things, not technical constraints. The tools themselves are easy
> enough to use, but people who are willing and able to use them, and with
> a clear guideline for how it needs done is a comrel issue which the
> foundation needs to sort out.
>

List moderation isn't the same as blacklisting.  With moderation
you're effectively whitelisting because the first post anybody makes
would be held for moderation, and depending on the approach you could
moderate everything.

If you allowed new subscribers to post without being held for
moderation, then the issues I spoke of would still apply, no matter
how much manpower you threw at it.

-- 
Rich

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

[kuzetsa]

On 03/26/2018 09:26 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 9:19 PM, kuzetsa <kuzetsa@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 03/20/2018 08:08 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Actually, I think it is more of a technical constraint.  It is
>>> basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
>>> all they need to do is roll up a new email address.
>>>
>>> I can think of various arguments for whitelisting or not whitelisting,
>>> but it seems silly to blacklist.
>>>
>>
>> require active stewardship (moderation, blacklisting, etc.)
>>
>> entry barriers to participation (default deny / require whitelist)
>>
>> if there are limitations on free speech, someone has to bear the burden.
>> for gentoo to have list moderation (blacklist approach) which isn't
>> dysfunctional, the main barrier to resources will be the human resources
>> end of things, not technical constraints. The tools themselves are easy
>> enough to use, but people who are willing and able to use them, and with
>> a clear guideline for how it needs done is a comrel issue which the
>> foundation needs to sort out.
>>
> 
> List moderation isn't the same as blacklisting.  With moderation
> you're effectively whitelisting because the first post anybody makes
> would be held for moderation, and depending on the approach you could
> moderate everything.
> 
> If you allowed new subscribers to post without being held for
> moderation, then the issues I spoke of would still apply, no matter
> how much manpower you threw at it.
> 

I think this may be a misunderstanding? no? there might be some mailing
list jargon term: "moderation" which I was unaware of:

I was more referring to how IRC chatrooms have an op, forums have
moderators which DO NOT screen individual posts, etc. I think I know of
the other version, and it might be analogous to the mechanism you meant?

for example: websites which hold back all comments which are posted
anonymously (non-trusted users) until a moderator can approve it.

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)

specifically - I was referring to persons (staff) who are moderators.

(active stewardship to check for problems which need addressed)

I think the mechanism you describes sounds like some sort of greylist /
tiered version of default deny or something like that. Interesting.

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.

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. the
lack of transparency for the process is a concern, I mean.

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

[Martin Vaeth]

Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 7:54 PM, Benda Xu <heroxbd@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> It boils down to an attitude of assuming outsiders are good (blacklist
>> to ML) or bad (whitelist to ML) by default.

++

This is the most crucial point.

It is the general attitude: Does Gentoo welcome contributions
or want to make their developers live in an ivory tower?

It is about openness vs. isolation.

> It is
> basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since
> all they need to do is roll up a new email address.

That may be technically true but it is not a problem the mailing list
is currently facing.  If it should eventually happen to be the case
that the mailing list is filled by tons of spam of anonymous posters
or faked identities causing serious problems, one can still think about
changing the modus operandi.

But without such an absolute need, it is very bad to restrict freedom.

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

[Rich Freeman]

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

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de> wrote:
>
> It is the general attitude: Does Gentoo welcome contributions
> or want to make their developers live in an ivory tower?
>
> It is about openness vs. isolation.
>

I'm pretty sure most developers, myself included, want to welcome
contributions.

Much of the concern is that the lists have been turning into endless
arguing over things like very topic.  If a newcomer comes along and
reads your post, they're going to get the impression that the
developers live in an ivory tower.  Why would somebody want to
contribute to Gentoo in the first place if that is their first
impression?

Before it was the debate over mailing list policy it was a debate over
discipline policies.  Apparently developers live in an ivory tower and
like to kick people out of the tower as well.  In that particular
debate the people most informed about what was actually happening were
forbidden by policy from explaining what was going on, which basically
left everybody who knew nothing of the details to spin conspiracy
theories.

It is natural that people are going to disagree on some of these
issues.  The problem is when it turns into a personal attack or
hyperbole, which IMO the part I quoted falls into.

The intent isn't to stifle debate/discussion.  Whitelisting vs
blacklisting on a mailing list have obvious pros/cons, and you made a
legitimate point in the second half of your email (one that was hardly
unknown to the Council I'm sure).  The problem becomes when we try to
attach motives to everybody else's actions.  It isn't enough to point
out the pros/cons of whitelisting/blacklisting/etc.  Now we need to
talk about "ivory towers" and "attitude" and in other posts "cabals"
and so on.  This kind of language can be demotivating because it
demonizes those trying to fix things no matter what they do.  Are they
promoting "ivory towers" or are they allowing "toxic people" to attack
new contributors (which also hardly is welcoming to new contributors)?
 And then everybody feels like they have to lead some kind of
revolution to save Gentoo from itself.

A lot of this comes down to considering that most people in these
debates probably are well-intended.

-- 
Rich

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

[Martin Vaeth]

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.

> Much of the concern is that the lists have been turning into endless
> arguing over things like very topic.

Yes. Some people could not be stopped from continuously expressing their
opinion. Some developers do not want to hear them. So the list is being
closed.

> If a newcomer comes along and reads your post, they're going to get
> the impression that the developers live in an ivory tower.

IMHO this impression is completely right.

> Why would somebody want to
> contribute to Gentoo in the first place if that is their first
> impression?

Exactly. This is why closing the list is the absolutely wrong signal.
Sticking at least to a blacklist-only mode might mitigate the IMHO
severe damage which has already happened by the decision to close the
list.

> The problem is when it turns into a personal attack or
> hyperbole, which IMO the part I quoted falls into.

Personal animosities are always a problem. This can and will not
be solved by technical measurements. Taking all non-developers as
hostages - including those which were not involved at all in the
debate and even worse even possible future contributors - is
certainly not a solution for that type of problem.
And anyway, you can be sure that the problem will appear again,
no matter how closed the list will be.

> The intent isn't to stifle debate/discussion.

But this is exactly what is happening by closing the list
to non-developers.

> 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.

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

[Rich Freeman]

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.

-- 
Rich

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

[M. J. Everitt]

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

[R0b0t1]

I really do hate discussing this. I will pray for Gentoo, friends, as
I hope the distribution continues to receive useful contributions.


On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 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.
>

Explain why the user was removed.

> 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.
>

This is insane. If they sue produce the emails. At least in the US,
the suit will be thrown out, as truth is a defense to defamation.

If I am not a lawyer and as such can not understand the law and my
opinion should not be trusted, then, as I assume you are not a lawyer,
your opinion should not be trusted either. Even if you have consulted
with a lawyer you are not a lawyer and there is no reason to believe
you could have understood what the lawyer told you.

I do not present this as sophistry: for any progress to be made in the
discussion of your hypothetical situation I sincerely think you need
to consider the above. At what point is one's knowledge of the law
enough to act within society?

> 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.
>

Stop using the law as a boogeyman.

Be transparent in why decisions were made. There are no legal concerns
save fair use (the copyright of any published emails) and the
publication of private facts.[1] For a tort involving the disclosure
of public facts, you would need to have no reason to publish those
facts save for the damage they could cause. You may also need to
publish them in a manner far more public than a Linux distribution
mailing list.


To continue the example I doubt anyone would care if it was just a
single Fred, though they may be slightly put off. Multiple Fred (or
related) incidents later it would seem rather strange.

As I have tried to explain my issue with the closure of the mailing
list is not the removal of a user, but the lack of openness with which
decisions are made. Points are brought up in good faith and then
ignored. Requests for clarification may not be greeted amicably.
Overall, this makes it seem like the closure of the development list
is to keep decisions from being questioned. If there were hecklers
asking stupid questions that would be one thing, but that is not what
it looks like to me.


I will note most developers go quietly about maintaining their charges
and make reasonable decisions.

Cheers,
     R0b0t1


[1]: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/publication-private-facts

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

[Stephen Christie]

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Hello,

I joined this mailing list a week ago, and the first email I received apparently restarted these long arguments for and against censorship here. There are lots of reasons for and against both sides, and lots of people on either side apparently. These are now the majority of the emails I've now received. The first reply was essentially "We've already talked about this, can we just move on?". The fact that discussion has continued so long is in some ways ironic. At what point is this discussion both disruptive of development as well as reflecting badly on the community, and so should be moved off-channel?

--UnderSampled

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

[Dawid Weglinski]

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2018-03-27 18:39 GMT+02:00 Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>:

> 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.
>

And how this work on forums?  Do moderators have the ability to ban Fred
for his harrasments on private channels?


>
> 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.
>

Very same efect you will get when Fred is whitelisted by a developer, and
kicked out when he starts acting inappriopriate. Please kindly show me the
difference.


>
> 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.
>

Please explain. I can imagine a troll on some #gentoo-${ISO3166-1_alpha-2}
who
is banned by channel operator. Does this create potential civil liability
for the project?


>
> 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.
>

Saying as an ex-dev and community member by last 12 years - banning trolls
and explaining reasons to others is always better solution.


>
> > 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)?
>

Trolls are trolls, and when banned/blacklisted by default THEN, they will
start
their trolling on private channels.


>
> 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.
>
> --
> Rich
>
>


-- 
Pozdrawiam
Dawid Węgliński

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

[Martin Vaeth]

Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Fred is a community member.  Fred consistently harasses and trolls new
> contributors in private.

Sure, it's a problem. But not a problem which can be solved by
closing the mailing list, in no step of the issue.

First of all, this happens in private, so you cannot prevent it
by closing a mailing list.

> No mention is made of why Fred as booted out, because everything
> happened in private.

That's the mistake which is made in this example. Be open in the
decisions. If you cannot be open in order to protect other people's
privacy, be open at least by saying exactly this.

> 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.

Yes, this might happen due to the non-openness. This might happen even
if you are open. And nothing will prevent it. Closing a mailing list
will not close such a debate; it will then just happen elsewhere.
Anyway, such a debate does not belong to dev-ml. The correct solution
is to continue to point people to have this debate on the appropriate place,
not on the mainly technically oriented dev-ml. Making the posters silent
by blacklisting even more is contra-productive and will give the
impression that they are actually right. As it is a commonplace:
You cannot solve social problems by technical measurements.

> 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.

Why not? Is it against a law to exclude somebody who is hurting a
project? If it is (or if there is a danger that it is), then the
problem is not that they cannot explain it but that they must not
do it in the first place.
In any case, this is a different problem and cannot be solved by
closing a mailing list.

> 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?

How would closing the mailing list solve the problem? It will give
the impression that you want to close the debate by taking away the
medium where people can argue. And the impression is correct, because
this actually *is* the intention if you are honest.
Of course, it will not close said debate. The debate will just happen
on another channel. (Which in this example might be appropriate, but
pointing to the proper channel is what should have happened and not
closing a mailing list and thus excluding random people from posting
things about clompletely different topics which *are* on-topic on dev-ml).

> 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.

Closing dev-ml will not help here. If people have a strong
disagreement with a decision, this will happen on gentoo channels.
If you want to prevent it technically, you have to close all channels.

> And what about the freedom to endlessly troll and harass you and
> others? [...]

Closing a mailing list will not prevent this.
Somebody who behaves this way (or feels being treated wrong) will not
stop this only because one channel is closed for him.
What is really happening by closing the mailing list is that you stop
innocent contributors.

In any case, that's the discussion blacklisting vs. whitelisting:
To stop one specific single poster, blacklisting is enough,
at least for the beginning. Sure, technically it can be circumvented,
but you will not stop this social problem anyway by technical means.

> 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.

Sure, pointing to the right channel is appropriate. This is something
completely else than to prevent posting *by default*.

> without being endlessly trolled and harassed.

This is unrelated about closing the mailing list. Especially if this
happened in private, anyway.

BTW, I do not think that contributors are that blue-eyed that they
will stop contributing only because one person does not know how to
behave. Especially if it is made clear somewhere that this happens
in disagreement with gentoo as a whole. *This* might be a way how
one might react to such a problem. Anyway, this discussion now is
getting off-topic: All these problems have nothing to do with
closing a ml and cannot be solved by this.

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 10:55 PM, R0b0t1 <r030t1@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> This is insane. If they sue produce the emails. At least in the US,
> the suit will be thrown out, as truth is a defense to defamation.

There are several problems with this:

First, as soon as a suit reaches a courtroom you're spending thousands
of dollars on attorney fees, which you typically will not get back if
you win in the US.  If the case isn't dismissed almost immediately
you're spending tens of thousands of dollars.

The next problem is that there is a matter of proof.  Suppose the
harassment happened in private IRC conversations.  The only logs
you'll have are those provided by random contributors.  They might not
even be admissible in a court unless the random contributors want to
appear publicly to testify to them.  Also, this all requires sharing
this stuff with the person who was harassing them.

If all we do is quietly kick somebody out with no indication as to
why, they don't really have any grounds to sue in the first place, and
since nothing negative was said about them there are no statements to
defend.

This is why most organizations/business/etc don't disclose why they
terminate employees.  They don't have to, and doing so just exposes
them to liability.

> As I have tried to explain my issue with the closure of the mailing
> list is not the removal of a user, but the lack of openness with which
> decisions are made.

Sure.  Everybody wants to see the info so that they can judge for
themselves and not have to trust somebody else's judgment.  It is only
natural.  This is why courts operate openly for the most part.

However, unlike courts we don't have budgets to pay professionals to
spend extensive time on process, and we also don't have the power to
issue subpoenas and wiretap communications.

So, ultimately we're probably just going to have to live with not
knowing the truth behind why people get booted once or twice per
decade, which seems to be the current rate.

-- 
Rich

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

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 2:33 AM, Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de> wrote:
> Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Fred is a community member.  Fred consistently harasses and trolls new
>> contributors in private.
>
> Sure, it's a problem. But not a problem which can be solved by
> closing the mailing list, in no step of the issue.
>
> First of all, this happens in private, so you cannot prevent it
> by closing a mailing list.

Certainly.  Closing lists won't stop the private abuse, nor is it intended to.

What it would stop is this particular thread talking endlessly about it.

>
>> No mention is made of why Fred as booted out, because everything
>> happened in private.
>
> That's the mistake which is made in this example. Be open in the
> decisions. If you cannot be open in order to protect other people's
> privacy, be open at least by saying exactly this.

In the example I can think of this was done, and yet people still
endlessly argued about it, because simply stating that you can't be
open about something won't satisfy people who want there to be
openness.

> Closing a mailing list
> will not close such a debate; it will then just happen elsewhere.

And that is the goal.

> Anyway, such a debate does not belong to dev-ml. The correct solution
> is to continue to point people to have this debate on the appropriate place,
> not on the mainly technically oriented dev-ml.

Could you take this debate to the appropriate place then?


> Making the posters silent
> by blacklisting even more is contra-productive and will give the
> impression that they are actually right.

If the goal is to make them silent on the closed list it is completely
productive.

Nothing can prevent people from getting the impression that there is
some kind of cover-up.  Certainly the last time this sort of thing
happened having hundreds of emails posted on the topic on the lists
didn't do anything to convince the few posters that the right thing
was done.

Now, I do like something that Debian did in this situation which was
to give the person who was booted the option to have the reasoning
disclosed or not.  If they refuse and people question why they were
booted, you can simply state that all people who are booted are given
the option to have the reasons disclosed, and the person leaving made
the choice not to have this done.  IMO something like this would tend
to reduce the legal liabilities.

>
>> 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.
>
> Why not? Is it against a law to exclude somebody who is hurting a
> project?

Not at all.  Booting somebody from an organization like Gentoo creates
no liability, unless it was based on discrimination/etc.

The liability comes from saying negative things about somebody.

Kicking out Fred is fine.  Stating publicly that Fred was kicked out
for sexual harassment would allow Fred to sue, and then you have to
pay to prove that he was sexually harassing somebody.

>
>> 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?
>
> How would closing the mailing list solve the problem? It will give
> the impression that you want to close the debate by taking away the
> medium where people can argue. And the impression is correct, because
> this actually *is* the intention if you are honest.

Certainly this is the intention, at least for my part.  There is no
benefit in arguing about this for more than a year, especially if
those who made the decisions get re-elected to their posts.

> Of course, it will not close said debate. The debate will just happen
> on another channel. (Which in this example might be appropriate, but
> pointing to the proper channel is what should have happened and not
> closing a mailing list and thus excluding random people from posting
> things about clompletely different topics which *are* on-topic on dev-ml).

People have repeatedly pointed out the correct places for such
debates, though honestly if it were my call I'd not allow this debate
to go on further anywhere that Gentoo operates.

People post this stuff on the -dev list for the same reason that
protesters block public streets.  They want to make it hard to ignore
them.

>
>> 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.
>
> Closing dev-ml will not help here. If people have a strong
> disagreement with a decision, this will happen on gentoo channels.
> If you want to prevent it technically, you have to close all channels.

Agree.  But, I don't make the decisions.  If it were up to me this
topic would be closed everywhere.

> BTW, I do not think that contributors are that blue-eyed that they
> will stop contributing only because one person does not know how to
> behave.

The problem comes when the person is booted out and a half dozen
people keep arguing that they were innocent, that Gentoo is run by a
cabal in an ivory tower, and that decisions like this should be made
more openly.  IMO this is the sort of thing that is more likely to
drive contributors away, because it has a veneer of legitimacy.  The
arguments in favor of that position are simple, and the arguments
against it are nuanced and often rely on access to non-public
information.

You can ignore their posts but then people assume they're right.  So
either we get endless argument (more than a year), or we need to
exercise prior restraint.  Neither is desirable, but I've yet to see
another option presented.

-- 
Rich

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

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 03/28/2018 12:41 AM, Stephen Christie wrote:
> 
> These are now the majority of the emails I've now received. The first
> reply was essentially "We've already talked about this, can we just
> move on?".

In our enthusiasm to defeat wltjr, we have let ourselves become wltjr.

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

[Martin Vaeth]

Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> Certainly.  Closing lists won't stop the private abuse, nor is it intended to.
>
> What it would stop is this particular thread talking endlessly about it.
>
>> Closing a mailing list
>> will not close such a debate; it will then just happen elsewhere.
>
> And that is the goal.

So now we finally get to the point:
The whole story has actually *nothing* to with Fred.

It is about what I said in the very first posting:
It is an attempt to suppress opinions, by taking away people an
important channel to raise their voice.

The whole Fred example was only a rhetorical trick: An attempt to find
at least *one* example where you believe that the developers' opinion is
undoubtfully the right one, an attempt to justify the ivory tower.

This one example - it plays no role whether it is justified or whether
there is another one - is completely suppressing the fact that in
almost all cases on dev-ml (trivial "ACK" things aside)
*are* clearly discussable (concerning technical topics)
and *should* be discussed.
In fact, all these *other* discussions are the actual purpose of dev-ml.

Closing the channel simply excludes non-developers from these
discussions dev-ml is made for.

Concering Gentoo's reputation, you can be sure that this step will be
only contraproductive:

- In Fred's case anyway, because people with the opinion that something
  strange is going on with this case will see their opinion just confirmed;
  outsiders anyway.

- For people not involved or not interested in Fred's case it is
  clearly even worse. From the outsider viewpoint as well.

This closing harms Gentoo a lot:

I am driven away from Gentoo by such an undemocratic step.
Certainly I am not the only one: Others also already formulated
similar opinions on this and the project mailing list, at least
if you are able to read between the lines.

> Could you take this debate to the appropriate place then?

Do not worry, this is presumably my last post on the topic
(soon I would not be able to post, anyway).

I am aware that the undemocratic decision has already been made
(BTW unsurprisingly in a not very democratic way),
so it makes no sense to discuss about it further.

My post was just a final attempt at least to mitigate the damage done
by this decision by speaking for the only thing which can still be
done purely technically: Blacklisting instead of whitelisting.

With whitelisting you will only attract that type of non-developers
who are willing to beg a gang to be a member of them.
Of course, if a secondary aim should be to get only uncritical followers
(or pretenders) and to drive away everybody else, whitelisting
is the correct choice.

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

[Tom Wijsman]

Hey!!!


I'm not going to open that bug, read all these related mailing list 
discussions or waste time on whatever!

Instead, I think it's important some of you read this message:

I hope that you choose to stand still for some time, or even sit or lie 
down for once.
Take a deep breath and count to ten, then think about what the goal of 
Gentoo is and what your goal in this context is.

Don't let these goals confuse others into random directions, but make it 
clear to yourself and everyone what they are.
And with those thoughts, as well as second guesses; decide what you 
really want to do with it, for yourself and for others...

Live your life; live it together <3


P.S: Not responding to you in particular, I'm spending my last time to 
collectively answer multiple threads from now and history

On 3/20/2018 1:17 PM, Michael Palimaka wrote:
> I see that in bug #650964[1] Council is pushing forward again with
> implementing user whitelisting on this mailing list (ie. anyone that is
> not "approved" will have their mail rejected).
>
> Could someone please explain how this doesn't directly contradict the
> core tenets of an open and inclusive community?
>
> 1: https://bugs.gentoo.org/650964
>

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

[R0b0t1]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 6:21 AM, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 2:33 AM, Martin Vaeth <martin@mvath.de> wrote:
>> Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Fred is a community member.  Fred consistently harasses and trolls new
>>> contributors in private.
>>
>> Sure, it's a problem. But not a problem which can be solved by
>> closing the mailing list, in no step of the issue.
>>
>> First of all, this happens in private, so you cannot prevent it
>> by closing a mailing list.
>
> Certainly.  Closing lists won't stop the private abuse, nor is it intended to.
>
> What it would stop is this particular thread talking endlessly about it.
>
>>
>>> No mention is made of why Fred as booted out, because everything
>>> happened in private.
>>
>> That's the mistake which is made in this example. Be open in the
>> decisions. If you cannot be open in order to protect other people's
>> privacy, be open at least by saying exactly this.
>
> In the example I can think of this was done, and yet people still
> endlessly argued about it, because simply stating that you can't be
> open about something won't satisfy people who want there to be
> openness.
>

As I have tried to explain, the reasons you have given are not
consistent and even if they were there is no reason to believe they
are based on a sound interpretation of the law. You simply ignored
those comments, which tells everyone else you do not care whether you
are making valid decisions. That is why these discussions have
continued.

>> Closing a mailing list
>> will not close such a debate; it will then just happen elsewhere.
>
> And that is the goal.
>
>> Anyway, such a debate does not belong to dev-ml. The correct solution
>> is to continue to point people to have this debate on the appropriate place,
>> not on the mainly technically oriented dev-ml.
>
> Could you take this debate to the appropriate place then?
>
>
>> Making the posters silent
>> by blacklisting even more is contra-productive and will give the
>> impression that they are actually right.
>
> If the goal is to make them silent on the closed list it is completely
> productive.
>
> Nothing can prevent people from getting the impression that there is
> some kind of cover-up.  Certainly the last time this sort of thing
> happened having hundreds of emails posted on the topic on the lists
> didn't do anything to convince the few posters that the right thing
> was done.
>
> Now, I do like something that Debian did in this situation which was
> to give the person who was booted the option to have the reasoning
> disclosed or not.  If they refuse and people question why they were
> booted, you can simply state that all people who are booted are given
> the option to have the reasons disclosed, and the person leaving made
> the choice not to have this done.  IMO something like this would tend
> to reduce the legal liabilities.
>
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Why not? Is it against a law to exclude somebody who is hurting a
>> project?
>
> Not at all.  Booting somebody from an organization like Gentoo creates
> no liability, unless it was based on discrimination/etc.
>
> The liability comes from saying negative things about somebody.
>
> Kicking out Fred is fine.  Stating publicly that Fred was kicked out
> for sexual harassment would allow Fred to sue, and then you have to
> pay to prove that he was sexually harassing somebody.
>

Fred can sue even if you've done nothing. You would still be well
advised to hire representation in that case to prevent Fred from
winning by default. Agitating people by withholding comments on
problematic behavior doesn't remove that possibility.

As long as the statements were true only a token effort (if even that)
needs to be made to dismiss the suit. In very rare cases, mostly where
something close to malicious intent behind the release of the
information can be shown, damages will be awarded. But seeing as there
is a valid reason (effective project governance) for releasing that
information I see no way that would be upheld.

>>
>>> 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?
>>
>> How would closing the mailing list solve the problem? It will give
>> the impression that you want to close the debate by taking away the
>> medium where people can argue. And the impression is correct, because
>> this actually *is* the intention if you are honest.
>
> Certainly this is the intention, at least for my part.  There is no
> benefit in arguing about this for more than a year, especially if
> those who made the decisions get re-elected to their posts.
>
>> Of course, it will not close said debate. The debate will just happen
>> on another channel. (Which in this example might be appropriate, but
>> pointing to the proper channel is what should have happened and not
>> closing a mailing list and thus excluding random people from posting
>> things about clompletely different topics which *are* on-topic on dev-ml).
>
> People have repeatedly pointed out the correct places for such
> debates, though honestly if it were my call I'd not allow this debate
> to go on further anywhere that Gentoo operates.
>
> People post this stuff on the -dev list for the same reason that
> protesters block public streets.  They want to make it hard to ignore
> them.
>
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> Closing dev-ml will not help here. If people have a strong
>> disagreement with a decision, this will happen on gentoo channels.
>> If you want to prevent it technically, you have to close all channels.
>
> Agree.  But, I don't make the decisions.  If it were up to me this
> topic would be closed everywhere.
>
>> BTW, I do not think that contributors are that blue-eyed that they
>> will stop contributing only because one person does not know how to
>> behave.
>
> The problem comes when the person is booted out and a half dozen
> people keep arguing that they were innocent, that Gentoo is run by a
> cabal in an ivory tower, and that decisions like this should be made
> more openly.  IMO this is the sort of thing that is more likely to
> drive contributors away, because it has a veneer of legitimacy.  The
> arguments in favor of that position are simple, and the arguments
> against it are nuanced and often rely on access to non-public
> information.
>

It has a veneer of legitimacy? Perhaps the complaints are legitimate?

Imagine the outcry if a court made decisions in private and did not
release names of the accusers and the accused.

> You can ignore their posts but then people assume they're right.  So
> either we get endless argument (more than a year), or we need to
> exercise prior restraint.  Neither is desirable, but I've yet to see
> another option presented.
>

Don't present a false dichotomy - you could begin releasing
information. Every argument as to whether or not that is a valid
decision has been ignored.

Cheers,
     R0b0t1