From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 9CDA21382C5 for ; Wed, 21 Mar 2018 23:44:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 5859DE087A; Wed, 21 Mar 2018 23:44:11 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-io0-x22f.google.com (mail-io0-x22f.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4001:c06::22f]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 00C0DE085B for ; Wed, 21 Mar 2018 23:44:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-io0-x22f.google.com with SMTP id r18so8725105ioa.1 for ; Wed, 21 Mar 2018 16:44:10 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to; bh=oAX9fA/p6uOBrm54YZ9TbdOLW02wpn/zLNNFx5o6fj0=; b=pUjSMRiwEXENXylt7Nysi120py/+TFqOmb2f/qVnmehS9nt30+4RNTu0g05tvqX8Js qu8pq2UK76USgeF35m7LMXG5rmFKoNpwYzynSraU1+A34pmPka31P+riGtmdbgkiOShw rI3U29MSic2IpR35T9inW3gvZFae2lMtg77X+STJa8a2RLC3QQI2gaIx+SrQOr+dX6BF ysrnhhUoYnyCACrP+hJH7K6opyden6ZExLLk1Geftfprf9jr6B95zDxiQ0/MSG7BzLmD h9rsHEEtRdfsceUWo3/1pkreWwfscVajWdBeVaOLl7uNb9dfgw2jQjPNTeakH4CgOo0c adQA== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date :message-id:subject:to; bh=oAX9fA/p6uOBrm54YZ9TbdOLW02wpn/zLNNFx5o6fj0=; b=nkM2LX6sZlN7a1Qr6rmST6/DnGFW9F1Hu3VKB9axj1lVZosPT5ATa1EiwD/CZXIGMJ LwVdPpWV4RMosPbFhdZCAFyno+5SWYDZiwoHaXNPHQ1eSZe6yMvaMqdkX5rZLWrlA1wS 9BOu76d6DvUXSGa2Di3GYq+PptXiPImq4Dn1XSU/X/ubUYWUaDxMFzZNXqNbdNM/7/NY fIaCyCGsfOnjChKVIKTCMBVDQb2q5quulj8yTE8necLy1BXN26bCt4ihybZDX7zHPHcs PR7LYvGADxWhBRpeFPyBNIhy3WA7nYz4LXW6cQiuti747RPhyNqCIQ8B7EPddaHX1bbl HHOg== X-Gm-Message-State: AElRT7HCUMYY8PuDkydjIWBXu/C1IwHdxbF3JSC1h1L+rngTIl7LMpKP zgovl33+2lc54rPJd/vsAv2XbAlatUVR/p6r3NE= X-Google-Smtp-Source: AG47ELt6XeVDCQMAd2LhGPmyK0YFDB6KDqXmUr4GlGiXynaXOk/2HMVDU80fxcd+LDL4FKHKp10h7+eh+EN1WKn+9GU= X-Received: by 10.107.56.87 with SMTP id f84mr23904946ioa.151.1521675849360; Wed, 21 Mar 2018 16:44:09 -0700 (PDT) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.79.197.135 with HTTP; Wed, 21 Mar 2018 16:44:08 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <4aab96fa-0edb-6a28-791e-28e2103f2a30@gentoo.org> <20180320152848.2uzqzvotaqk5hlnm@gentoo.org> <20180321053601.GA4705@angelfall.a21an.org> From: Gregory Woodbury Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2018 19:44:08 -0400 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Mailing list moderation and community openness To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Archives-Salt: 53d6e6af-1dd0-4180-8bb1-3a1b650ed43f X-Archives-Hash: 9f3816364196fb871eb88f6d5547b0be 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 wrote: > On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 12:55 PM, R0b0t1 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