* [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) @ 2019-06-04 13:05 Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-04 13:15 ` Dirkjan Ochtman ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Kristian Fiskerstrand @ 2019-06-04 13:05 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 906 bytes --] The agenda item "Forums (specifically OTW)" was deferred to further discussion in the mailing lists during the 2019-02-10 council meeting. The agenda for that meeting can be found at [Agenda] and the tracking bug is [Bug 677824]. This email aims to re-opens the discussion [which was started in a previous thread] as per the council decision. I ask that the discussion remains civil and respectful, while also allowing for a high bar for the actual discussion. References: [Agenda] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/5c0c0f5552709aca0154b554b9b451fa [Bug 677824] https://bugs.gentoo.org/677824 [which was started in a previous thread] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/c033187cbbfe8677a5177a0af51af170 -- Kristian Fiskerstrand OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3 [-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 488 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-04 13:05 [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) Kristian Fiskerstrand @ 2019-06-04 13:15 ` Dirkjan Ochtman 2019-06-04 13:30 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-12 3:38 ` Michał Górny 2019-06-14 16:04 ` [gentoo-project] " Kristian Fiskerstrand 2 siblings, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Dirkjan Ochtman @ 2019-06-04 13:15 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 526 bytes --] On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 3:06 PM Kristian Fiskerstrand <k_f@gentoo.org> wrote: > References: > [Agenda] > > https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/5c0c0f5552709aca0154b554b9b451fa > > [Bug 677824] > https://bugs.gentoo.org/677824 > > [which was started in a previous thread] > > https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-project/message/c033187cbbfe8677a5177a0af51af170 > I looked at the links a bit, but there's very little substance there. Does anyone want to give some more context and background? Regards, Dirkjan [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1223 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-04 13:15 ` Dirkjan Ochtman @ 2019-06-04 13:30 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-06 4:39 ` desultory 2019-06-12 10:04 ` Alec Warner 0 siblings, 2 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Kristian Fiskerstrand @ 2019-06-04 13:30 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project, Dirkjan Ochtman [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1351 bytes --] On 6/4/19 3:15 PM, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote: > I looked at the links a bit, but there's very little substance there. Does > anyone want to give some more context and background? There are several elements being discussed; but noting, in no particular order, some of them; (a) The forums are hosted on Gentoo infra and in the name of the distribution, but there is a very split user and developer base; are the forums properly moderated wrt (i) CoC (ii) legal liability / copyrights (iii) potential PR issues towards the distribution for user contributed content; (b) Part of (a) discussion is appeals process, so a user banned from forums can appeal a ban to other parts (comrel, council), so a decision with regards to forums also affects other projects / groups within the distribution. Is the additional overhead worthwhile? (c) The discussion has mostly focused on OTW (Off-The-Wall) section of the forums, one argument for keeping it is it is a convenient place for moderators to move threads that are started in other forums but doesn't belong there instead of deleting it, and keeping off-topic discussion in separate threads minimize the noise for the rest of forums. -- Kristian Fiskerstrand OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3 [-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 488 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-04 13:30 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand @ 2019-06-06 4:39 ` desultory 2019-06-12 10:04 ` Alec Warner 1 sibling, 0 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: desultory @ 2019-06-06 4:39 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project On 06/04/19 09:30, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote: > On 6/4/19 3:15 PM, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote: >> I looked at the links a bit, but there's very little substance there. Does >> anyone want to give some more context and background? > > There are several elements being discussed; but noting, in no particular > order, some of them; > > (a) The forums are hosted on Gentoo infra and in the name of the > distribution, but there is a very split user and developer base; are the > forums properly moderated wrt (i) CoC (ii) legal liability / copyrights > (iii) potential PR issues towards the distribution for user contributed > content; > Since that is a bit of a tangle of claims, allow me to break that down into addressable components. > (a) The forums are hosted on Gentoo infra and in the name of the > distribution, Yes, the forums are operating on some, but not all, of the hardware donated for that express purpose. > but there is a very split user and developer base; Which is, at least in large part, due to the behavior of some, but by no means all, developers who actively antagonize users. That there is a disconnect between one set of users (some developers) and another set of users (people other than those in the first set) seems a rather curious thing to place blame for on people who have invested as much time as the forums team has on attempting to bridge that gap where possible. > are the forums properly moderated wrt (i) CoC So far as I have found, the forums are one of the very few places where the CoC is actually enforced. But, since you brought it up (as a new claim, mind), do you have any specific complaints, or are you expecting us to somehow prove that we have not, as a team, ever failed to fully and properly enforce the CoC according to your standards? If so, that is an utterly ridiculous standard to meet, especially given that the CoC is open to interpretation. Not to mention that it would call for us to prove a negative (which is functionally impossible regardless of available time), on a few days notice. > (ii) legal liability / copyrights Again, this is a new claim and no related problems have been previously raised. Given the nature of the forums, Gentoo neither holds nor claims to hold copyright to users posts, so this appears to be ridiculous from first principles. > (iii) potential PR issues towards the distribution for user contributed > content; > This is a rather fantastical standard to put to any project: might it, at some point, potentially, in theory, even indirectly, be related to something which someone does not like? Allow me to reveal the answer to that: yes. Someone, somewhere will find something that someone does or says offensive, no matter how harmless that thing was in context, because there are people who actively seek even ludicrously convoluted ways in which to claim offense and that they should be sheltered from such things because they are too delicate for this world. Just to drive home the point of how ridiculous this is, by this standard: The security team should be disbanded because they are too secretive, no matter that their "secretive" actions are intended to, and indeed serve to, improve the security of installed systems, they are a strange frightening cabal and must be stopped. All games must be removed as there is some aspect of each that someone dislikes, sudoku might terrify people with math anxiety, tetris could terrify people with fear of falling objects, and fortune databases even have USE flags to include "offensive material", this must be stopped. Action must be immediately undertaken to remove systemd and all support for it, because some people don't like it. Action must be immediately undertaken to remove openrc and all support for it, because some people don't like it. Action must be immediately undertaken to remove chrome, and firefox, and chromium, and opera, and well, pretty much everything, because, somewhere, someone doesn't like that particular thing, it is offensive and must be expunged from existence because that would make the world a better, and utterly barren, place. Could we please, pretty please, have some sane standards, even during lame duck sessions? > (b) Part of (a) discussion is appeals process, so a user banned from > forums can appeal a ban to other parts (comrel, council), so a decision > with regards to forums also affects other projects / groups within the > distribution. Is the additional overhead worthwhile? > Exactly when was this in question? Are you telling us that it is the opinion of the council that the forums team has absolute final word on CoC (and forum guidelines in general) enforcement on the forums? If so, this would be news to me. If you have somehow conflated this with proctors "offering" to insert itself as another layer between forums and ComRel, and my rejection of that arrangement as a bad idea for all involved, you would be mistaken. > (c) The discussion has mostly focused on OTW (Off-The-Wall) section of > the forums, one argument for keeping it is it is a convenient place for > moderators to move threads that are started in other forums but doesn't > belong there instead of deleting it, and keeping off-topic discussion in > separate threads minimize the noise for the rest of forums. > And the argument for removing it has come from people who rarely, if ever, use the forums at all, by all appearances primarily spurred on by a developer who publicly admits to maintaining a grudge against the entire project due to negative feedback (from me) on a bad idea they proposed quite some time ago (which was not implemented). So on one side of the argument you have the people actually doing the work who do consider Off the Wall to have at least sufficient value to continue to exist, and on the other you have people you by their own admission are ignorant of the thing in practice and who are therefore operating on the basis of ignorance, disinformation, and to some extent paranoia. I will, doubtlessly, have further commentary on the matter, but for now this about covers what immediately comes to mind. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-04 13:30 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-06 4:39 ` desultory @ 2019-06-12 10:04 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-12 11:13 ` Rich Freeman 1 sibling, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Alec Warner @ 2019-06-12 10:04 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project; +Cc: Dirkjan Ochtman [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3948 bytes --] On Tue, Jun 4, 2019 at 6:30 AM Kristian Fiskerstrand <k_f@gentoo.org> wrote: > On 6/4/19 3:15 PM, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote: > > I looked at the links a bit, but there's very little substance there. > Does > > anyone want to give some more context and background? > > There are several elements being discussed; but noting, in no particular > order, some of them; > > (a) The forums are hosted on Gentoo infra and in the name of the > distribution, but there is a very split user and developer base; are the > forums properly moderated wrt (i) CoC (ii) legal liability / copyrights > (iii) potential PR issues towards the distribution for user contributed > content; > (i) I think you need to convince the existing forum-mods team that the CoC matters, and that they should actually enforce it. I don't see a very robust conversation with the existing mods team on this topic. My impression from forum-mods is that they view this action as a cudgel (to get rid of / change something most developers dislike) rather than as the CoC is intended (to encourage a more open and safe Gentoo Community, presumably.) (ii) is a Foundation issue, as the Council has no legal liability for the forums or their content that I am aware of. I (personally as a board member) am happy with the existing legal liability the forums represents. (iii) I'm not sure how the forums differ from other UCG Gentoo hosts (wiki, bugzilla, blogs) or Gentoo affiliated areas (public Gentoo prefixed Freenode IRC channels.) Are you suggesting we not host UCG, or why would we limit this action to the Forums? Or you assert that we have sufficient moderation of the other UCG channels but forums is not sufficiently moderated? > (b) Part of (a) discussion is appeals process, so a user banned from > forums can appeal a ban to other parts (comrel, council), so a decision > with regards to forums also affects other projects / groups within the > distribution. Is the additional overhead worthwhile? I think if you want to root agency in the Council or its delegate that is fine, but I haven't seen this as a problem in practice. I also don't see things like "Oh I was banned from #gentoo for 4 weeks" come to comrel very often, FWIW. > > (c) The discussion has mostly focused on OTW (Off-The-Wall) section of > the forums, one argument for keeping it is it is a convenient place for > moderators to move threads that are started in other forums but doesn't > belong there instead of deleting it, and keeping off-topic discussion in > separate threads minimize the noise for the rest of forums. > I'm not sure we have explored this sufficiently, so I'm trying to drive more discussion here. Why has it focused on OTW? (i) Because it contains content that violates the CoC? (ii) Because it contains content unrelated to Gentoo? (iii) Because it contains content we find objectionable? I'm trying to narrow down the scope here. Most UCG sites contain (i), and (ii) and probably (iii). I have concerns that basically no one in the council even uses the forum, we have no data that describes a problem on the forum, and we are (as described in the 10/02 meeting log notes[0]) trying to legislate the job of a moderation team that we have essentially failed to achieve any common ground with. The other exciting part is that currently the forums are hosted at the pleasure of the Board on behalf of the community and the board owns the trademarks and relationship with the sponsor who donates the hardware for the forums. I want to desperately avoid an outcome where the Council votes to make changes to the forum, but the board objects to said changes. In other words; I want to achieve some kind of consensus on how the forums should be operated. [0] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20190210.txt > > -- > Kristian Fiskerstrand > OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net > fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3 > > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5307 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 10:04 ` Alec Warner @ 2019-06-12 11:13 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-12 13:00 ` Alec Warner 0 siblings, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-12 11:13 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project; +Cc: Dirkjan Ochtman On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 6:04 AM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote: > > (i) I think you need to convince the existing forum-mods team that the CoC matters, and that they should actually enforce it. Seems like we need to convince the Trustees of this as well... > I want to desperately avoid an outcome where the Council votes to make changes to the forum, but the board objects to said changes. Well, that is easy enough. If there isn't any legal reason to object to a change, then don't. If there is, then please speak up before somebody does something bad. -- Rich ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 11:13 ` Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-12 13:00 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-12 14:09 ` Rich Freeman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Alec Warner @ 2019-06-12 13:00 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project; +Cc: Dirkjan Ochtman [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2731 bytes --] On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 4:13 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 6:04 AM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote: > > > > (i) I think you need to convince the existing forum-mods team that the > CoC matters, and that they should actually enforce it. > > Seems like we need to convince the Trustees of this as well... > 2 quick points then. (a) I believe that the CoC is a tool to achieve a goal. The goal is to apply a policy to have a community where people feel its safe to contribute. That means safe from harassment, where contributors feel free to speak their mind without being set upon. So when the CoC achieves this goal, its good; when it doesn't achieve this goal, its bad. That is why I think Gentoo needs a CoC; there is no intrinsic value in a CoC itself. Instead the value comes from the community using it to hold its members accountable to achieve the underlying goal. (b) I am but one human, the board is 5 humans, the council is 7 humans. I don't believe any of us use the forums and none of us are forums-mods. The people who *currently* today apply the CoC in the forums are the forums mods and they typically move the bad stuff to OTW. We need the support of moderators in whatever decision we make. Either we get consensus from the current moderator team, or we fire them and hire new moderators who will enforce whatever unilateral decision we make. I'm suggesting that the former (where we convince them our decision is correct and they should enforce it) is better than firing everyone and hiring new mods. > > > I want to desperately avoid an outcome where the Council votes to make > changes to the forum, but the board objects to said changes. > > Well, that is easy enough. If there isn't any legal reason to object > to a change, then don't. If there is, then please speak up before > somebody does something bad. > I'm not convinced my duty as a trustee ends at legal. The *community* has no representation on the Council at all (users don't get to vote) and so I struggle to see how the *community* is represented. "Gentoo lives for the community, by the community Gentoo strives to please its users. The Gentoo community is Gentoo's goal of life. Without community there is no Gentoo. To help Gentoo's development, the community provides a continuous stream of feedback and contributes to the various aspects of the Gentoo distribution. This cooperative model will remain valid for Gentoo's entire lifespan."[0] If we strive to please our users, I struggling to see why we would remove the entire forum (as was hinted at earlier.) [0] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Main_Page#Gentoo_lives_for_the_community.2C_by_the_community > -- > Rich > > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3782 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 13:00 ` Alec Warner @ 2019-06-12 14:09 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-13 2:36 ` Alec Warner 0 siblings, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-12 14:09 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project; +Cc: Dirkjan Ochtman On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 9:00 AM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 4:13 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: >> > > (a) I believe that the CoC is a tool to achieve a goal. The goal is to apply a policy to have a community where people feel its safe to contribute. Also to have a community where people feel like they actually WANT to contribute. Why would I want to be a part of an organization that is constantly slinging mud on the mailing lists? Why would I even want to read these lists? Ultimately the many volunteers who give their time to Gentoo deserve to have a place where they can do it in reasonable harmony. Some disagreement is inevitable and just a direct result of our mission. However, there are many disagreements that could come up that have nothing to do with our mission, and part of the reason for the CoC is so that people understand that this just isn't the place to discuss those other things. >> >> Well, that is easy enough. If there isn't any legal reason to object >> to a change, then don't. If there is, then please speak up before >> somebody does something bad. > > > I'm not convinced my duty as a trustee ends at legal. The *community* has no representation on the Council at all (users don't get to vote) and so I struggle to see how the *community* is represented. So, first, you don't have to have a vote to be represented by somebody. And, second, anybody in the community has the opportunity to vote by contributing. Not every voice is equally important to listen to, and the ones casting the votes are arguably the voice that are most worth listening to. > To help Gentoo's development, the community provides a continuous stream of feedback and contributes to the various aspects of the Gentoo distribution. Indeed, and all those who do contribute in this way already get to vote for Council, and if somebody feels they have been missed they should apply for dev status so that this can be fixed. In any case, the job of the Trustees is to facilitate Gentoo's mission, not interfere with those chosen to lead it... -- Rich ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 14:09 ` Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-13 2:36 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-15 3:53 ` desultory 0 siblings, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Alec Warner @ 2019-06-13 2:36 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project; +Cc: Dirkjan Ochtman [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2812 bytes --] On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 7:09 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 9:00 AM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote: > > > > On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 4:13 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: > >> > > > > (a) I believe that the CoC is a tool to achieve a goal. The goal is to > apply a policy to have a community where people feel its safe to contribute. > > Also to have a community where people feel like they actually WANT to > contribute. > > Why would I want to be a part of an organization that is constantly > slinging mud on the mailing lists? Why would I even want to read > these lists? > > Ultimately the many volunteers who give their time to Gentoo deserve > to have a place where they can do it in reasonable harmony. Some > disagreement is inevitable and just a direct result of our mission. > However, there are many disagreements that could come up that have > nothing to do with our mission, and part of the reason for the CoC is > so that people understand that this just isn't the place to discuss > those other things. > > >> > >> Well, that is easy enough. If there isn't any legal reason to object > >> to a change, then don't. If there is, then please speak up before > >> somebody does something bad. > > > > > > I'm not convinced my duty as a trustee ends at legal. The *community* > has no representation on the Council at all (users don't get to vote) and > so I struggle to see how the *community* is represented. > > So, first, you don't have to have a vote to be represented by somebody. > And, second, anybody in the community has the opportunity to vote by > contributing. > Not every voice is equally important to listen to, and the ones > casting the votes are arguably the voice that are most worth listening > to. > > To help Gentoo's development, the community provides a continuous stream > of feedback and contributes to the various aspects of the Gentoo > distribution. > > Indeed, and all those who do contribute in this way already get to > vote for Council, and if somebody feels they have been missed they > should apply for dev status so that this can be fixed. > > In any case, the job of the Trustees is to facilitate Gentoo's > mission, not interfere with those chosen to lead it... So just to keep your IRC commentary on the ML record, you believe the Foundation should be run such that the board approves any council action provided its legal; whether or not the board believes the action facilitates Gentoo's mission, because in your words "anything else leads to endless infighting between the two groups." We could update the mission to reflect this mode of operation; feel free to propose an amendment or run for the board. Its not what I perceive the mission of the board to be though. -A > -- > Rich > > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4255 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-13 2:36 ` Alec Warner @ 2019-06-15 3:53 ` desultory 2019-06-15 11:17 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-15 16:39 ` [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) Raymond Jennings 0 siblings, 2 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: desultory @ 2019-06-15 3:53 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project On 06/12/19 22:36, Alec Warner wrote: > On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 7:09 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: > >> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 9:00 AM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote: >>> >>> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 4:13 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: >>>> >>> >>> (a) I believe that the CoC is a tool to achieve a goal. The goal is to >> apply a policy to have a community where people feel its safe to contribute. >> >> Also to have a community where people feel like they actually WANT to >> contribute. >> >> Why would I want to be a part of an organization that is constantly >> slinging mud on the mailing lists? Why would I even want to read >> these lists? >> >> Ultimately the many volunteers who give their time to Gentoo deserve >> to have a place where they can do it in reasonable harmony. Some >> disagreement is inevitable and just a direct result of our mission. >> However, there are many disagreements that could come up that have >> nothing to do with our mission, and part of the reason for the CoC is >> so that people understand that this just isn't the place to discuss >> those other things. >> >>>> >>>> Well, that is easy enough. If there isn't any legal reason to object >>>> to a change, then don't. If there is, then please speak up before >>>> somebody does something bad. >>> >>> >>> I'm not convinced my duty as a trustee ends at legal. The *community* >> has no representation on the Council at all (users don't get to vote) and >> so I struggle to see how the *community* is represented. >> >> So, first, you don't have to have a vote to be represented by somebody. > > >> And, second, anybody in the community has the opportunity to vote by >> contributing. > > >> Not every voice is equally important to listen to, and the ones >> casting the votes are arguably the voice that are most worth listening >> to. > > > > >>> To help Gentoo's development, the community provides a continuous stream >> of feedback and contributes to the various aspects of the Gentoo >> distribution. >> >> Indeed, and all those who do contribute in this way already get to >> vote for Council, and if somebody feels they have been missed they >> should apply for dev status so that this can be fixed. >> >> In any case, the job of the Trustees is to facilitate Gentoo's >> mission, not interfere with those chosen to lead it... > > > So just to keep your IRC commentary on the ML record, you believe the > Foundation should be run such that the board approves any council action > provided its legal; whether or not the board believes the action > facilitates Gentoo's mission, because in your words "anything else leads to > endless infighting between the two groups." > > We could update the mission to reflect this mode of operation; feel free to > propose an amendment or run for the board. Its not what I perceive the > mission of the board to be though. > Since conversations from IRC are being pulled in, one point that you mentioned in our recent discussion was that, at least by your impression, some (unspecified) members of the council were actively seeking to cause the council and trustees to vote in opposition to one another. Given that, I have a question for you and for such council members. Which council members appear to you to be attempting to cause a schism between the council and foundation? To all such council members: what benefit would there be in such a scenario? > -A > > >> -- >> Rich >> >> > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-15 3:53 ` desultory @ 2019-06-15 11:17 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-15 11:20 ` Michael Everitt 2019-06-16 4:52 ` desultory 2019-06-15 16:39 ` [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) Raymond Jennings 1 sibling, 2 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-15 11:17 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 11:53 PM desultory <desultory@gentoo.org> wrote: > > On 06/12/19 22:36, Alec Warner wrote: > > >> A bunch of untrimmed quoted stuff irrelevant to his reply (some of which was already drifting offtopic). > > > > A bunch of stuff putting words into other people's mouths which had nothing to do with the topic. > > Since conversations from IRC are being pulled in, one point that you > mentioned in our recent discussion was that, at least by your > impression, some (unspecified) members of the council were actively > seeking to cause the council and trustees to vote in opposition to one > another. Can we stick to the topic of this thread, which is what if anything to do with the forums? If you want to start yet another metastructure debate just start another thread. We already have half a dozen such threads starting due to the upcoming election, which makes this debate actually somewhat timely, and one is somewhat tangentially related to your question. We don't need to take over every other discussion on the lists with it. And while we're at it, can we just let people state their own opinions if they care to? I realize everybody around here feels deprived if I don't weigh in on every single thread, but it isn't necessary to paraphrase from the book of rich0 when for some reason he is neglecting his no-doubt-numerous disciples on a thread that isn't directly related to what is being cited... I mean, historically it hasn't been THAT hard to flame-bait me into responding to stuff... -- Rich ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-15 11:17 ` Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-15 11:20 ` Michael Everitt 2019-06-16 4:52 ` desultory 1 sibling, 0 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Michael Everitt @ 2019-06-15 11:20 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 655 bytes --] On 15/06/19 12:17, Rich Freeman wrote: > And while we're at it, can we just let people state their own opinions > if they care to? I realize everybody around here feels deprived if I > don't weigh in on every single thread, but it isn't necessary to > paraphrase from the book of rich0 when for some reason he is > neglecting his no-doubt-numerous disciples on a thread that isn't > directly related to what is being cited... I mean, historically it > hasn't been THAT hard to flame-bait me into responding to stuff... > .. you mean there is an entry barrier at all ?! I thought you were The Other ML troll .. ;) [albeit with a commit bit] [-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 801 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-15 11:17 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-15 11:20 ` Michael Everitt @ 2019-06-16 4:52 ` desultory 2019-06-16 10:36 ` [gentoo-project] Various IRC Discussions (was Deferred decision: Forums) Rich Freeman 1 sibling, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: desultory @ 2019-06-16 4:52 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project On 06/15/19 07:17, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 11:53 PM desultory <desultory@gentoo.org> wrote: >> >> On 06/12/19 22:36, Alec Warner wrote: >> >>>> A bunch of untrimmed quoted stuff irrelevant to his reply (some of which was already drifting offtopic). >>> >>> A bunch of stuff putting words into other people's mouths which had nothing to do with the topic. >> >> Since conversations from IRC are being pulled in, one point that you >> mentioned in our recent discussion was that, at least by your >> impression, some (unspecified) members of the council were actively >> seeking to cause the council and trustees to vote in opposition to one >> another. > > Can we stick to the topic of this thread, which is what if anything to > do with the forums? > Given where I posted the questions, it seemed obvious to me that they were in regards to issues raised during a conversation specifically regarding the topic at hand. Despite your protestation, it still seems obvious to me. > If you want to start yet another metastructure debate just start > another thread. We already have half a dozen such threads starting > due to the upcoming election, which makes this debate actually > somewhat timely, and one is somewhat tangentially related to your > question. We don't need to take over every other discussion on the > lists with it. > I had two very specific questions, both of which are likely to yield response of limited scope if simply answered instead of responded to with yet another display of bathos. All I am asking of council members who specifically seek divergent votes by the council and trustees, if such parties in their own estimation exist, is to tell us of what benefit they would see in divergent votes by the council and trustees. Outside of that group of council members which where addressed as an unconfirmed theoretical entity, the only other party I was inquiring with was antarus. So the scope of my posted inquires was neither broad in scope nor in the set of those from which responses were sought. If necessary, the question could again be raised generally for all those running, but that would not necessarily address the views of sitting council members, which was the specific scope of my present inquiry. > And while we're at it, can we just let people state their own opinions > if they care to? I realize everybody around here feels deprived if I > don't weigh in on every single thread, but it isn't necessary to > paraphrase from the book of rich0 when for some reason he is > neglecting his no-doubt-numerous disciples on a thread that isn't > directly related to what is being cited... I mean, historically it > hasn't been THAT hard to flame-bait me into responding to stuff... > Given that you are not presently on the council, it seems rather unlikely that you would be a present council member actively seeking divergent votes from the council and trustees. Further, making earnest inquires hardly seeks to qualify as deliberate flame bait, especially not baiting you when you are expressly not one of the parties whose opinion was sought. So, like, chill and stuff. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Various IRC Discussions (was Deferred decision: Forums) 2019-06-16 4:52 ` desultory @ 2019-06-16 10:36 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-17 3:03 ` desultory 0 siblings, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-16 10:36 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project; +Cc: Dean Stephens On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 12:52 AM desultory <desultory@gentoo.org> wrote: > > On 06/15/19 07:17, Rich Freeman wrote: > > > And while we're at it, can we just let people state their own opinions > > if they care to? I realize everybody around here feels deprived if I > > don't weigh in on every single thread, but it isn't necessary to > > paraphrase from the book of rich0 when for some reason he is > > neglecting his no-doubt-numerous disciples on a thread that isn't > > directly related to what is being cited... I mean, historically it > > hasn't been THAT hard to flame-bait me into responding to stuff... > > > Given that you are not presently on the council, it seems rather > unlikely that you would be a present council member actively seeking > divergent votes from the council and trustees. Further, making earnest > inquires hardly seeks to qualify as deliberate flame bait, especially > not baiting you when you are expressly not one of the parties whose > opinion was sought. So, like, chill and stuff. I'm not sure if you actually read the 72 lines of text that you quoted, but it included the following line: > So just to keep your IRC commentary on the ML record, ... That was directed at me. Hence I replied to it. Just another reason why it is better to not excessively quote. Also, my email did not state that either your message or the one that you quoted was flame-bait. Only that yours was off-topic to the thread, which it was. This has nothing to do with the forums. -- Rich ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Various IRC Discussions (was Deferred decision: Forums) 2019-06-16 10:36 ` [gentoo-project] Various IRC Discussions (was Deferred decision: Forums) Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-17 3:03 ` desultory 0 siblings, 0 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: desultory @ 2019-06-17 3:03 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project On 06/16/19 06:36, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Sun, Jun 16, 2019 at 12:52 AM desultory <desultory@gentoo.org> wrote: >> >> On 06/15/19 07:17, Rich Freeman wrote: >> >>> And while we're at it, can we just let people state their own opinions >>> if they care to? I realize everybody around here feels deprived if I >>> don't weigh in on every single thread, but it isn't necessary to >>> paraphrase from the book of rich0 when for some reason he is >>> neglecting his no-doubt-numerous disciples on a thread that isn't >>> directly related to what is being cited... I mean, historically it >>> hasn't been THAT hard to flame-bait me into responding to stuff... >>> >> Given that you are not presently on the council, it seems rather >> unlikely that you would be a present council member actively seeking >> divergent votes from the council and trustees. Further, making earnest >> inquires hardly seeks to qualify as deliberate flame bait, especially >> not baiting you when you are expressly not one of the parties whose >> opinion was sought. So, like, chill and stuff. > > I'm not sure if you actually read the 72 lines of text that you > quoted, but it included the following line: > >> So just to keep your IRC commentary on the ML record, ... > > That was directed at me. Hence I replied to it. Just another reason > why it is better to not excessively quote. > Problem with that reasoning being that you did not reply to that message, you replied to one which I wrote. The one you quoted, in case that was somehow ambiguous. Quoting the entirety of a message being replied to is fairly common practice, if for no other reason than to curtail claims of quotes being taken out of context. Which is somewhat ironic in this case as that is arguably what you did by claiming to have replied to a message that was itself quoted for context instead of the message to which you actually replied. If you replied to the wrong message by mistake, just replying to that effect would have been clearer, more concise, and less confrontational than the approach that you took. > Also, my email did not state that either your message or the one that > you quoted was flame-bait. Only that yours was off-topic to the > thread, which it was. This has nothing to do with the forums. > Being a direct reply to that message, it did at very least make that implication. And, pray tell, how is inquiring as to what the perceived benefits of voting in a particular manner on the matter at hand off topic when discussing the matter at hand? Is it your opinion that council members should not consider the results of a vote when making it? If so, why? Also if that is, as you imply, the case; what exactly would the point of having the council vote at all be? (You made the argument here, I am simply asking for clarification.) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-15 3:53 ` desultory 2019-06-15 11:17 ` Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-15 16:39 ` Raymond Jennings 1 sibling, 0 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Raymond Jennings @ 2019-06-15 16:39 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4553 bytes --] On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 8:53 PM desultory <desultory@gentoo.org> wrote: > On 06/12/19 22:36, Alec Warner wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 7:09 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: > > > >> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 9:00 AM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote: > >>> > >>> On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 4:13 AM Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote: > >>>> > >>> > >>> (a) I believe that the CoC is a tool to achieve a goal. The goal is to > >> apply a policy to have a community where people feel its safe to > contribute. > >> > >> Also to have a community where people feel like they actually WANT to > >> contribute. > >> > >> Why would I want to be a part of an organization that is constantly > >> slinging mud on the mailing lists? Why would I even want to read > >> these lists? > >> > >> Ultimately the many volunteers who give their time to Gentoo deserve > >> to have a place where they can do it in reasonable harmony. Some > >> disagreement is inevitable and just a direct result of our mission. > >> However, there are many disagreements that could come up that have > >> nothing to do with our mission, and part of the reason for the CoC is > >> so that people understand that this just isn't the place to discuss > >> those other things. > >> > >>>> > >>>> Well, that is easy enough. If there isn't any legal reason to object > >>>> to a change, then don't. If there is, then please speak up before > >>>> somebody does something bad. > >>> > >>> > >>> I'm not convinced my duty as a trustee ends at legal. The *community* > >> has no representation on the Council at all (users don't get to vote) > and > >> so I struggle to see how the *community* is represented. > >> > >> So, first, you don't have to have a vote to be represented by somebody. > > > > > >> And, second, anybody in the community has the opportunity to vote by > >> contributing. > > > > > >> Not every voice is equally important to listen to, and the ones > >> casting the votes are arguably the voice that are most worth listening > >> to. > > > > > > > > > >>> To help Gentoo's development, the community provides a continuous > stream > >> of feedback and contributes to the various aspects of the Gentoo > >> distribution. > >> > >> Indeed, and all those who do contribute in this way already get to > >> vote for Council, and if somebody feels they have been missed they > >> should apply for dev status so that this can be fixed. > >> > >> In any case, the job of the Trustees is to facilitate Gentoo's > >> mission, not interfere with those chosen to lead it... > > > > > > So just to keep your IRC commentary on the ML record, you believe the > > Foundation should be run such that the board approves any council action > > provided its legal; whether or not the board believes the action > > facilitates Gentoo's mission, because in your words "anything else leads > to > > endless infighting between the two groups." > > > > We could update the mission to reflect this mode of operation; feel free > to > > propose an amendment or run for the board. Its not what I perceive the > > mission of the board to be though. > > > Since conversations from IRC are being pulled in, one point that you > mentioned in our recent discussion was that, at least by your > impression, some (unspecified) members of the council were actively > seeking to cause the council and trustees to vote in opposition to one > another. Given that, I have a question for you and for such council > members. > > Which council members appear to you to be attempting to cause a schism > between the council and foundation? > My personal point of view is that while council and trustees have different roles and should presumably focus on the respective responsibilities for those roles, and avoid stepping on each other's toes, I think it should also be born in mind that both of them exist for the service of the Gentoo distro. The council oversees cross-project issues and the trustees look after the foundation as stewards of its assets that are used, per its own paperwork, in support of its mission to support the distro. By analogy, a foot ball team has wide receivers, quarterbacks, and so on. Each of them has a different role to play, but they all part of the same team. I see council and trustees likewise, and though they may have distinct roles to play in the distro, both of them are allies because they serve the same cause. > To all such council members: what benefit would there be in such a > scenario? > > > -A > > > > > >> -- > >> Rich > >> > >> > > > > > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5966 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-04 13:05 [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-04 13:15 ` Dirkjan Ochtman @ 2019-06-12 3:38 ` Michał Górny 2019-06-12 9:42 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-12 13:40 ` Jimi Huotari 2019-06-14 16:04 ` [gentoo-project] " Kristian Fiskerstrand 2 siblings, 2 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Michał Górny @ 2019-06-12 3:38 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2999 bytes --] On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 15:05 +0200, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote: > The agenda item "Forums (specifically OTW)" was deferred to further > discussion in the mailing lists during the 2019-02-10 council meeting. > The agenda for that meeting can be found at [Agenda] and the tracking > bug is [Bug 677824]. > > This email aims to re-opens the discussion [which was started in a > previous thread] as per the council decision. > > I ask that the discussion remains civil and respectful, while also > allowing for a high bar for the actual discussion. > I don't think OTW is a major problem. The real problem are *technical* forums, and those cause two problems. The first of them is that developers rarely hear of the problems with their packages. The second of them is that Forums tend to breed very bad 'solutions'. I don't mind providing multiple support channels as long as problems actually reach developers. However, I don't think it's news to most of the developers who don't actively participate in Forums (read: look for new threads everywhere) that some problems never leave them. During my years in Gentoo I've been pinged a few times over expansive Forum threads on problems with my packages which never made it to Bugzilla or anything else that I actually could've noticed. It all relies on courtesy of accidental developers (who are not Forum moderators, I should add). I can only imagine how many problems were never addressed properly because the maintainer never learned of them, and cheap hacks proposed on Forums were sufficient for the users. And no, I don't think that requiring every developer to directly follow all Forum feeds is a solution. A side effect of the former problem is that Forums are home to many horrible 'solutions'. Sadly, those solutions sometimes involve making things *much worse* than they were before. This is problem both for users who end up victims of having their systems broken, and developers who end up having to help fix the resulting breakage. Breakage resulting from use of dev-python/pip is the most prominent example I know of. Multiple Forum victims ended up using it to 'fix' problems. As a result, they ended up with obsolete directly installed packages overriding Gentoo packages and breaking stuff. The scale of this was so great that I had to actually patch dev-python/pip to block installing packages system-wide. Which is a technical hack to a social problem. I'm not saying Forums is the only source of the problem, people can figure out how to break systems themselves. However, Forums is frequently a source of bad information that is mistakenly trusted and is not properly verified and rejected. To summarize, I think the two major problems with the Forums are: 1) not passing information properly to package maintainers, and 2) lack of proper Q/A. If you can solve them, I don't have any problem with the Forums. -- Best regards, Michał Górny [-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 618 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 3:38 ` Michał Górny @ 2019-06-12 9:42 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-12 12:16 ` Michał Górny 2019-06-12 13:40 ` Jimi Huotari 1 sibling, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Alec Warner @ 2019-06-12 9:42 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3348 bytes --] On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 8:38 PM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 15:05 +0200, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote: > > The agenda item "Forums (specifically OTW)" was deferred to further > > discussion in the mailing lists during the 2019-02-10 council meeting. > > The agenda for that meeting can be found at [Agenda] and the tracking > > bug is [Bug 677824]. > > > > This email aims to re-opens the discussion [which was started in a > > previous thread] as per the council decision. > > > > I ask that the discussion remains civil and respectful, while also > > allowing for a high bar for the actual discussion. > > > > I don't think OTW is a major problem. The real problem are *technical* > forums, and those cause two problems. The first of them is that > developers rarely hear of the problems with their packages. The second > of them is that Forums tend to breed very bad 'solutions'. > I'm curious how this is different from other support forums. Are there no bad solutions proposed on the wiki? in #gentoo? In other channels? -A > > I don't mind providing multiple support channels as long as problems > actually reach developers. However, I don't think it's news to most of > the developers who don't actively participate in Forums (read: look > for new threads everywhere) that some problems never leave them. > > During my years in Gentoo I've been pinged a few times over expansive > Forum threads on problems with my packages which never made it to > Bugzilla or anything else that I actually could've noticed. It all > relies on courtesy of accidental developers (who are not Forum > moderators, I should add). I can only imagine how many problems were > never addressed properly because the maintainer never learned of them, > and cheap hacks proposed on Forums were sufficient for the users. > > And no, I don't think that requiring every developer to directly follow > all Forum feeds is a solution. > > A side effect of the former problem is that Forums are home to many > horrible 'solutions'. Sadly, those solutions sometimes involve making > things *much worse* than they were before. This is problem both for > users who end up victims of having their systems broken, and developers > who end up having to help fix the resulting breakage. > > Breakage resulting from use of dev-python/pip is the most prominent > example I know of. Multiple Forum victims ended up using it to 'fix' > problems. As a result, they ended up with obsolete directly installed > packages overriding Gentoo packages and breaking stuff. The scale of > this was so great that I had to actually patch dev-python/pip to block > installing packages system-wide. Which is a technical hack to a social > problem. > > I'm not saying Forums is the only source of the problem, people can > figure out how to break systems themselves. However, Forums is > frequently a source of bad information that is mistakenly trusted > and is not properly verified and rejected. > > To summarize, I think the two major problems with the Forums are: > 1) not passing information properly to package maintainers, > and 2) lack of proper Q/A. If you can solve them, I don't have any > problem with the Forums. > -- > Best regards, > Michał Górny > > [-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4224 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 9:42 ` Alec Warner @ 2019-06-12 12:16 ` Michał Górny 2019-06-12 12:32 ` Rich Freeman 0 siblings, 1 reply; 22+ messages in thread From: Michał Górny @ 2019-06-12 12:16 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2340 bytes --] On Wed, 2019-06-12 at 02:42 -0700, Alec Warner wrote: > On Tue, Jun 11, 2019 at 8:38 PM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote: > > > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 15:05 +0200, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote: > > > The agenda item "Forums (specifically OTW)" was deferred to further > > > discussion in the mailing lists during the 2019-02-10 council meeting. > > > The agenda for that meeting can be found at [Agenda] and the tracking > > > bug is [Bug 677824]. > > > > > > This email aims to re-opens the discussion [which was started in a > > > previous thread] as per the council decision. > > > > > > I ask that the discussion remains civil and respectful, while also > > > allowing for a high bar for the actual discussion. > > > > > > > I don't think OTW is a major problem. The real problem are *technical* > > forums, and those cause two problems. The first of them is that > > developers rarely hear of the problems with their packages. The second > > of them is that Forums tend to breed very bad 'solutions'. > > > > I'm curious how this is different from other support forums. Are there no > bad solutions proposed on the wiki? in #gentoo? In other channels? > I never said this is much different. However, this topic is about Forums, so I'm answering what my problem with Forums is so far. To be honest, I don't think I've seen any other support channel causing so much mayhem. But if I were to consider your question more deeply, then I believe there are differences: 1) Forums are more 'ad hoc' than Wiki. I dare say people usually put more effort to put correct data there than when they answer some forum post. Not to mention it's organized by topic, so it's easier to review, and provides ability to directly correct mistakes. On Forums, the best *I* can do (as regular developer) is point out the mistake in a reply and hope that user reads it before applying a bad idea presented earlier. 2) #gentoo is not really 'persistent' the way Forums (or Wiki) are. If someone gives a bad advice, it usually directly affects only people being on the channel at the moment. Even if the same bad advice is given multiple times or spread, I doubt it would reach the scope of Forum post that's publicly visible to everyone forever. -- Best regards, Michał Górny [-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 618 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 12:16 ` Michał Górny @ 2019-06-12 12:32 ` Rich Freeman 0 siblings, 0 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Rich Freeman @ 2019-06-12 12:32 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 8:16 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote: > > But if I were to consider your question more deeply, then I believe > there are differences: > > 1) ...On Forums, the best > *I* can do (as regular developer) is point out the mistake in a reply > and hope that user reads it before applying a bad idea presented > earlier. I think the -user list suffers from some of the same issue. These sorts of forums can seem "democratic" but often I see 12 people going on and on about a really bad solution, and some dev can point out the right solution, and often the other 12 just ignore it and keep going on about the bad solution. So, everybody gets an equal vote and competency tends to get drowned out. If anything the forums are a little better in this regard in that the devs at least get more obvious flair. There is also the potential for moderation to deal with this but in practice I don't think we're doing that. Some kind of "approved answers" feature might create more value in the forums. Really though I think users also have to accept responsibility to some degree. If you go with the popular vote and ignore the minority voice that happens to have a dev flair or an @g.o email you're probably going to have issues. I don't think devs need to feel obligated to offer paths forward for whatever breakage users create by following bad advice. And of course we have the issue that most devs don't have time to handhold everybody, and part of the cost of accepting free help with support is that you are going to have varying levels of expertise. Personally I don't have an issue with having Forums - I think they're a mode of communication that has certain advantages as well as disadvantages. My issue is more with the fact that we are tending to get some kind of schism in the community along with them, in part because there isn't universal agreement around certain values (not just the CoC though that is part of it). -- Rich ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-12 3:38 ` Michał Górny 2019-06-12 9:42 ` Alec Warner @ 2019-06-12 13:40 ` Jimi Huotari 1 sibling, 0 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Jimi Huotari @ 2019-06-12 13:40 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5554 bytes --] On Wed, 12 Jun 2019 05:38:30 +0200 Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Tue, 2019-06-04 at 15:05 +0200, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote: > > The agenda item "Forums (specifically OTW)" was deferred to further > > discussion in the mailing lists during the 2019-02-10 council meeting. > > The agenda for that meeting can be found at [Agenda] and the tracking > > bug is [Bug 677824]. > > > > This email aims to re-opens the discussion [which was started in a > > previous thread] as per the council decision. > > > > I ask that the discussion remains civil and respectful, while also > > allowing for a high bar for the actual discussion. > > > > I don't think OTW is a major problem. The real problem are *technical* > forums, and those cause two problems. The first of them is that > developers rarely hear of the problems with their packages. The second > of them is that Forums tend to breed very bad 'solutions'. > > I don't mind providing multiple support channels as long as problems > actually reach developers. However, I don't think it's news to most of > the developers who don't actively participate in Forums (read: look > for new threads everywhere) that some problems never leave them. > > During my years in Gentoo I've been pinged a few times over expansive > Forum threads on problems with my packages which never made it to > Bugzilla or anything else that I actually could've noticed. It all > relies on courtesy of accidental developers (who are not Forum > moderators, I should add). I can only imagine how many problems were > never addressed properly because the maintainer never learned of them, > and cheap hacks proposed on Forums were sufficient for the users. It would be nice to have some actual examples of these issues. I have been browsing the forums since 2010 as a user, and since 2015 as a moderator, and what /I/ tend to see, is people encouraging others\r to file bug reports [1][2][3][4][5] whenever it seems to be a good\r idea. I wonder how many bugs would /not/ have been brought to the\r attention of developers without the forums. :] I dare say the forums often save developer time by quite a lot, too, when the issue at hand would be resolved as INVALID for example, which might additionally leave the user frustrated and without any idea towards how to fix things [6]. Ultimately, it's up to the user of course, just like it would be without the forums. > A side effect of the former problem is that Forums are home to many > horrible 'solutions'. Sadly, those solutions sometimes involve making > things *much worse* than they were before. This is problem both for > users who end up victims of having their systems broken, and developers > who end up having to help fix the resulting breakage. > > Breakage resulting from use of dev-python/pip is the most prominent > example I know of. Multiple Forum victims ended up using it to 'fix' > problems. As a result, they ended up with obsolete directly installed > packages overriding Gentoo packages and breaking stuff. The scale of > this was so great that I had to actually patch dev-python/pip to block > installing packages system-wide. Which is a technical hack to a social > problem. When I think of 'pip' and the forums, all I can think of, is users asking others /not/ to install things as root with it [7][8][9][10][11]. I suspect this issue has more to do with 'pip' itself, and the guides/documentation regarding it in the wild. > I'm not saying Forums is the only source of the problem, people can > figure out how to break systems themselves. However, Forums is > frequently a source of bad information that is mistakenly trusted > and is not properly verified and rejected. > > To summarize, I think the two major problems with the Forums are: > 1) not passing information properly to package maintainers, > and 2) lack of proper Q/A. If you can solve them, I don't have any > problem with the Forums. For 1), perhaps we could create scripts that will scan all the forum forum posts that are being created, and, when a package name is matched, will send copies of the posts via mail to the maintainers of said packages that are being discussed, and perhaps automatically files bug reports for them as well, why not. For 2), have all the posts go via the Gentoo Quality Assurance Project, before they hit the forums? There may be some jest within the preceding suggestions, but I don't quite see how you'd expect these things to be fixed (that is not to say that I agree them being problems that are in need of a fix). It's a community helping out the community, and if it has been a great burden on developers, I don't remember having heard or read of it before now. 0. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-826842.html 1. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-189786.html#189786 2. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3341931.html#3341931 3. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8030732.html#8030732 4. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7143726.html#7143726 5. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8233138.html#8233138 6. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1073732.html 7. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7497450.html#7497450 8. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8109926.html#8109926 9. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7901776.html#7901776 10. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7665482.html#7665482 11. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8226884.html#8226884 [-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 981 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
* [gentoo-project] Re: Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) 2019-06-04 13:05 [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-04 13:15 ` Dirkjan Ochtman 2019-06-12 3:38 ` Michał Górny @ 2019-06-14 16:04 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand 2 siblings, 0 replies; 22+ messages in thread From: Kristian Fiskerstrand @ 2019-06-14 16:04 UTC (permalink / raw To: gentoo-project [-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1100 bytes --] On 6/4/19 3:05 PM, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote: > The agenda item "Forums (specifically OTW)" was deferred to further > discussion in the mailing lists during the 2019-02-10 council meeting. > The agenda for that meeting can be found at [Agenda] and the tracking > bug is [Bug 677824]. > > This email aims to re-opens the discussion [which was started in a > previous thread] as per the council decision. > > I ask that the discussion remains civil and respectful, while also > allowing for a high bar for the actual discussion. It seems this matter has sparked a bit of debate across the board, but I notice several discussions on the matter in various IRC channels that aren't necessarily followed by relevant parties. I would therefore encourage those having views on the matter to participate in the discussion in the mailing list archives to ensure it is being collected and archived before a decision is made by the Council. -- Kristian Fiskerstrand OpenPGP keyblock reachable at hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net fpr:94CB AFDD 3034 5109 5618 35AA 0B7F 8B60 E3ED FAE3 [-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --] [-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 488 bytes --] ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 22+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2019-06-17 3:03 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 22+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2019-06-04 13:05 [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-04 13:15 ` Dirkjan Ochtman 2019-06-04 13:30 ` Kristian Fiskerstrand 2019-06-06 4:39 ` desultory 2019-06-12 10:04 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-12 11:13 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-12 13:00 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-12 14:09 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-13 2:36 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-15 3:53 ` desultory 2019-06-15 11:17 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-15 11:20 ` Michael Everitt 2019-06-16 4:52 ` desultory 2019-06-16 10:36 ` [gentoo-project] Various IRC Discussions (was Deferred decision: Forums) Rich Freeman 2019-06-17 3:03 ` desultory 2019-06-15 16:39 ` [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW) Raymond Jennings 2019-06-12 3:38 ` Michał Górny 2019-06-12 9:42 ` Alec Warner 2019-06-12 12:16 ` Michał Górny 2019-06-12 12:32 ` Rich Freeman 2019-06-12 13:40 ` Jimi Huotari 2019-06-14 16:04 ` [gentoo-project] " Kristian Fiskerstrand
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