[gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Coucil meeting 2020-12-13

[gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Coucil meeting 2020-12-13

[Georgy Yakovlev]

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In 2 two weeks from now, the Council will meet again. This is
the time to raise and prepare items that the Council should put on the
agenda to discuss or vote on.

Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
suggested one (since the last meeting).

The agenda for the meeting will be sent out on Sunday 2020-12-06.

Please reply to the gentoo-project list.

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Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Andreas K. Hüttel]

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> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> suggested one (since the last meeting).

I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the Wall" 
(OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.

Rationale:

* provides zero value to the distribution
* large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
  Gentoo to be associated with
* it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
  (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
* forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their roles
  (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar discussion
  one year ago

This leaves us with two options:

1) shut down OTW
or
2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill the
   moderator role in OTW

I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons 
* that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
* and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
), so 1) it is.

Cheers, Andreas

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer 
(council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Alec Warner]

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On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@gentoo.org>
wrote:

> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
>
> I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the
> Wall"
> (OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
>

FWIW my reply is very long but mostly comes down to what I feel is..lets
try to call it 3 principles.

(1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with others.
(2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
people's personal preferences.
(3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
provide some data to clarify some various points.

Also FYI: What about the polish OTW (
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-61.html)


>
> Rationale:
>
> * provides zero value to the distribution
>

I think the OTW forum does provide value. Can you elaborate on why you
think the value is 0?

For example, forum-mods move offtopic threads from other forums into OTW,
so it serves as a holding bin for those conversations. We could advocate
moving those to the dustbin, but the dustbin is readonly, so threads may
come back.

In addition there are those who believe that the offtopic nature of OTW
keeps the rest of the forums a nicer cleaner place, and that suppressing
this content can have unintended consequences. So I request that you do
consider the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of this decision.

* large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
>   Gentoo to be associated with
>

The argument about it being toxic and you not liking it is...well...it's a
bad argument! All of a sudden you can just delete projects from Gentoo
because you "don't want to be associated with them because you think they
are toxic?" Isn't this a bit of a slippery slope? I think you have a good
argument, but you muddle it with this stuff. E.g. the following:

   - OTW contains some content that clearly violates the CoC
   - OTW is not necessary for operation of Gentoo
   - Moderating OTW is not currently happening to the council's
   satisfaction, and thus the CoC is being violated on a routine basis
   - It's unclear we have a plan for changing the OTW moderation, so our
   options are the two you proposed below.

This mostly has nothing to do with 'how much you hate OTW' and more to do
with actually enforcing policies you were elected to enforce and I'd (if I
actually believed the 4th item was true) would clearly support this vote.
But this item sounds like you are deleting OTW because you dislike it and
my answer is "that is not a policy I can support." In short, I don't think
this argument supports your conclusion, it erodes it because we shouldn't
make policy decisions based on what you like or dislike.


> * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
>   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
>

According to what data?

Looking at the past year:
select COUNT(*) as cnt, IF(phpbb_posts.forum_id=10,true, false) as forum,
phpbb_users.user_id as user from phpbb_users INNER JOIN phpbb_posts ON
phpbb_posts.poster_id=phpbb_users.user_id where phpbb_posts.post_time >
UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365 DAY)) and
phpbb_posts.poster_id IN (select DISTINCT(poster_id) from phpbb_posts where
forum_id=10 and post_time > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365
DAY))) group by user, forum order by user, cnt, forum desc;

Which basically says "find everyone who posted in OTW in the past year,
group their posts by (COUNT, OTW, !OTW) and you will find that most of them
post in other forums fairly regularly. Are there people who only post in
OTW? Sure. Is it "everyone in OTW?" No.

I suspect the underlying issue is that OTW is dominated by a small number
of posters; I've tried to provide data to clarify the distribution of
posters (forgive my bad mysql.)

OTW has ~1.4 million posts total
OTW has ~10500 posts in the past 365 days.
The top poster has 1187 posts in OTW in the past 365 days (~1/10 posts)
The top 20 posters have 9251 posts in OTW in the past 365 days (9/10 posts
are these 20 people)
COUNT of all posters who posted to OTW in the past 365 days is 159, which
means for those 139 remaining users, they handle the remaining 1200 (10%)
of posts in OTW.

I avoided doing the analysis historically because there are tons of people
who posted like 100k times in 2008 and don't post anymore and they mess up
the numbers; so I stuck to the past 365 days of data.

If you want to conclude that "OTW is mostly a place for 20 people to chat"
I think the data supports this conclusion.
If you want to conclude that "The 20 people who chat in OTW mostly don't
chat in other forums" I think the data does not support this conclusion.


> * forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their
> roles
>   (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar
> discussion
>   one year ago
>

If you want to say 'desultory has made it clear' I'd believe that argument.
I'm not really convinced the other moderators necessarily agree (but more
on this below.)


>
> This leaves us with two options:
>
> 1) shut down OTW
> or
> 2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill
> the
>    moderator role in OTW
>

In 2019 I wrote:
---
Why do we specifically target the forums?
(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)
trying to legislate the job of a moderation team that we have essentially
failed to achieve any common ground with.
---

I continue to sustain that the forums contains i, i is primarily the
problem, and we have failed to convince the mods to do anything. Part of my
concern (again restating above) is that the argument used against OTW isn't
just i, but is also ii and iii and I find these arguments less relevant.

ii: If we banned every medium that had content unrelated to Gentoo, we
would likely have no mediums left.
iii: If we banned content that we found objectionable but didn't violate
the CoC, we should consider amending the CoC to cover that content and then
that relabels iii into i.

I personally don't find the situation very recoverable because in theory
I'd like to see the moderators moderate OTW more, but I think that ship has
sailed after repeated failed attempts at gaining that support.

-A


> I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons
> * that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
> * and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
> ), so 1) it is.
>
> Cheers, Andreas
>
> --
> Andreas K. Hüttel
> dilfridge@gentoo.org
> Gentoo Linux developer
> (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Alec Warner]

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On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07 PM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
>
>> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
>> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
>> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
>>
>> I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the
>> Wall"
>> (OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
>>
>
> FWIW my reply is very long but mostly comes down to what I feel is..lets
> try to call it 3 principles.
>
> (1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with
> others.
> (2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
> people's personal preferences.
> (3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
> provide some data to clarify some various points.
>

Branching this thread, because I'm interested more in the process parts.

More principles here and in general decision making. If we ditch a thing
because "you like it" or "you think it's toxic" it's a subjective basis for
decision making. It poses a few challenges.

 - It's functionally easy to reverse, because subjective decisions are
basically  capricious. We can elect a new council and they can just undo it
because there is no rational basis for the decision.
 - If I'm the forums mod team and I'm told a forum needs to be deleted
because it violates the CoC, I have somewhat concrete action items I can
take to save it. If I am instead told that a forum needs to be deleted
because "community members find it toxic" I'm less clear on what the next
steps are; particularly if I think the forum is following the CoC.
 - Similarly, It's unclear what the scope of 'toxicity' is, and so the lack
of options (to defend against it) leads to toxicity being used as a weapon
(much as people feared the CoC might be used.)

I also don't see a ton of the steps here (admittedly there are significant
numbers of threads stretching back years on this topic.) For instance I
might start by getting in sync with forums mods.

 - Do they agree that comments in OTW violate the CoC? I think the answer
is currently unclear (but maybe it is clear, I dunno.)
 - Do they agree that the CoC is clear (and so are comfortable enforcing
it?) They seem to enforce some kind of moderation in other forums, so that
is a good sign at least. It also means if the CoC is unclear, we can
discuss and amend it..but I don't think that discussion ever really took
place.
 - Do they agree that if the Coc was amended or clarified, they would
enforce it in OTW?
 - Do you agree that OTW could stay if the CoC was enforced satisfactorily?

I think this framing also helps us understand where we are, and where the
process went wrong.

If we disagree that OTW can stay if the CoC was enforced...then any further
conversation seems pointless.

If forum-mods refuse to enforce the CoC in OTW, then we are forced to
either find new mods for OTW, or close it.

If the forum-mods disagree that OTW posts violate the CoC, then we need to
either convince them or modify the CoC.

Many of these problems have clear next steps...but I have no idea where we
landed in this process at all or why it is suddenly deemed futile to stop
trying and go directly to "close forum."

-A


>
> Also FYI: What about the polish OTW (
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-61.html)
>

>
>>
>> Rationale:
>>
>> * provides zero value to the distribution
>>
>
> I think the OTW forum does provide value. Can you elaborate on why you
> think the value is 0?
>
> For example, forum-mods move offtopic threads from other forums into OTW,
> so it serves as a holding bin for those conversations. We could advocate
> moving those to the dustbin, but the dustbin is readonly, so threads may
> come back.
>
> In addition there are those who believe that the offtopic nature of OTW
> keeps the rest of the forums a nicer cleaner place, and that suppressing
> this content can have unintended consequences. So I request that you do
> consider the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of this decision.
>
> * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others)
>> wish
>>   Gentoo to be associated with
>>
>
> The argument about it being toxic and you not liking it is...well...it's a
> bad argument! All of a sudden you can just delete projects from Gentoo
> because you "don't want to be associated with them because you think they
> are toxic?" Isn't this a bit of a slippery slope? I think you have a good
> argument, but you muddle it with this stuff. E.g. the following:
>
>    - OTW contains some content that clearly violates the CoC
>    - OTW is not necessary for operation of Gentoo
>    - Moderating OTW is not currently happening to the council's
>    satisfaction, and thus the CoC is being violated on a routine basis
>    - It's unclear we have a plan for changing the OTW moderation, so our
>    options are the two you proposed below.
>
> This mostly has nothing to do with 'how much you hate OTW' and more to do
> with actually enforcing policies you were elected to enforce and I'd (if I
> actually believed the 4th item was true) would clearly support this vote.
> But this item sounds like you are deleting OTW because you dislike it and
> my answer is "that is not a policy I can support." In short, I don't think
> this argument supports your conclusion, it erodes it because we shouldn't
> make policy decisions based on what you like or dislike.
>
>
>> * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the
>> forums
>>   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
>>
>
> According to what data?
>
> Looking at the past year:
> select COUNT(*) as cnt, IF(phpbb_posts.forum_id=10,true, false) as forum,
> phpbb_users.user_id as user from phpbb_users INNER JOIN phpbb_posts ON
> phpbb_posts.poster_id=phpbb_users.user_id where phpbb_posts.post_time >
> UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365 DAY)) and
> phpbb_posts.poster_id IN (select DISTINCT(poster_id) from phpbb_posts where
> forum_id=10 and post_time > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365
> DAY))) group by user, forum order by user, cnt, forum desc;
>
> Which basically says "find everyone who posted in OTW in the past year,
> group their posts by (COUNT, OTW, !OTW) and you will find that most of them
> post in other forums fairly regularly. Are there people who only post in
> OTW? Sure. Is it "everyone in OTW?" No.
>
> I suspect the underlying issue is that OTW is dominated by a small number
> of posters; I've tried to provide data to clarify the distribution of
> posters (forgive my bad mysql.)
>
> OTW has ~1.4 million posts total
> OTW has ~10500 posts in the past 365 days.
> The top poster has 1187 posts in OTW in the past 365 days (~1/10 posts)
> The top 20 posters have 9251 posts in OTW in the past 365 days (9/10 posts
> are these 20 people)
> COUNT of all posters who posted to OTW in the past 365 days is 159, which
> means for those 139 remaining users, they handle the remaining 1200 (10%)
> of posts in OTW.
>
> I avoided doing the analysis historically because there are tons of people
> who posted like 100k times in 2008 and don't post anymore and they mess up
> the numbers; so I stuck to the past 365 days of data.
>
> If you want to conclude that "OTW is mostly a place for 20 people to chat"
> I think the data supports this conclusion.
> If you want to conclude that "The 20 people who chat in OTW mostly don't
> chat in other forums" I think the data does not support this conclusion.
>
>
>> * forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their
>> roles
>>   (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar
>> discussion
>>   one year ago
>>
>
> If you want to say 'desultory has made it clear' I'd believe that
> argument. I'm not really convinced the other moderators necessarily agree
> (but more on this below.)
>
>
>>
>> This leaves us with two options:
>>
>> 1) shut down OTW
>> or
>> 2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill
>> the
>>    moderator role in OTW
>>
>
> In 2019 I wrote:
> ---
> Why do we specifically target the forums?
> (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)
> trying to legislate the job of a moderation team that we have essentially
> failed to achieve any common ground with.
> ---
>
> I continue to sustain that the forums contains i, i is primarily the
> problem, and we have failed to convince the mods to do anything. Part of my
> concern (again restating above) is that the argument used against OTW isn't
> just i, but is also ii and iii and I find these arguments less relevant.
>
> ii: If we banned every medium that had content unrelated to Gentoo, we
> would likely have no mediums left.
> iii: If we banned content that we found objectionable but didn't violate
> the CoC, we should consider amending the CoC to cover that content and then
> that relabels iii into i.
>
> I personally don't find the situation very recoverable because in theory
> I'd like to see the moderators moderate OTW more, but I think that ship has
> sailed after repeated failed attempts at gaining that support.
>
> -A
>
>
>> I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons
>> * that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
>> * and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
>> ), so 1) it is.
>>
>> Cheers, Andreas
>>
>> --
>> Andreas K. Hüttel
>> dilfridge@gentoo.org
>> Gentoo Linux developer
>> (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)
>
>

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:30:25PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07 PM Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@gentoo.org>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> >> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> >> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
> >>
> >> I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the
> >> Wall"
> >> (OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
> >>
> >
> > FWIW my reply is very long but mostly comes down to what I feel is..lets
> > try to call it 3 principles.
> >
> > (1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with
> > others.
> > (2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
> > people's personal preferences.
> > (3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
> > provide some data to clarify some various points.
> >
> 
> Branching this thread, because I'm interested more in the process parts.
> 
> More principles here and in general decision making. If we ditch a thing
> because "you like it" or "you think it's toxic" it's a subjective basis for
> decision making. It poses a few challenges.
> 
>  - It's functionally easy to reverse, because subjective decisions are
> basically  capricious. We can elect a new council and they can just undo it
> because there is no rational basis for the decision.

So is the nature of democracy.

>  - Do they agree that comments in OTW violate the CoC? I think the answer
> is currently unclear (but maybe it is clear, I dunno.)

>  - Do they agree that the CoC is clear (and so are comfortable enforcing
> it?) They seem to enforce some kind of moderation in other forums, so that
> is a good sign at least. It also means if the CoC is unclear, we can
> discuss and amend it..but I don't think that discussion ever really took
> place.

Simply because this has become the "norm" does not justify it. You
are making an assumption that "enforcement here" and "not there" is
because of some conscious decision to do the "right thing" by the CoC.
It is not. It has clearly been stated and proven that mods mostly ignore
OTW and let it go. Over time, that has become a problem... so "fixing
it" is difficult.

>  - Do they agree that if the Coc was amended or clarified, they would
> enforce it in OTW?

See below. This is silly.

>  - Do you agree that OTW could stay if the CoC was enforced satisfactorily?
>

Yes, but it is a lost cause. Also, finding someone to "clean it up" will
likely be more difficult than finding a tax specialist who only uses
open source software. Because, principles.

> If we disagree that OTW can stay if the CoC was enforced...then any further
> conversation seems pointless.
>

See previous comments regarding the steady decline of OTW and the
inability to properly moderate it now.

> If forum-mods refuse to enforce the CoC in OTW, then we are forced to
> either find new mods for OTW, or close it.
> 

Remove privileges, delete the forum subsection (or whatever it is), and
burn the content. It contains very offensive (oh, subjectiveness)
content. I wouldn't want an individual with privileges who finds such
content acceptable.

> If the forum-mods disagree that OTW posts violate the CoC, then we need to
> either convince them or modify the CoC.
> 

As I stated in my reply to the other thread... you cannot legislate
common sense. The inability of someone to rationally interpret the CoC
and understand the relevance of the forums to the distro is *not* a
reason to modify our CoC.

Sure, we can "convince them" but at this stage... they likely don't
share a common view of the distro with the rest of the community.

> Many of these problems have clear next steps...but I have no idea where we
> landed in this process at all or why it is suddenly deemed futile to stop
> trying and go directly to "close forum."
>

As said in other thread, there has been clear escalation. There are bugs
to show it. I was fairly certain you were "aware of it."

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07:53PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> (1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with others.

<snip>

There has been a steady escalation here by the council and various other
developers. So, this is satisfied (or is that subjective of me to
assume?). Is there a metric for establishing whether good faith has
occured?

> (2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
> people's personal preferences.

No matter how much you want to be objective... we are humans and
subjectiveness is a part of that. The CoC is a shared policy... hell,
some may even say it isn't as they weren't there to adopt/formalize it.
So, there's that. 

> (3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
> provide some data to clarify some various points.
> 

I don't find the data here relevant. Regardless of
who/what/where/when (which is what data will give us)... I want to
understand the why.

Quite simply, the why is... because people have nothing better to do on
a forum meant for something completely different. More on this later.

> Also FYI: What about the polish OTW (
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-61.html)
>

Not really sure what relevance this plays as I do not know Polish. Also,
relying on automatic translation of such content, in this context, seems
short-sighted.

> 
> >
> > Rationale:
> >
> > * provides zero value to the distribution
> >
> 
> I think the OTW forum does provide value. Can you elaborate on why you
> think the value is 0?
> 
> For example, forum-mods move offtopic threads from other forums into OTW,
> so it serves as a holding bin for those conversations. We could advocate
> moving those to the dustbin, but the dustbin is readonly, so threads may
> come back.
> 
> In addition there are those who believe that the offtopic nature of OTW
> keeps the rest of the forums a nicer cleaner place, and that suppressing
> this content can have unintended consequences. So I request that you do
> consider the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of this decision.
> 

Pump the breaks. So, you are justifying that they do play a role because
it provides a dumping ground for things that *are not* relevant to the
forums?

Furthermore, it is not suppression. It is ensuring that the nature of
the forums is *relevant* to the goal of the forums... which is to support
the Gentoo distribution (here comes the subjectiveness). How threads
discussing politics, conspiracy theories, or other shenanigans relates
to Gentoo's goals is beyond me.

FTR, there are threads discussing very dark times in the world's
history such as Hitler etc. Are these really things we want our
sponsors' monies/hardware and our donations going to support? Are we
really being good stewards of the monies, hardware, etc donated to
further our cause as a distro? 

Maybe our donors are objective too, but I doubt they would be happy with
such a situation.

> * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
> >   Gentoo to be associated with

<snip>

The argument from our "elected" official is very valid. Isn't that what
he is there for? He has to be subjective, but he has also publically
stated on many mediums *why* OTW is bad for us. Additionally, many
others agree.

Policies are great, but you cannot legislate common sense (which IMHO is
where subjectiveness plays a role). Attempting to delineate every
possible scenario of things we deem "not OK" is asinine. This is what
the CoC is for and why we have an elected council to interpret
it/enforce it (along with COMREL).

This brings up a larger point. I am sure there are many developers who
would argue with COMREL and/or the Council regarding their
subjectiveness to forcibly retire them. Should we do away with the
council too? It's a slippery slope toward objectiveness.

> > * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
> >   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
> >
> 
> According to what data?
> 
> Looking at the past year:
> select COUNT(*) as cnt, IF(phpbb_posts.forum_id=10,true, false) as forum,
> phpbb_users.user_id as user from phpbb_users INNER JOIN phpbb_posts ON
> phpbb_posts.poster_id=phpbb_users.user_id where phpbb_posts.post_time >
> UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365 DAY)) and
> phpbb_posts.poster_id IN (select DISTINCT(poster_id) from phpbb_posts where

<snip>

Cool data. The problem is the *why*. None of this content, regardless of
who/what/where/when is relevant to us as a distro.

<snip>

> sailed after repeated failed attempts at gaining that support.
> 

So, like, what is your counter proposal or proposal here? You seem to be
playing a "devils advocate", but have very strong opinions on why Andreas is
wrong in his approach.

So, what would Alec do?

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Alec Warner]

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On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 6:58 AM Aaron Bauman <bman@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07:53PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@gentoo.org>
> > wrote:
> > (1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with
> others.
>
> <snip>
>
> There has been a steady escalation here by the council and various other
> developers. So, this is satisfied (or is that subjective of me to
> assume?). Is there a metric for establishing whether good faith has
> occured?
>

It's my (subjective) belief that a good faith discussion with forum-mods
never occurred. Feel free to disagree!


>
> > (2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
> > people's personal preferences.
>
> No matter how much you want to be objective... we are humans and
> subjectiveness is a part of that. The CoC is a shared policy... hell,
> some may even say it isn't as they weren't there to adopt/formalize it.
> So, there's that.


My point is more like "this belief that everyone dislikes OTW" is poorly
measured and poorly falsifiable. This point was also made on -core where it
was suggested to have a better basis for the decision to avoid
flip-flopping. If you end up with a rational basis then different people
can examine the situation and draw the same conclusions.

Is the CoC a rational basis? I mean there is definitely subjectivity to it,
but I think it's clearly more of a shared belief than "I think X is toxic"
and there are fairly clear guidelines in the CoC today (and we could add
more.) We could ask questions like (quoting the CoC's unacceptable behavior
here):
Does this activity happen on OTW?
---
- Flaming and trolling. What is trolling? You are deemed to be trolling if
you make comments intended to provoke an angry response from others. What
is flaming? Flaming is the act of sending or posting messages that are
deliberately hostile and insulting.
- Posting/participating only to incite drama or negativity rather than to
tactfully share information.
- Being judgmental, mean-spirited or insulting. It is possible to
respectfully challenge someone in a way that empowers without being
judgemental.
- Constantly purveying misinformation despite repeated warnings.
---
I'd argue it does contain some of these things. If it *didn't* contain
those things, would we consider keeping it? I'd like to think yes.


> > (3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
> > provide some data to clarify some various points.
> >
>
> I don't find the data here relevant. Regardless of
> who/what/where/when (which is what data will give us)... I want to
> understand the why.
>
> Quite simply, the why is... because people have nothing better to do on
> a forum meant for something completely different. More on this later.
>

Yeah I don't want to live in a world where I have to "do gentoo" in every
channel all the time. You and I have had numerous discussions of non-gentoo
topics on IRC, but I don't see anyone advocating for deleting IRC as a
medium. People talk about offtopic stuff. It's a thing that will happen and
will continue to happen..basically forever. So this policy where we must
only allow Gentoo topics is...I think it's a bit inane.


>
> > Also FYI: What about the polish OTW (
> > https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-61.html)
> >
>
> Not really sure what relevance this plays as I do not know Polish. Also,
> relying on automatic translation of such content, in this context, seems
> short-sighted.
>

It's a question of scope. Are we deleting "OTW" or "OTW and polish OTW."


>
> >
> > >
> > > Rationale:
> > >
> > > * provides zero value to the distribution
> > >
> >
> > I think the OTW forum does provide value. Can you elaborate on why you
> > think the value is 0?
> >
> > For example, forum-mods move offtopic threads from other forums into OTW,
> > so it serves as a holding bin for those conversations. We could advocate
> > moving those to the dustbin, but the dustbin is readonly, so threads may
> > come back.
> >
> > In addition there are those who believe that the offtopic nature of OTW
> > keeps the rest of the forums a nicer cleaner place, and that suppressing
> > this content can have unintended consequences. So I request that you do
> > consider the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of this decision.
> >
>
> Pump the breaks. So, you are justifying that they do play a role because
> it provides a dumping ground for things that *are not* relevant to the
> forums?
>

I'm refuting an argument. The argument is that the OTW forum has 0 value.
I'm suggesting the value is non-zero.


>
> Furthermore, it is not suppression. It is ensuring that the nature of
> the forums is *relevant* to the goal of the forums... which is to support
> the Gentoo distribution (here comes the subjectiveness). How threads
> discussing politics, conspiracy theories, or other shenanigans relates
> to Gentoo's goals is beyond me.
>

I mean it's clearly suppression. That isn't to say suppression is bad. We
"suppress" SPAM for the same reason and I don't see anyone going around
saying we should let spambots fill up the forums ;)


>
> FTR, there are threads discussing very dark times in the world's
> history such as Hitler etc. Are these really things we want our
> sponsors' monies/hardware and our donations going to support? Are we
> really being good stewards of the monies, hardware, etc donated to
> further our cause as a distro?


>
> Maybe our donors are objective too, but I doubt they would be happy with
> such a situation.
>

Again though, is this a real argument or a boogeyman argument? "Our donors
might be unhappy with X, so you should stop doing X."
So I'd ask...are our donors unhappy? If they are, then sure, we can take
action! But I suspect the answer is "we have no idea what they think about
the forums, or OTW" and so again, it's not a great basis for action.


> > * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others)
> wish
> > >   Gentoo to be associated with
>
> <snip>
>
> The argument from our "elected" official is very valid. Isn't that what
> he is there for? He has to be subjective, but he has also publically
> stated on many mediums *why* OTW is bad for us. Additionally, many
> others agree.
>
> Policies are great, but you cannot legislate common sense (which IMHO is
> where subjectiveness plays a role). Attempting to delineate every
> possible scenario of things we deem "not OK" is asinine. This is what
> the CoC is for and why we have an elected council to interpret
> it/enforce it (along with COMREL).
>
> This brings up a larger point. I am sure there are many developers who
> would argue with COMREL and/or the Council regarding their
> subjectiveness to forcibly retire them. Should we do away with the
> council too? It's a slippery slope toward objectiveness.
>

My point is that dillfridge presented a multi-faceted argument. One point
was "large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others)
wish
Gentoo to be associated with". Perhaps he intended this to mean "large
parts of the content violate the CoC" in which case I'd be open to a
clarification. The point as written is bad though; and it's not
justification for action as written, IMHO.


>
> > > * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the
> forums
> > >   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
> > >
> >
> > According to what data?
> >
> > Looking at the past year:
> > select COUNT(*) as cnt, IF(phpbb_posts.forum_id=10,true, false) as forum,
> > phpbb_users.user_id as user from phpbb_users INNER JOIN phpbb_posts ON
> > phpbb_posts.poster_id=phpbb_users.user_id where phpbb_posts.post_time >
> > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365 DAY)) and
> > phpbb_posts.poster_id IN (select DISTINCT(poster_id) from phpbb_posts
> where
>
> <snip>
>
> Cool data. The problem is the *why*. None of this content, regardless of
> who/what/where/when is relevant to us as a distro.
>

It was raised in the original argument..so I provided additional context.
If you want to agree that the point is irrelevant to the decision, well I
could agree to that ;)


>
> <snip>


> > sailed after repeated failed attempts at gaining that support.
> >
>
> So, like, what is your counter proposal or proposal here? You seem to be
> playing a "devils advocate", but have very strong opinions on why Andreas
> is
> wrong in his approach.
>

> So, what would Alec do?
>

Alec would structure the argument better.
Avoid making points that detract from my case.
Avoid bringing in arguments with no factual basis.
Substantiate my arguments with data.

-A


> --
> Cheers,
> Aaron
>

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 08:16:16AM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 6:58 AM Aaron Bauman <bman@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07:53PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> It's my (subjective) belief that a good faith discussion with forum-mods
> My point is more like "this belief that everyone dislikes OTW" is poorly
> measured and poorly falsifiable. This point was also made on -core where it
> was suggested to have a better basis for the decision to avoid
> flip-flopping. If you end up with a rational basis then different people
> can examine the situation and draw the same conclusions.
> 
> Is the CoC a rational basis? I mean there is definitely subjectivity to it,
> but I think it's clearly more of a shared belief than "I think X is toxic"
> and there are fairly clear guidelines in the CoC today (and we could add
> more.) We could ask questions like (quoting the CoC's unacceptable behavior
> here):
> Does this activity happen on OTW?
> 
> Yeah I don't want to live in a world where I have to "do gentoo" in every
> channel all the time. You and I have had numerous discussions of non-gentoo
> topics on IRC, but I don't see anyone advocating for deleting IRC as a
> medium. People talk about offtopic stuff. It's a thing that will happen and
> will continue to happen..basically forever. So this policy where we must
> only allow Gentoo topics is...I think it's a bit inane.
>

The reasoning is simply based on the fact that it is a hosted forum.
Paid for by others who donate to us in good faith to support the
distribution. If this entails such discussions as seen in OTW... I would
be highly surprised. So, the question is quite a rhetorical one.

> It's a question of scope. Are we deleting "OTW" or "OTW and polish OTW."
> 

Is that what it is? I don't read/speak Polish.

> >
> I'm refuting an argument. The argument is that the OTW forum has 0 value.
> I'm suggesting the value is non-zero.
>

Sure, but you are refuting it by stating that OTW does play a role and
that role is to house all the things that don't belong.

> 
> >
> > Maybe our donors are objective too, but I doubt they would be happy with
> > such a situation.
> >
> 
> Again though, is this a real argument or a boogeyman argument? "Our donors
> might be unhappy with X, so you should stop doing X."
> So I'd ask...are our donors unhappy? If they are, then sure, we can take
> action! But I suspect the answer is "we have no idea what they think about
> the forums, or OTW" and so again, it's not a great basis for action.
>

If you want to attempt quantifying the matter go for it. It is mostly a
rhetorical question. If you cannot rationalize this on your own there is
a larger concern.

Let's use an example here... if I donate to "Alec for President"
and you go spend all my donations on ice cream. I may be a little angry,
no? This is not the "good faith" I would be assuming by donating. I
don't think we need to attempt to quantify this. Any amount spent
or donated resource used is wrong.

There is a purpose to my donations which is to support the distro. Not make a
cozy forum for people to rant/rave on about Hitler, politics, and conspiracy
theories. It is antithetical.

I suppose your next suggestion would be a document stating what donations
should/could/would be used for?

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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[gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[desultory]

On 12/01/20 12:31, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 08:16:16AM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 6:58 AM Aaron Bauman <bman@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07:53PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
>> It's my (subjective) belief that a good faith discussion with forum-mods
>> My point is more like "this belief that everyone dislikes OTW" is poorly
>> measured and poorly falsifiable. This point was also made on -core where it
>> was suggested to have a better basis for the decision to avoid
>> flip-flopping. If you end up with a rational basis then different people
>> can examine the situation and draw the same conclusions.
>>
>> Is the CoC a rational basis? I mean there is definitely subjectivity to it,
>> but I think it's clearly more of a shared belief than "I think X is toxic"
>> and there are fairly clear guidelines in the CoC today (and we could add
>> more.) We could ask questions like (quoting the CoC's unacceptable behavior
>> here):
>> Does this activity happen on OTW?
>>
>> Yeah I don't want to live in a world where I have to "do gentoo" in every
>> channel all the time. You and I have had numerous discussions of non-gentoo
>> topics on IRC, but I don't see anyone advocating for deleting IRC as a
>> medium. People talk about offtopic stuff. It's a thing that will happen and
>> will continue to happen..basically forever. So this policy where we must
>> only allow Gentoo topics is...I think it's a bit inane.
>>
> 
> The reasoning is simply based on the fact that it is a hosted forum.
> Paid for by others who donate to us in good faith to support the
> distribution. If this entails such discussions as seen in OTW... I would
> be highly surprised. So, the question is quite a rhetorical one.
> 
So, your opinion is that we should not use resources donated for a
specific purpose (hosting the forums) for that purpose, but we are free
to use resources donated to other entities for purposes entirely
disjoint from producing, maintaining, and supporting an operating system
(toolkit) because the resources that were donated to the entities that
are providing services to us are paid for by others? And you consider
that to be logically consistent? Even aside from the fact that the
hosting would be donated to the Gentoo Foundation, thus if the question
actually was one of suitable use of donated resources, the council is
not even the right body to be considering removing Off the Wall.

>> It's a question of scope. Are we deleting "OTW" or "OTW and polish OTW."
>>
> 
> Is that what it is? I don't read/speak Polish.
> 
>>>
>> I'm refuting an argument. The argument is that the OTW forum has 0 value.
>> I'm suggesting the value is non-zero.
>>
> 
> Sure, but you are refuting it by stating that OTW does play a role and
> that role is to house all the things that don't belong.
> 
Thereby making the forums, as a whole, distinctly less prone to
misappropriation than other channels of communication used by Gentoo,
whether hosted on systems managed by the infra team or donated to other
entities entirely.

>>
>>>
>>> Maybe our donors are objective too, but I doubt they would be happy with
>>> such a situation.
>>>
>>
>> Again though, is this a real argument or a boogeyman argument? "Our donors
>> might be unhappy with X, so you should stop doing X."
>> So I'd ask...are our donors unhappy? If they are, then sure, we can take
>> action! But I suspect the answer is "we have no idea what they think about
>> the forums, or OTW" and so again, it's not a great basis for action.
>>
> 
> If you want to attempt quantifying the matter go for it. It is mostly a
> rhetorical question. If you cannot rationalize this on your own there is
> a larger concern.
> 
Is your opinion really so self evident that it warrants impugning anyone
who so much as asks you to clearly state it? Even if it was, carrying
through with such retorts would still be against the code of conduct.

> Let's use an example here... if I donate to "Alec for President"
> and you go spend all my donations on ice cream. I may be a little angry,
> no? This is not the "good faith" I would be assuming by donating. I
> don't think we need to attempt to quantify this. Any amount spent
> or donated resource used is wrong.
> 
Is our rhetorical "you" offended that campaigns provide food for their
volunteers, which is not necessarily of the most stringent dietary
value? Does our rhetorical "you" know that donuts and other assorted
"junk food" is typical fare for campaign staff? Would our rhetorical
"you" still be upset if they then found out that Alec for President
hosted a fundraiser in the form of an ice cream social, thereby
multiplying the value to the campaign of the funds which "you" had donated?

> There is a purpose to my donations which is to support the distro. Not make a
> cozy forum for people to rant/rave on about Hitler, politics, and conspiracy
> theories. It is antithetical.
> 
By that argument, are we to now close the project list now that you have
proceeded to "rant/rave on about Hitler, politics, and conspiracy theories"?

> I suppose your next suggestion would be a document stating what donations
> should/could/would be used for?
> 
Would it not be more productive, and less confrontational (again,
counter to the code of conduct which you claim to be supporting), to ask
instead of assembling a straw man?

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Jimi Huotari]

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On Tue, 1 Dec 2020 08:16:16 -0800
Alec Warner <antarus@gentoo.org> wrote:

> > There has been a steady escalation here by the council and various
> > other developers. So, this is satisfied (or is that subjective of me to
> > assume?). Is there a metric for establishing whether good faith has
> > occured?
> >  
> 
> It's my (subjective) belief that a good faith discussion with forum-mods
> never occurred. Feel free to disagree!

As one of the forum admins/mods, this is more or less how I feel as well.

Thank you, A, for your considerate e-mail.

Also thanks to Klondike for their e-mails on this subject back in November.

Speaking of my thoughts and about how I felt about the situation from
around the time when this topic came up again this year: we have the
bug(s) and complaints from the other year, yeah, but I for one seriously
did not realise we were in such a hurry.

There I was, waiting for the forums upgrade to move along, which would
likely mean some changes with regards to the structure of the forums
as users see it (including Off the Wall; I've mentioned this before
already, and these were part of the plans well before anyone brought any
of this up last year).

Life and stuff happens, and people who were mainly working on the upgrade
can't work on it any longer, and I decide to push it forward myself when I
can.  Then, rather suddenly, people demand that we change how things have
been done for quite a long while now, immediately, with some suggestions
towards getting rid of us (admins/mods and the forums) entirely.  I know
that several developers who maintain ebuilds do not consider those who do
not maintain ebuilds (previously 'staffers') as real developers, so that
part isn't a big surprise.

I had actually hoped to finally finish things up with regards to
officially becoming an ebuild maintainer as well, but I'm not so sure
about that any longer... and I digress.

To go back to the topic of urgency for a bit, bug 677824 [1] last said:

"Closing for now, as discussed in today's council meeting. Please reopen
when there is input from the mailing list."

This is the state it was in before the "discussion" started again in the
private mailing list this year.  Before that, I don't know of any sort of
communication towards our general direction on this matter.

The bug now also mentions some IRC conversations as well, which are
something we've not been a part of, though I do admit I am aware of a lot
of them if only because I happen to idle in some of the particular
channels (#gentoo-council and #gentoo-infra for example), and do
occasionally read the back-log.

In closing: it really should not be too surprising that people might be
more willing to change things when they're asked nicely to do so, though
it seems people had already decided what to do here regardless of what we
say or do.

As a kind of a sidey-note, to this day, I don't remember seeing anyone
reporting any of the offending posts as they normally would be, via the
forums [2], which is a big part of how moderation over there happens.  :]

1. https://bugs.gentoo.org/677824
2. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-28820.html

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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On Dienstag, 1. Dezember 2020 23:07:01 CET Jimi Huotari wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Dec 2020 08:16:16 -0800
> Speaking of my thoughts and about how I felt about the situation from
> around the time when this topic came up again this year: we have the
> bug(s) and complaints from the other year, yeah, but I for one seriously
> did not realise we were in such a hurry.
> 
> ...
> 
> To go back to the topic of urgency for a bit, bug 677824 [1] last said:
> 
> "Closing for now, as discussed in today's council meeting. Please reopen
> when there is input from the mailing list."

I'm sure I'm not the only dev who rather regretfully spends time on that 
topic, so the discussion died down, but with bug 677824 in deferred/unresolved 
state it was really only a matter of time for it to re-erupt on a random event 
as nothing has changed since in OTW, both wrt lack of moderation and public 
visibility. None of which should have depended on council action to change, 
but simply on awareness in the forum moderation team.

On Dienstag, 1. Dezember 2020 23:07:01 CET Jimi Huotari wrote:
> I had actually hoped to finally finish things up with regards to
> officially becoming an ebuild maintainer as well, but I'm not so sure
> about that any longer...

That would be a shame.

On Dienstag, 1. Dezember 2020 23:07:01 CET Jimi Huotari wrote:
> As a kind of a sidey-note, to this day, I don't remember seeing anyone
> reporting any of the offending posts as they normally would be, via the
> forums [2], which is a big part of how moderation over there happens.  :]

I've had enough interactions about OTW in 'Gentoo Forums Feedback' to realise 
that is pointless.

Regards

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[gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[desultory]

On 12/01/20 09:58, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07:53PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@gentoo.org>
>> wrote:
>> (1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with others.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There has been a steady escalation here by the council and various other
> developers. So, this is satisfied (or is that subjective of me to
> assume?). Is there a metric for establishing whether good faith has
> occured?
> 
It is not subjective of you to assume that good faith has been
exercised, it is outright disingenuous. If you seriously have trouble
finding ways in which council members have acted in bad faith in regard
to this motion, pointing them out again will be every bit as futile as
when they were pointed out before.

>> (2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
>> people's personal preferences.
> 
> No matter how much you want to be objective... we are humans and
> subjectiveness is a part of that. The CoC is a shared policy... hell,
> some may even say it isn't as they weren't there to adopt/formalize it.
> So, there's that. 
> 
>> (3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
>> provide some data to clarify some various points.
>>
> 
> I don't find the data here relevant. Regardless of
> who/what/where/when (which is what data will give us)... I want to
> understand the why.
> 
> Quite simply, the why is... because people have nothing better to do on
> a forum meant for something completely different. More on this later.
> 
So, data is irrelevant, but your suppositions are pure, unvarnished, and
unsupported, gospel Truth?

>> Also FYI: What about the polish OTW (
>> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-61.html)
>>
> 
> Not really sure what relevance this plays as I do not know Polish. Also,
> relying on automatic translation of such content, in this context, seems
> short-sighted.
> 
>>
>>>
>>> Rationale:
>>>
>>> * provides zero value to the distribution
>>>
>>
>> I think the OTW forum does provide value. Can you elaborate on why you
>> think the value is 0?
>>
>> For example, forum-mods move offtopic threads from other forums into OTW,
>> so it serves as a holding bin for those conversations. We could advocate
>> moving those to the dustbin, but the dustbin is readonly, so threads may
>> come back.
>>
>> In addition there are those who believe that the offtopic nature of OTW
>> keeps the rest of the forums a nicer cleaner place, and that suppressing
>> this content can have unintended consequences. So I request that you do
>> consider the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of this decision.
>>
> 
> Pump the breaks. So, you are justifying that they do play a role because
> it provides a dumping ground for things that *are not* relevant to the
> forums?
> By volume, compared to the forums as a whole, Off the Wall is comparable
to the volume of off topic content present on other channels but it is
segregated from the on topic discuss, unlike other channels.

> Furthermore, it is not suppression. It is ensuring that the nature of
> the forums is *relevant* to the goal of the forums... which is to support
> the Gentoo distribution (here comes the subjectiveness). How threads
> discussing politics, conspiracy theories, or other shenanigans relates
> to Gentoo's goals is beyond me.
> 
As antarus pointed out in another reply to your post, it is indeed
suppression literally by the definition of the word. To claim that Off
the Wall, by mere fact of existence, somehow makes the forums as a whole
not "*relevant* to the goal of the forums" is utterly absurd. And,
again, such discussions take place in channels that are explicitly
dedicated to technical usage, but you dismiss that as not being
problematic despite those channels being expressly misused while Off the
Wall is expressly not being misused when it is used for "discussing
politics, conspiracy theories, or other shenanigan".

Your argument is analogous to claiming that drinking water treatment
facilities should be removed because they collect things that you would
rather not drink in a place that you would not be drinking from, instead
of letting those things enter the water supply in the concentrations
that they exist in the source water. Sure, you can pick out the chunky
bits yourself, but why should everyone be forced to do that when the
water can be centrally filtered to a higher standard?

> FTR, there are threads discussing very dark times in the world's
> history such as Hitler etc. Are these really things we want our
> sponsors' monies/hardware and our donations going to support? Are we
> really being good stewards of the monies, hardware, etc donated to
> further our cause as a distro? 
> 
Some people have an interest in history, and what it can teach us.
Including how and why the worst aspects of it came to pass, along with
whether and in what ways current events reflect those of the past. It is
ironic that you specifically highlight an individual known for
suppressing thought and speech which he considered to be undesirable, to
make it easier for him and those following him to engage in acts which
were beyond barbaric, to support your position that we should
necessarily suppress thought and speech which you consider to be
undesirable.

As for your questions, the hardware that the forums are hosted on was
donated for the hosting of the forums on the condition that the company
providing it received mention in the page footer used by the forums.
That was done with Off the Wall being entirely visible to the public,
and thus to those making the offer. That hardware is used to host other
things beyond the forums, which do not carry the credit to the host. The
obvious inference is that the provider of that hosting considers the
credit on the forums to have sufficient value to support not only the
forums but other services as well, without being put off by Off the
Wall. In short, yes, to both of your questions.

> Maybe our donors are objective too, but I doubt they would be happy with
> such a situation.
> 
Funny, they seemed happy to make the offer to host the forums in the
first place.

>> * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
>>>   Gentoo to be associated with
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The argument from our "elected" official is very valid. Isn't that what
> he is there for? He has to be subjective, but he has also publically
> stated on many mediums *why* OTW is bad for us. Additionally, many
> others agree.
> 
Setting aside various the other assertions, are you seriously arguing
that people are elected for the express purpose that they are to then
act irrationally?

> Policies are great, but you cannot legislate common sense (which IMHO is
> where subjectiveness plays a role). Attempting to delineate every
> possible scenario of things we deem "not OK" is asinine. This is what
> the CoC is for and why we have an elected council to interpret
> it/enforce it (along with COMREL).
> 
> This brings up a larger point. I am sure there are many developers who
> would argue with COMREL and/or the Council regarding their
> subjectiveness to forcibly retire them. Should we do away with the
> council too? It's a slippery slope toward objectiveness.
> 
Frankly, you are making a fine argument for dissolving, at least this
instance of, the council. Abusing policies, to the point of breaking
them, for purely subjective reasons. Ignoring established processes in
pursuit of a personal goals which have little (if any) logical basis.
Having a plurality of members openly acting in bad faith, an outright
majority if comments made outside of the discussions here and on core
are to be considered. Repeated violations of the very policy which they
claim to be acting in support of. Given the pattern of behavior, not
dissolving this council could well be considered irresponsible.

>>> * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
>>>   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
>>>
>>
>> According to what data?
>>
>> Looking at the past year:
>> select COUNT(*) as cnt, IF(phpbb_posts.forum_id=10,true, false) as forum,
>> phpbb_users.user_id as user from phpbb_users INNER JOIN phpbb_posts ON
>> phpbb_posts.poster_id=phpbb_users.user_id where phpbb_posts.post_time >
>> UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365 DAY)) and
>> phpbb_posts.poster_id IN (select DISTINCT(poster_id) from phpbb_posts where
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Cool data. The problem is the *why*. None of this content, regardless of
> who/what/where/when is relevant to us as a distro.
> 
Nor is a fair portion of traffic in other Gentoo affiliated
communications media, while Off the Wall provides a very clearly
delineated space where that discussion does belong instead of simply
chalking up off topic discussion to being part of cost of having on
topic discussions.

With Off the Wall, we can move things that are off topic out of the way
of things that are on topic, without Off the Wall we would need to
invest more time and effort into deciding whether something tangentially
related is close enough to stay. Which, incidentally, is a subjective
decision which is open to disagreement and debate which would itself
consume still more volunteered time. In any scenario where there are
rules being enforced, edge cases consume more resources to consider and
act upon. Not to mention that telling people that there is some fuzzy
line which they cannot cross is often taken as an invitation to prod the
boundaries of that line and complain when subjective decisions could be
interpreted to not perfectly agree with one another over time. Fostering
disorder in the name of fostering order is rather counterproductive.

> <snip>
> 
>> sailed after repeated failed attempts at gaining that support.
>>
> 
> So, like, what is your counter proposal or proposal here? You seem to be
> playing a "devils advocate", but have very strong opinions on why Andreas is
> wrong in his approach.
> 
> So, what would Alec do?
> 

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Aaron W. Swenson]

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On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 05:15:30AM +0200, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
>> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
>> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
>> suggested one (since the last meeting).
>
>I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the Wall"
>(OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
>
>Rationale:
>
>* provides zero value to the distribution
>* large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
>  Gentoo to be associated with
>* it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
>  (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
>* forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their roles
>  (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar discussion
>  one year ago
>
>This leaves us with two options:
>
>1) shut down OTW
>or
>2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill the
>   moderator role in OTW

I propose a third and fourth option here: Make it a privileged area, or split
off to a Religion & Politics forum.

Some other communities have made a dedicated "Religion & Politics" area despite
the community having no connection to religion and politics otherwise. Users who
wish to access the area would need to submit a request via PM to gain access. As
part of the request, the user acknowledges that the forum will be relatively
free from moderation. Only requests for threats of injury will be moderated.
Basically, words are allowed, but stick and stones aren't.

Additionally, it makes the forum private so the topics therein won't come up in
searches, but will still be publicly available. This should minimize non-Gentoo
user participation.

>
>I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons
>* that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
>* and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
>), so 1) it is.
>
>Cheers, Andreas
>
>-- 
>Andreas K. Hüttel
>dilfridge@gentoo.org
>Gentoo Linux developer
>(council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)



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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 10:06:53AM -0500, Aaron W. Swenson wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 05:15:30AM +0200, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
> >> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
> >> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
> >> suggested one (since the last meeting).
> >
> >I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the Wall"
> >(OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
> >
> >Rationale:
> >
> >* provides zero value to the distribution
> >* large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
> >  Gentoo to be associated with
> >* it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
> >  (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
> >* forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their roles
> >  (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar discussion
> >  one year ago
> >
> >This leaves us with two options:
> >
> >1) shut down OTW
> >or
> >2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill the
> >   moderator role in OTW
> 
> I propose a third and fourth option here: Make it a privileged area, or split
> off to a Religion & Politics forum.
>

Hi, Aaron.

We (Gentoo), via the council, have somewhat made this happen by
restricting access to OTW for registered users only. There has been no
discussion over the user acknowledgement portion though.

Overall, I don't think this fits Gentoo. Please see my reply to Alec's
message. The content/subjects in OTW are not supportive of Gentoo in any
fashion. For me, this relates directly to the other projects, sponsors,
and donators that make Gentoo a reality. I do not believe any of these
individuals would support such content being paid for/hosted by donated
hardware/bandwidth/etc.

> Additionally, it makes the forum private so the topics therein won't come up in
> searches, but will still be publicly available. This should minimize non-Gentoo
> user participation.
>

This happened. See above.

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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[gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[desultory]

On 11/30/20 22:15, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
>> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
>> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
>> suggested one (since the last meeting).
> 
> I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the Wall" 
> (OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
> 
To start with, your motion is badly stated, "without replacement" could
be construed as forbidding the creation of any subforums in the future,
especially considering how established process has been egregiously
abused by the council in regard to this issue so far. Beyond that,
"without replacement" without qualification could be construed as
covering any discussion which has taken place in Off the Wall, including
solicitation and coordination of donations to Gentoo and various
discussions which are either tangentially or indeed directly related to
Gentoo. Further, given the existence of multiple (given multiple
languages) Gentoo related chat sub-forums, such a decision could be
construed as forbidding them as well. Though we have apparently already
established that clarity and consistency are distinctly aside from the
goals of at least some council members.

> Rationale:
> 
> * provides zero value to the distribution
Which has been shown to be false.

> * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
>   Gentoo to be associated with
Which is, at very best, debatable. To call prose "toxic" is to imply
that it is, by its very nature, corrupting and destructive to those
exposed to it, which attributes to those words literally magical powers.
It has been my experience that those claiming that mere words are some
manner of unstoppable corrupting influence either lack a counterargument
to such "toxic" words; or they outright concede the "toxic" prose to be
unassailably correct, yet still counter to their preferences.

> * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
>   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
Even stipulating that your figures were accurate, by this logic any
software in the tree or project serving a niche userbase would need to
be removed and any overlays serving such software or provided by such
teams would need to be removed from Gentoo controlled infrastructure.
Given that you have not made such an argument, your arguments lack
logical consistency.

> * forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their roles
>   (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar discussion
>   one year ago
Which is, to put none too fine a point on it, false. It also holds forum
moderators to a distinctly different standard than any other body in
Gentoo. As it is implicitly insisting that forum moderators be fully
proactive in their actions, even in areas which are expressly subject to
much lesser moderation. While other bodies are left go so far as to
expressly state that they intend to avoid doing anything, even when
action would be called for under the rules by which they nominally
operate, as they wish to avoid the potential for negative feedback, and
yet they are allowed to remain unchanged. Again, your statements are
based on major logical inconsistencies.

> 
> This leaves us with two options:
> 
> 1) shut down OTW
> or
> 2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill the
>    moderator role in OTW
> 
Curiously, you have in no way show that the existing moderators are not
"people willing to fulfill the moderator role in OTW", yet you take it
as a given. Moderation is, by and large, driven by users reporting
problems, whether it be spam, a post that breaks layout, or posts which
are counter to forum rules in some other way, even including spurious
reports (everything from jokes to false claims that confirmed facts were
confabulated misinformation), there have historically been extremely few
reports of posts in Off the Wall. Which is especially notable
considering that at least several council members have forum accounts
and *all* council members have e-mail by which they could properly
contact moderators about whatever they consider to be problematic.
Further, valid reports regarding posts in Off the Wall are handled in
essentially the same timeframe as any other. That a section is given
more free rein than other sections does not mean that it is given carte
blanche. In short, your inferences are wrong.

Not to mention that there are indeed other options for the council to
take, which have better logical support than those you  propose.

Option 3:
Given the precedent set by multiple council members, yourself included,
in the discussion of this very topic on the core mailing list, the code
of conduct does not apply to any medium which is not visible to the
public at large. Thus, given the council decision to restrict public
visibility of Off the Wall, there are definitionally no code of conduct
concerns there. If you want to maintain logical self consistency,
multiple council members, along with other developers, would need to
receive sanctions analogous to whatever would be otherwise done to Off
the Wall.

Then again, given how strictly council members have been adhering to the
code of conduct in this public discussion, one could make the argument
that the code of conduct is itself null and void. Which would again
imply that there would be no call for the council to take the action you
propose. Though it would further imply that there is no reason for Off
the Wall to be subject to restricted access.

Option 4:
Given that this latest farce was instigated by a member of the council
making an appeal to the council while bypassing normal channels of
complaint, thereby asserting primary enforcement responsibility for the
complaint before any action could be taken by those who would otherwise
have been responsible for handling it. Further given that such authority
was at no point deferred back to forum moderators, despite the rather
obviously increased delay induced by making such enforcement a council
matter. Further still, given that the council, having claimed primary
enforcement responsibility, proceeded to take no direct action on the
subject of the complaint, instead opting to separately decide to simply
hide the entire sub-forum. It seems perfectly sensible for the council,
which is a technical conflict resolution panel, to resolve to not
manufacture social conflicts itself.

Note that option 4 is not mutually exclusive with any other option.

> I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons 
> * that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
> * and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
> ), so 1) it is.
> 
Having undertaken the laborious process of not looking, I can understand
how you came to the conclusion that they would be hard to find.

> Cheers, Andreas
> 

In short, all of your arguments are either extremely weak or outright
false and your proposed solution is unfounded.

Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Fri, 04 Dec 2020, desultory  wrote:

>> Rationale:
>> 
>> * provides zero value to the distribution
> Which has been shown to be false.

Which still leaves both a positive or negative value as possibilities.

> Given the precedent set by multiple council members, yourself
> included, in the discussion of this very topic on the core mailing
> list, the code of conduct does not apply to any medium which is not
> visible to the public at large. Thus, given the council decision to
> restrict public visibility of Off the Wall, there are definitionally
> no code of conduct concerns there.

Last time I checked, the forums (including OTW) were open for anyone to
register, which makes them public communication media. So the Code of
Conduct applies.

(This is quite similar to mailing lists, where you won't receive any
messages unless you register. Still, we consider the mailing lists to be
public media.)

> Then again, given how strictly council members have been adhering to
> the code of conduct in this public discussion, one could make the
> argument that the code of conduct is itself null and void. Which would
> again imply that there would be no call for the council to take the
> action you propose. Though it would further imply that there is no
> reason for Off the Wall to be subject to restricted access.

Non sequitur.

Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[desultory]

On 12/04/20 07:45, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Fri, 04 Dec 2020, desultory  wrote:
> 
>>> Rationale:
>>>
>>> * provides zero value to the distribution
>> Which has been shown to be false.
> 
> Which still leaves both a positive or negative value as possibilities.
> 
Positive value has already been explained, repeatedly.

>> Given the precedent set by multiple council members, yourself
>> included, in the discussion of this very topic on the core mailing
>> list, the code of conduct does not apply to any medium which is not
>> visible to the public at large. Thus, given the council decision to
>> restrict public visibility of Off the Wall, there are definitionally
>> no code of conduct concerns there.
> 
> Last time I checked, the forums (including OTW) were open for anyone to
> register, which makes them public communication media. So the Code of
> Conduct applies.
> 
Aside form limited circumstances when registration is restricted, for
instance due to flooding, they are open to register. However, under the
current, council mandated configuration Off the Wall is not publicly
readable without an account, unlike the mailing lists aside from core.

> (This is quite similar to mailing lists, where you won't receive any
> messages unless you register. Still, we consider the mailing lists to be
> public media.)
> 
If the code of conduct applies to the mailing lists, why is it so
broadly ignored and evidently entirely unenforced? Further, there are
official public archives of the lists, aside from core, and there is no
such public archive of the contents of Off the Wall, thus the lists are
presently distinctly more public than Off the Wall. That is, of course,
without even considering the propensity for core to leak.

>> Then again, given how strictly council members have been adhering to
>> the code of conduct in this public discussion, one could make the
>> argument that the code of conduct is itself null and void. Which would
>> again imply that there would be no call for the council to take the
>> action you propose. Though it would further imply that there is no
>> reason for Off the Wall to be subject to restricted access.
> 
> Non sequitur.
> 
How, exactly? The council acts as the final level of appeal (short of
literally suing for redress over a CoC enforcement action) yet multiple
council members have been posting in a manner which is directly counter
to the CoC. If posting in a manner directly counter to the CoC is
acceptable behavior to those ultimately tasked with enforcing it, then
the CoC is moot at best. If the CoC is moot then there is no functioning
policy to enforce. If there is no functioning policy, there is no policy
to breach. As such, either the council as a whole and its members
individually need to start treating the CoC as a functioning and
enforceable policy, not least by abiding by it, or the council as a
whole and its members individually need to admit that it is indeed as it
has been treated by them: a defunct policy.

> Ulrich
> 

Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Sat, 05 Dec 2020, desultory  wrote:

> On 12/04/20 07:45, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> Last time I checked, the forums (including OTW) were open for anyone
>> to register, which makes them public communication media. So the Code
>> of Conduct applies.

> Aside form limited circumstances when registration is restricted, for
> instance due to flooding, they are open to register. However, under
> the current, council mandated configuration Off the Wall is not
> publicly readable without an account, unlike the mailing lists aside
> from core.

So basically you say that OTW isn't a public forum, so the CoC doesn't
apply to it and nothing needs to change?

I had really hoped that the moderators team would acknowledge that the
current state of affairs with OTW is unacceptable, and come up with some
plan of their own how to improve things.

If neither of these two things are going to happen, then it won't be
difficult to predict that the Council will close down OTW sooner or
later.

> How, exactly? The council acts as the final level of appeal (short of
> literally suing for redress over a CoC enforcement action) yet
> multiple council members have been posting in a manner which is
> directly counter to the CoC. If posting in a manner directly counter
> to the CoC is acceptable behavior to those ultimately tasked with
> enforcing it, then the CoC is moot at best. If the CoC is moot then
> there is no functioning policy to enforce. If there is no functioning
> policy, there is no policy to breach. As such, either the council as a
> whole and its members individually need to start treating the CoC as a
> functioning and enforceable policy, not least by abiding by it, or the
> council as a whole and its members individually need to admit that it
> is indeed as it has been treated by them: a defunct policy.

Such unproven allegations aren't helpful. If I should have violated the
CoC in any ML posting, then please point out that concrete posting or
report me to ComRel.

Ulrich

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[desultory]

On 12/05/20 05:36, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>>>>> On Sat, 05 Dec 2020, desultory  wrote:
> 
>> On 12/04/20 07:45, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>>> Last time I checked, the forums (including OTW) were open for anyone
>>> to register, which makes them public communication media. So the Code
>>> of Conduct applies.
> 
>> Aside form limited circumstances when registration is restricted, for
>> instance due to flooding, they are open to register. However, under
>> the current, council mandated configuration Off the Wall is not
>> publicly readable without an account, unlike the mailing lists aside
>> from core.
> 
> So basically you say that OTW isn't a public forum, so the CoC doesn't
> apply to it and nothing needs to change?
> 
They are in point of fact less public than the lists, and your
statements indicate that you consider the degree to which a medium is
public to determine the degree to which a medium is subject to the CoC.
Completely aside from the fact that moderation is deliberately lax in
Off the Wall and moderation is further deliberately reliant upon
problems being properly reported and that both have been true since well
before the CoC was drafted.

> I had really hoped that the moderators team would acknowledge that the
> current state of affairs with OTW is unacceptable, and come up with some
> plan of their own how to improve things.
> 
I had hoped that council would acknowledge when it was working outside
of its competence and recognize that those doing the work would
understand that work better than those merely making a show of offense
that something that they make little, if any, use of contains a section
which they do not read which contains things which they would not elect
to read.

You, and other council members, deem the current state of Off the Wall
"unacceptable", while carefully avoiding how it is so beyond the mere
fact that it contains material which is not topical to technical support
of Gentoo or otherwise necessarily directly associated with Gentoo; all
while brushing off that other mediums contain such content without
having a suitable place (or indeed mechanism) to separate it from that
which is directly related to Gentoo. Instead, we are apparently to
engage in a purity spiral, but only on the forums because there are
mechanisms to enforce one there, regardless of the damage that would
result (if you need that explained, read up on what a purity spiral is
before attempting to claim that they are anything other than
destructive). As I pointed out in the discussion on core, there is no
evidently feasible change which would quell all complaints, and there
has been no mention of some acceptable threshold of complaints which
would satisfy the council (though given the origin of this farce, it can
be inferred to be zero). Yet you claim to expect a proposal to come
forth to satisfy concerns which, as so far stated, are fairly summarized
as "I don't use it. I am willfully ignorant of it. I don't like it. Make
it go away."

> If neither of these two things are going to happen, then it won't be
> difficult to predict that the Council will close down OTW sooner or
> later.
> 
Considering that the previous council vote explicitly called for
discussion on the lists, which never took place, and that this latest
farce is directly due to the manner in which the council has taken
action, ongoing gross incompetence on the part of the council is hardly
unexpected.

The only council member to clearly state their preference to not close
Off the Wall stated that they wanted the CoC enforced those violating it
to be banned, and even they only got half way there: such cases need to
be reported to forum moderators, not claimed by council to declare its
collective indigence at while it spends a month complaining that nothing
is being done because it claimed the role while avoiding the actions
which that role implies. Instead, we have this farce.

>> How, exactly? The council acts as the final level of appeal (short of
>> literally suing for redress over a CoC enforcement action) yet
>> multiple council members have been posting in a manner which is
>> directly counter to the CoC. If posting in a manner directly counter
>> to the CoC is acceptable behavior to those ultimately tasked with
>> enforcing it, then the CoC is moot at best. If the CoC is moot then
>> there is no functioning policy to enforce. If there is no functioning
>> policy, there is no policy to breach. As such, either the council as a
>> whole and its members individually need to start treating the CoC as a
>> functioning and enforceable policy, not least by abiding by it, or the
>> council as a whole and its members individually need to admit that it
>> is indeed as it has been treated by them: a defunct policy.
> 
> Such unproven allegations aren't helpful. If I should have violated the
> CoC in any ML posting, then please point out that concrete posting or
> report me to ComRel.
> 
This entire farce is unhelpful, yet it continues to go on. Further,
there is no concept of "proven allegation" in regard to the CoC, even in
cases where a developer would be completely expelled from the project
there is no reference to proving any "allegations". However, critically
reading the CoC and the discussions in question should suffice to
demonstrate repeated conflict between the two.

As for you specifically, your public posts have been less overt than
certain of your posts on core or those of other council members both on
core and in public, though distinct elements remain present.

As for making a ComRel complaint they, like proctors, have openly stated
that they prefer inaction regardless of whether a formal complaint is
made (though at least ComRel specified that they they did so in less
overt cases, even if their actions since have not exactly carried
through on that). Between that declaration on their part and the fact
that I, ComRel, and the council are all aware that any appeals would go
to the council, it hardly seems worth the waste of time.

> Ulrich
> 

Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.05 10:36, Ulrich Mueller wrote:

[snip]
> 
> I had really hoped that the moderators team would acknowledge that the
> current state of affairs with OTW is unacceptable, and come up with
> some
> plan of their own how to improve things.
> 
> 
> Ulrich
> 

I suspect that has not happened because of the way that this has been 
mismanaged by council members from the outset, which has demotivated
many of the forum mods team. 

There is a well used reporting and escalation and appeal process in place.
It was not used.
Every post contains a 'Report' button. There were no reports.
The forum mods have an email alias that could have been used to report 
posts and wider issues. That didn't happen either.

Instead the initial report was an email to council on a closed list, with a 
CC: to the the forums team. When I learned email etiquette, in the late 
60's CC: meant for information only, no action required.
Clearly, the poster did not want the forums mods team to do anything. 

The council is supposed to be the final appeals body, not the first 
port of of call for anyone upset by something.

If the council want to be seen to following the process that they were 
elected to enforce, the only course of action is to refer the matter to the 
forum mods team. 

Any vote that short circuits the process council is supposed to enforce 
only brings council further into disrepute.

Its not too late for the council to recognise the damage they have done
to themselves in the eyes of the wider community and stop the 
mismanagement in its tracks by enforcing process.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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On Dienstag, 8. Dezember 2020 12:46:16 CET Roy Bamford wrote:
> There is a well used reporting and escalation and appeal process in place.
> It was not used.
> Every post contains a 'Report' button. There were no reports.
> The forum mods have an email alias that could have been used to report
> posts and wider issues. That didn't happen either.

You're suggesting to report each burning tree separately in a forest fire 
before the fighters can move in. Personally I've lost any trust in the process 
when it comes to OTW a long time ago. You can continue to insist on 'the 
process' and weirdly cite decades obsolete email etiquette, unfortunately it 
just seems you want to avoid giving us your take on the current state of 
affairs with OTW, in which I understand you feel much less at home than the 
Forums lead anyway.

Regards

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.08 12:34, Andreas Sturmlechner wrote:
> On Dienstag, 8. Dezember 2020 12:46:16 CET Roy Bamford wrote:
> > There is a well used reporting and escalation and appeal process in
> place.
> > It was not used.
> > Every post contains a 'Report' button. There were no reports.
> > The forum mods have an email alias that could have been used to
> report
> > posts and wider issues. That didn't happen either.
> 
> You're suggesting to report each burning tree separately in a forest
> fire 
> before the fighters can move in. Personally I've lost any trust in the
> process 
> when it comes to OTW a long time ago. You can continue to insist on
> 'the 
> process' and weirdly cite decades obsolete email etiquette,
> unfortunately it 
> just seems you want to avoid giving us your take on the current state
> of 
> affairs with OTW, in which I understand you feel much less at home
> than the 
> Forums lead anyway.
> 
> Regards
> 

I think that you have missed the main point I was trying to make.
The problem is the council destroying their own credibility. 
It just happens that the vehicle of choice is the forums OTW but it
could hove been anything.

Using the same process as the appeal to close OTW we should
disband comrel, since everyone will go straight to council anyway.

Its a dangerous precedent to set process does not matter, or worse,
applies to some people and not others.  

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Andreas Sturmlechner]

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On Dienstag, 8. Dezember 2020 14:02:09 CET Roy Bamford wrote:
> I think that you have missed the main point I was trying to make.
> The problem is the council destroying their own credibility.
> It just happens that the vehicle of choice is the forums OTW but it
> could hove been anything.

I can see that you *want* to make a point, but you're telling us that 

> the initial report was an email to council on a closed list, with a
> CC: to the the forums team.

- when it was sent to -core (yes, a closed list), not council
- and forum-mods in CC: (but they won't reply because of 60s' netiquette)
- neither is it 'the' initial report when we consider the 2019 -project
  thread that had remained unresolved
- ...which incidentally also did not get any more forum-mods involvement with
  exception of desultory (who seems to speak for all of them all the time?)

At this point it should be clear that Gentoo devs have concerns about one part 
of the forums that go beyond reporting individual incidents and nothing is 
stopping forum mods from telling us about their plans, if they have some, 
while there even is some upgrade in development that might give new 
possibilities. They should know best how to organise themselves, after all, 
and I don't see volunteers queueing up for them. Instead we have desultory 
going off on tangents and hardening some us-vs-them sentiment while the next 
Council meeting is approaching and this topic is very foreseeable - and here 
we are.

For me, with OTW hidden from public a minimum goal was met (and it should have 
happened a long time ago), but I can see why it is not enough for others. The 
trash produced in OTW by non-Gentoo-affiliated members is in no relation to 
the role it serves in keeping the support forums clean, and I doubt you can 
easily change such a long established subculture without making a clean cut, 
but you may as well prove me wrong.

Regards

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Re: [gentoo-project] Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Sam James]

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> On 8 Dec 2020, at 19:40, Andreas Sturmlechner <asturm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> On Dienstag, 8. Dezember 2020 14:02:09 CET Roy Bamford wrote:
>> I think that you have missed the main point I was trying to make.
>> The problem is the council destroying their own credibility.
>> It just happens that the vehicle of choice is the forums OTW but it
>> could hove been anything.
> 
> I can see that you *want* to make a point, but you're telling us that
> 
>> the initial report was an email to council on a closed list, with a
>> CC: to the the forums team.
> 
> - when it was sent to -core (yes, a closed list), not council
> - and forum-mods in CC: (but they won't reply because of 60s' netiquette)
> - neither is it 'the' initial report when we consider the 2019 -project
>  thread that had remained unresolved
> - ...which incidentally also did not get any more forum-mods involvement with
>  exception of desultory (who seems to speak for all of them all the time?)
> 
> At this point it should be clear that Gentoo devs have concerns about one part
> of the forums that go beyond reporting individual incidents and nothing is
> stopping forum mods from telling us about their plans, if they have some,
> while there even is some upgrade in development that might give new
> possibilities. They should know best how to organise themselves, after all,
> and I don't see volunteers queueing up for them. Instead we have desultory
> going off on tangents and hardening some us-vs-them sentiment while the next
> Council meeting is approaching and this topic is very foreseeable - and here
> we are.
> 
> For me, with OTW hidden from public a minimum goal was met (and it should have
> happened a long time ago), but I can see why it is not enough for others. The
> trash produced in OTW by non-Gentoo-affiliated members is in no relation to
> the role it serves in keeping the support forums clean, and I doubt you can
> easily change such a long established subculture without making a clean cut,
> but you may as well prove me wrong.
> 

I’d just like to add that this reflects my views - and others I know of - who just
want a practical solution here, and are speaking based on real concerns rather
than some hidden motivation.

I think the forums are valuable as a support venue and I just want to move forward
without deeply controversial content being associated with our distribution - and understand the plans
of the forum moderators in future.

I look forward to hearing practical suggestions on moving forwarding and assuaging our concerns from
the forums team (in an accessible layout/format).

> Regards

Best,
Sam

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Re: [gentoo-project] Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.08 20:14, Sam James wrote:

[snip]
> 
> I look forward to hearing practical suggestions on moving forwarding
> and assuaging our concerns from
> the forums team (in an accessible layout/format).
> 
> > Regards
> 
> Best,
> Sam
> 

Sam,

That's the first sensible suggestion anyone made since the the original 
mail to the closed list.

The request needs to made on behalf of the council as its their matter
now to deal with as they see fit. That is indeed one of their options.

Lets not waste time and effort second guessing what council may 
decide to do.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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Hi,

The topic has been discussed extensively in the past few weeks; The sad
climax was last Tuesday. At this point I will not look back anymore.
Maybe all of us could have done a better job but whataboutism doesn’t
help anyone. Let's try to focus on a possible solution.

To recall the problem:
On November 7th, Gentoo forum member "Old School" named another human
being a slut (https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8526392.html#8526392).

This is a violation of Gentoo's code of conduct where we explicit state
that "posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting" are
unacceptable behaviors 
(https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/Code_of_conduct).

This is not about free speech. Gentoo is primary a Linux distribution,
not a discussion platform. This is about us who defined once how we want
to treat each other in the Gentoo community and everyone participating
must adhere to our code of conduct. It’s that simple.

I expect that everyone in Gentoo, including forum moderators, agree on that.

What does that mean for the forum?

 From my point of view, the following things must change:

1) We must finally migrate the forum's software. The new software should
give us new possibilities like introducing a warning system and move to
a reporting system which doesn't require posting in a public forum. This
should make life for moderators a lot easier like nobody is expecting
that moderators will read every posting. But once we get aware of a code
of conduct violation, we must take action.

2) Moderators must of course moderate a bit more, at least for the next
three months until everyone in the community has understood that Gentoo
should be a place where everyone should feel welcome and where we pay
attention how we treat each other. I am expecting that not more than 20
people will have a problem with our rules but consistently applied rules
should either lead to changes in behavior or result in bans after a
short time.

3) We should consider starting with a new, empty, OTW forum. Some old
content like the screenshot or Christmas thread can (and should) of
course be preserved.

Like said, these are only the things which I believe have to change. I
am looking forward for other opinions, especially from current forums
moderators how they believe that the problem should be resolved.

If the situation will not change and forum remains a place where our
code of conduct will be ignored, we will have no choice but to close it.

Let's work together to solve the problem and keep the forum open! Don’t
let less than 20 people who don't share our values take our forum away
from us!


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.11 21:23, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The topic has been discussed extensively in the past few weeks; The
> sad
> climax was last Tuesday. At this point I will not look back anymore.
> Maybe all of us could have done a better job but whataboutism doesn’t
> help anyone. Let's try to focus on a possible solution.
> 
> To recall the problem:
> On November 7th, Gentoo forum member "Old School" named another human
> being a slut (https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8526392.html#8526392).
> 
> This is a violation of Gentoo's code of conduct where we explicit
> state
> that "posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting"
> are
> unacceptable behaviors 
> (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/Code_of_conduct).
> 
> This is not about free speech. Gentoo is primary a Linux distribution,
> not a discussion platform. This is about us who defined once how we
> want
> to treat each other in the Gentoo community and everyone participating
> must adhere to our code of conduct. It’s that simple.
> 
> I expect that everyone in Gentoo, including forum moderators, agree on
> that.
> 
> What does that mean for the forum?
> 
>  From my point of view, the following things must change:
> 
> 1) We must finally migrate the forum's software. The new software
> should
> give us new possibilities like introducing a warning system and move
> to
> a reporting system which doesn't require posting in a public forum.
> This
> should make life for moderators a lot easier like nobody is expecting
> that moderators will read every posting. But once we get aware of a
> code
> of conduct violation, we must take action.
> 
> 2) Moderators must of course moderate a bit more, at least for the
> next
> three months until everyone in the community has understood that
> Gentoo
> should be a place where everyone should feel welcome and where we pay
> attention how we treat each other. I am expecting that not more than
> 20
> people will have a problem with our rules but consistently applied
> rules
> should either lead to changes in behavior or result in bans after a
> short time.
> 
> 3) We should consider starting with a new, empty, OTW forum. Some old
> content like the screenshot or Christmas thread can (and should) of
> course be preserved.
> 
> Like said, these are only the things which I believe have to change. I
> am looking forward for other opinions, especially from current forums
> moderators how they believe that the problem should be resolved.
> 
> If the situation will not change and forum remains a place where our
> code of conduct will be ignored, we will have no choice but to close
> it.
> 
> Let's work together to solve the problem and keep the forum open!
> Don’t
> let less than 20 people who don't share our values take our forum away
> from us!
> 
> 
> -- 
> Regards,
> Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
> C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5
> 
> 

Thomas,

Thank you. This post and Alecs post with some data are about the
only two rational posts in the whole thread. Oh, Sam made a useful 
contribution too.

Does your post represent the council considered opinion or only
your own?

Its a reasonable problem statement that the forums team can 
work with to devise potential solutions. I discussed something
similar with dilfridge and k_f at FOSDEM 2019.

I have a major concern with the concept of the council 
deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the 
carrier.

Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to 
close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published 
content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
conditions. 

Getting legal advice on that point and taking on the 
resulting  legal liabilities that result is a job for the 
Foundation, not the council.

Its all a matter of how its done. Should the council decide
to 'encourage' the forums team to take the opportunity
to update the forums structure to prepare for the 
forthcoming forum upgrade, then the changes become part 
of everyday forums management, not the result of the 
editorial red pencil.

Can the council provide a problem statement that a least
a majority of the members support?

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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Hi,

On 2020-12-12 02:07, Roy Bamford wrote:
> Does your post represent the council considered opinion or only
> your own?

At the moment I am speaking for myself.


> Its a reasonable problem statement that the forums team can
> work with to devise potential solutions. I discussed something
> similar with dilfridge and k_f at FOSDEM 2019.
> 
> I have a major concern with the concept of the council
> deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
> carrier.
> 
> Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
> close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
> were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
> Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
> content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
> conditions.
> 
> Getting legal advice on that point and taking on the
> resulting  legal liabilities that result is a job for the
> Foundation, not the council.
 >
 > [...]
 >
 > Can the council provide a problem statement that a least
 > a majority of the members support?

Let's cool down the heated debate a bit.

Anyone can bring up a topic to council at anytime. This also applies to 
council members and nothing else has happened yet.

I don't get your reference. Like said, this is not about free speech. 
Not about section 230 currently discussed in the US:

We as Gentoo community have created our code of conduct.

The code of conduct we created should protect our values.

This has nothing to do with liability. It doesn't matter if anything 
which happened violates any law applying to Gentoo foundation or not.

This is about our 'own' law we gave ourselves to protect the values we 
believe in to run this Linux distribution and how we want to treat each 
other while doing what we love.

Don't you believe in our code of conduct?

Don't you agree that from time to time, especially those active in the 
OTW forum adopt the wrong tone and tend to offend people?

I think you do. Like I hope every community member do.

The current motion is about those few people (<20!) who don't. All of 
them will have the chance to change their behavior in case they really 
share our values. If they don't, those people no longer have a place in 
our community.

And that's also why I think you don't need any statement:

A community member like you and me brought to everyone's attention that 
there's a place in Gentoo forums where a minority of people violates our 
code of conduct from time to time and want to stop that (and not for the 
first time but hopefully for the last time!).

We are currently in the process to find a solution for this. And 
everyone in Gentoo is invited to join and help with that problem. 
Especially the current forums team who usually do a great job.

Of course, if nobody comes up with another, working, solution, like 
said, we will have no choice but to close it.

Please join the process. I think we all agree that we need to address 
this problem because we believe in the values Gentoo is known for but we 
can only do this together.


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Geoffrey Ekman]

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If there is one thing I will say as an outsider, an advocate from a corp.
 I think we all agree that we need to address
this problem because we believe in the values Gentoo is known for but we
can only do this together.

No we don't all agree, my opinion is of my own and not that of my company. However, the only problem you are trying to accomplish is trying to get rid of the freedom of gentoo. Since when has gentoo provided a value statement and guidelines to adhere to for the use of software outside of what is already packaged and the licenses therein?

If this is the future of gentoo I think a lot of us in the real world will create something better and release that truelly free, with free speech on message boards.


________________________________
From: Thomas Deutschmann <whissi@gentoo.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2020 02:39
To: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

Hi,

On 2020-12-12 02:07, Roy Bamford wrote:
> Does your post represent the council considered opinion or only
> your own?

At the moment I am speaking for myself.


> Its a reasonable problem statement that the forums team can
> work with to devise potential solutions. I discussed something
> similar with dilfridge and k_f at FOSDEM 2019.
>
> I have a major concern with the concept of the council
> deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
> carrier.
>
> Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
> close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
> were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
> Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
> content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
> conditions.
>
> Getting legal advice on that point and taking on the
> resulting  legal liabilities that result is a job for the
> Foundation, not the council.
>
> [...]
>
> Can the council provide a problem statement that a least
> a majority of the members support?

Let's cool down the heated debate a bit.

Anyone can bring up a topic to council at anytime. This also applies to
council members and nothing else has happened yet.

I don't get your reference. Like said, this is not about free speech.
Not about section 230 currently discussed in the US:

We as Gentoo community have created our code of conduct.

The code of conduct we created should protect our values.

This has nothing to do with liability. It doesn't matter if anything
which happened violates any law applying to Gentoo foundation or not.

This is about our 'own' law we gave ourselves to protect the values we
believe in to run this Linux distribution and how we want to treat each
other while doing what we love.

Don't you believe in our code of conduct?

Don't you agree that from time to time, especially those active in the
OTW forum adopt the wrong tone and tend to offend people?

I think you do. Like I hope every community member do.

The current motion is about those few people (<20!) who don't. All of
them will have the chance to change their behavior in case they really
share our values. If they don't, those people no longer have a place in
our community.

And that's also why I think you don't need any statement:

A community member like you and me brought to everyone's attention that
there's a place in Gentoo forums where a minority of people violates our
code of conduct from time to time and want to stop that (and not for the
first time but hopefully for the last time!).

We are currently in the process to find a solution for this. And
everyone in Gentoo is invited to join and help with that problem.
Especially the current forums team who usually do a great job.

Of course, if nobody comes up with another, working, solution, like
said, we will have no choice but to close it.

Please join the process. I think we all agree that we need to address
this problem because we believe in the values Gentoo is known for but we
can only do this together.


--
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5

________________________________
From: Thomas Deutschmann <whissi@gentoo.org>
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2020 02:39
To: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

Hi,

On 2020-12-12 02:07, Roy Bamford wrote:
> Does your post represent the council considered opinion or only
> your own?

At the moment I am speaking for myself.


> Its a reasonable problem statement that the forums team can
> work with to devise potential solutions. I discussed something
> similar with dilfridge and k_f at FOSDEM 2019.
>
> I have a major concern with the concept of the council
> deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
> carrier.
>
> Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
> close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
> were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
> Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
> content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
> conditions.
>
> Getting legal advice on that point and taking on the
> resulting  legal liabilities that result is a job for the
> Foundation, not the council.
 >
 > [...]
 >
 > Can the council provide a problem statement that a least
 > a majority of the members support?

Let's cool down the heated debate a bit.

Anyone can bring up a topic to council at anytime. This also applies to
council members and nothing else has happened yet.

I don't get your reference. Like said, this is not about free speech.
Not about section 230 currently discussed in the US:

We as Gentoo community have created our code of conduct.

The code of conduct we created should protect our values.

This has nothing to do with liability. It doesn't matter if anything
which happened violates any law applying to Gentoo foundation or not.

This is about our 'own' law we gave ourselves to protect the values we
believe in to run this Linux distribution and how we want to treat each
other while doing what we love.

Don't you believe in our code of conduct?

Don't you agree that from time to time, especially those active in the
OTW forum adopt the wrong tone and tend to offend people?

I think you do. Like I hope every community member do.

The current motion is about those few people (<20!) who don't. All of
them will have the chance to change their behavior in case they really
share our values. If they don't, those people no longer have a place in
our community.

And that's also why I think you don't need any statement:

A community member like you and me brought to everyone's attention that
there's a place in Gentoo forums where a minority of people violates our
code of conduct from time to time and want to stop that (and not for the
first time but hopefully for the last time!).

We are currently in the process to find a solution for this. And
everyone in Gentoo is invited to join and help with that problem.
Especially the current forums team who usually do a great job.

Of course, if nobody comes up with another, working, solution, like
said, we will have no choice but to close it.

Please join the process. I think we all agree that we need to address
this problem because we believe in the values Gentoo is known for but we
can only do this together.


--
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Marek Szuba]

On 2020-12-12 06:48, Geoffrey Ekman wrote:

> However, the only problem you are trying to accomplish is trying to
> get rid of the freedom of gentoo.

If the freedom of Gentoo means allowing racists, xenophobes, misogynists 
etc. spew their hatred, in topics completely unrelated to 
Gentoo-the-Linux-distribution, then IMHO we couldn't get rid of it soon 
enough.

The right to free speech is not a free-for-all. Even the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights, which by design is as general as possible, 
lists both freedom of opinion and expression (Article 19) AND the right 
not to be subjected to "attacks on his honour and reputation" and being 
legally protected from such attacks (Article 12). And there are 
countries which no-one in their sane mind would accuse of censoring free 
speech, in which hateful speech against groups of the population is a 
criminally punishable offence.

-- 
MS

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[David Seifert]

On Sat, 2020-12-12 at 05:48 +0000, Geoffrey Ekman wrote:
> If there is one thing I will say as an outsider, an advocate from a
> corp.
>  I think we all agree that we need to address
> this problem because we believe in the values Gentoo is known for but
> we
> can only do this together.
>  
> No we don't all agree, my opinion is of my own and not that of my
> company. However, the only problem you are trying to accomplish is
> trying to get rid of the freedom of gentoo. Since when has gentoo
> provided a value statement and guidelines to adhere to for the use of
> software outside of what is already packaged and the licenses therein?
> 
> If this is the future of gentoo I think a lot of us in the real world
> will create something better and release that truelly free, with free
> speech on message boards.

1. Please don't use HTML email.
2. Here's a suggestion: post on twitter and facebook the following
message:

    VMware [your company] abuses its position to exploit GPL-licensed
    code in the Linux kernel to its own monetary advantage and violates
    the spirit of the GPL and the community around it.

Then, tell your HR about it. Let's see how much freedom of speech
protects your job then.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[desultory]

On 12/11/20 21:38, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2020-12-12 02:07, Roy Bamford wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>> Can the council provide a problem statement that a least
>> a majority of the members support?
> 
> Let's cool down the heated debate a bit.
> 
Asking for the council to actually state the problem at hand as it sees
it seems to be an entirely reasonable thing to do, especially given how
long it has gone without doing so.

At this point you are the only council member to bother to express what
you consider the problem to be. Which, while that is a start, is one
seventh of the way to even having a basis to start to formulate a
gestalt opinion of the council and comes a couple of days before the
meeting before which a proposal which would satisfy that gestalt opinion
would need to be formulated and presented. I would ask that you kindly
forgive me for being distinctly underwhelmed on the whole.

> Anyone can bring up a topic to council at anytime. This also applies to
> council members and nothing else has happened yet.
> 
While that is true, a council member making a motion to the council
usurping the role of an active project, then complaining that the
project in question has not fulfilled its role as it otherwise would
have is a perverse privilege unique to council members.

> I don't get your reference. Like said, this is not about free speech.
> Not about section 230 currently discussed in the US:
> 
> We as Gentoo community have created our code of conduct.
> 
> The code of conduct we created should protect our values.
> 
> This has nothing to do with liability. It doesn't matter if anything
> which happened violates any law applying to Gentoo foundation or not.
> 
Might I be so bold as to suggest that your opinion of that would change
rather dramatically were such liability brought to bear?

> This is about our 'own' law we gave ourselves to protect the values we
> believe in to run this Linux distribution and how we want to treat each
> other while doing what we love.
> 
> Don't you believe in our code of conduct?
> 
> Don't you agree that from time to time, especially those active in the
> OTW forum adopt the wrong tone and tend to offend people?
> 
> I think you do. Like I hope every community member do.
> 
I believe that when there is a problem which calls for the attention of
a moderator, it should be brought to the attention of a moderator,
preferably the entire team, not declared to be the sole purview of the
council which then refuses to let moderators act on it for weeks on end.

> The current motion is about those few people (<20!) who don't. All of
> them will have the chance to change their behavior in case they really
> share our values. If they don't, those people no longer have a place in
> our community.
> 
If those few people make such frequent violations of the code of
conduct, it should be utterly trivial to find reasonably current posts
of theirs to properly report, be handled by the moderators, and if
necessary the users could then be subject to disciplinary action by the
moderators under existing rules. That it is somehow evidently considered
to be an intractable problem is bewildering to me. Either there is cause
to report the problem users, or there is not, and if not there is no
cause to do anything about their posts either.

The code of conduct is inherently subjective, the differences in posts
in this discussion by different council members demonstrates that rather
openly, and there will be disagreement on how it is enforced and indeed
on whether it is enforced at all. That the council appears to be
treating it as a fully objective document with hard binary pass/fail
criteria while evidently not even agreeing amongst itself on quite what
the CoC means in practice is itself concerning. That the council is
treating it as an excuse to interfere with the basic functioning of a
project on a level even below a bug report is an extremely concerning
precedent to set, especially considering that the proposed remedy would
negatively impact that project on an ongoing basis. The irony that the
council is doing this with regard to the only project which enforces the
CoC and has not openly stated that it avoids doing so as a general
practice is not lost on me.

> And that's also why I think you don't need any statement:
> 
> A community member like you and me brought to everyone's attention that
> there's a place in Gentoo forums where a minority of people violates our
> code of conduct from time to time and want to stop that (and not for the
> first time but hopefully for the last time!).
> 
> We are currently in the process to find a solution for this. And
> everyone in Gentoo is invited to join and help with that problem.
> Especially the current forums team who usually do a great job.
> 
Final solutions to social problems, real or imagined, imposed by those
divorced from the consequences have a rather unpleasant history.

> Of course, if nobody comes up with another, working, solution, like
> said, we will have no choice but to close it.
> 
> Please join the process. I think we all agree that we need to address
> this problem because we believe in the values Gentoo is known for but we
> can only do this together.
> 
> 
Reporting problem posts is itself a working solution, and has been since
before the forums formally became a part of Gentoo, if it weren't there
would be a much broader problem.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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Hi,

On 2020-12-12 08:34, desultory wrote:
> Asking for the council to actually state the problem at hand as it sees
> it seems to be an entirely reasonable thing to do, especially given how
> long it has gone without doing so.

It is difficult for me to believe that those involved in this four-week 
discussion did not understand what it was actually about and then did 
not even ask specifically about it themselves.

But anyway, like said in my initial email, let's forget about the past 
and let's focus on a solution.

Nobody says that forum staff is doing a bad job in general but OTW 
section was often handled like an autonomous zone which we are going to 
end. Hopefully together. But let me be clear on this: The Gentoo 
community will definitely find a solution for this problem. Maybe we 
will grant you time until end of January in case you will tell us that 
forums software will finally get upgraded in January and that the new 
software will play an important role (i.e. warning system, new/easier 
moderation tools, better reporting system...). For such a concession, 
however, it would be important to get clear signals from the forum team 
that they understand what needs to be changed and are willing to solve 
the problem together.

I am sure you can. Please join the process!

Again some guidelines which should be addressed in the proposal/concept:

1) Clear statement/commitment that forums staff intends to enforce 
Gentoo's code of conduct in forum like any other project. This shouldn't 
be a big deal for you but it will help us to understand that we are all 
on the same page.

2) We don't expect that forum staff will read every posting but if 
forums staff will even quote insults and join 'the discussion', we would 
consider this problematic because we expect that any community member 
will step in if he/she will observe a code of conduct violation in 
general and make everyone see reason (notice: this doesn't imply 'block 
warden' mentality).

3) Implement a reporting system which will protect the reporter.

4) Tell us how you plan to address some inconsistency. For example, this 
is not the first time that the user in question has posted such an 
insult. The user was banned for similar postings back in 2016. We would 
expect that such a misbehaving user who has shown in the past that they 
disregard Gentoo values, would have been removed from the community long 
time ago.

5) Remove bad content. If someone posted an insult and we took action, 
don't forget to remove the offending content (soft delete entire posting 
or remove offending paragraph).

6) Just a reminder: You are not alone at the front. If forum staff is 
unsure about certain postings, please ask for help. We have projects to 
deal with things like that and they are happy to assist you.


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[desultory]

On 12/12/20 10:15, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2020-12-12 08:34, desultory wrote:
>> Asking for the council to actually state the problem at hand as it sees
>> it seems to be an entirely reasonable thing to do, especially given how
>> long it has gone without doing so.
> 
> It is difficult for me to believe that those involved in this four-week
> discussion did not understand what it was actually about and then did
> not even ask specifically about it themselves.
> 
> But anyway, like said in my initial email, let's forget about the past
> and let's focus on a solution.
> 
> Nobody says that forum staff is doing a bad job in general but OTW
> section was often handled like an autonomous zone which we are going to
> end. Hopefully together. But let me be clear on this: The Gentoo
> community will definitely find a solution for this problem. Maybe we
> will grant you time until end of January in case you will tell us that
> forums software will finally get upgraded in January and that the new
> software will play an important role (i.e. warning system, new/easier
> moderation tools, better reporting system...). For such a concession,
> however, it would be important to get clear signals from the forum team
> that they understand what needs to be changed and are willing to solve
> the problem together.
> 
> I am sure you can. Please join the process!
> 
> Again some guidelines which should be addressed in the proposal/concept:
> 
> 1) Clear statement/commitment that forums staff intends to enforce
> Gentoo's code of conduct in forum like any other project. This shouldn't
> be a big deal for you but it will help us to understand that we are all
> on the same page.
> 
The CoC is part of, and linked from, the forum guidelines.

> 2) We don't expect that forum staff will read every posting but if
> forums staff will even quote insults and join 'the discussion', we would
> consider this problematic because we expect that any community member
> will step in if he/she will observe a code of conduct violation in
> general and make everyone see reason (notice: this doesn't imply 'block
> warden' mentality).
> 
Quoting the content which violates the rules is part of issuing a public
warning on the forums, as it is in most any medium in which such quoting
is not actively discouraged by the interface. Public warnings are given
in the same topic as the post which incited the warning, and as such
could be considered to be joining the discussion. Doing otherwise is, at
very best, ambiguous.

> 3) Implement a reporting system which will protect the reporter.
> 
From what? Are you seriously suggesting that a council member was so
afraid of users commenting on a report of a post that this whole farce
was somehow justified?

Even aside from that, as I have already noted, forum moderators can be
reached via private message on the forums, via IRC (which allows direct
communication between users), and via e-mail either individually or as a
team. Thus if a user does have any reason to make a private report,
which is exceedingly rare, they already have several options at their
disposal.

> 4) Tell us how you plan to address some inconsistency. For example, this
> is not the first time that the user in question has posted such an
> insult. The user was banned for similar postings back in 2016. We would
> expect that such a misbehaving user who has shown in the past that they
> disregard Gentoo values, would have been removed from the community long
> time ago.
> 
It is not inconsistency to have time limits on most bans, the point of
disciplinary action is not to persecute but to correct. If and when
further correction is necessary, further action can be taken. Given the
example of one infraction every four years, I would hardly call that a
problem worthy of a permanent ban. To put the scale of this farce into
perspective a bit, if the post which was the subject of the original
complaint in this farce had been reported normally and left to the
moderators to handle, if there had been a ban implemented (after four
years a warning is distinctly more likely) that ban would have ended by now.

> 5) Remove bad content. If someone posted an insult and we took action,
> don't forget to remove the offending content (soft delete entire posting
> or remove offending paragraph).
> 
This seems counterproductive. If a warning is issued, or a ban levied
citing a specific post in public then users know why. If a post suddenly
vanishes and a public warning is issued without being able to quote the
problematic post, not only do users no longer have the context of the
offending post they also have no clear indication of quite what the
problem was that caused the warning. Making warnings wholly private
means that only the user being warned even knows what happened, thus
other users will not know what was considered problematic about the
post(s) in question.

All of those options do little more than foster distrust of those in a
position to issue warnings or levy bans; all for the supposed benefit of
attempting to banish everything that anyone considers inappropriate,
which is itself a losing game.

Attempting to make any functioning community as neat and orderly as a
Potemkin village will, in the long run, render them as substantive.

> 6) Just a reminder: You are not alone at the front. If forum staff is
> unsure about certain postings, please ask for help. We have projects to
> deal with things like that and they are happy to assist you.
> 
> 

[gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020, Roy Bamford wrote:

> I have a major concern with the concept of the council 
> deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the 
> carrier.

> Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to 
> close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
> were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
> Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published 
> content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
> conditions. 

Why do you have these rules then?

"[...] the administrators and moderators of this forum will attempt to
remove or edit any generally objectionable material as quickly as
possible, [...]"

"You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous,
hateful, threatening, sexually-oriented or any other material that may
violate any applicable laws. Doing so may lead to you being immediately
and permanently banned (and your service provider being informed).
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these
conditions. You agree that the webmaster, administrator and moderators
of this forum have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic
at any time should they see fit."

Ulrich

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Andreas K. Hüttel]

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> I have a major concern with the concept of the council
> deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
> carrier.
> 
> Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
> close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
> were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
> Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
> content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
> conditions.

This is misinformation at best, and deliberate confusion sowing at worst. 

I assume that you're talking about the US legal situation. [#]

* The DCMA, which mostly pops up when searching for "common carrier", 
primarily applies to copyright violations. That is not what we are talking 
about. Even so, the safe harbor provision of the DCMA only applies as long as 
reported violations are swiftly removed.

* US legal code explicitly provides a "good samaritan provision" regarding 
offensive material, protecting blocking or filtering, even proactively.
====================
(2) Civil liability
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on 
account of—
(A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or 
availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, 
lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise 
objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or
[...]
====================
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

Cheers.



[#] Mostly because (broadly simplifying) only the US focuses that strongly on 
freedom of speech, while the EU focuses somewhat more on data protection and 
protection against slander(?). The UK legal situation is insignificant on a 
global scale.


-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer 
(council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Roy Bamford]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2006 bytes --]

On 2020.12.12 12:07, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
> > I have a major concern with the concept of the council
> > deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> > At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> > The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
> > carrier.
> > 
> > Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
> > close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
> > were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
> > Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
> > content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
> > conditions.
> 
> This is misinformation at best, and deliberate confusion sowing at
> worst. 
> 
> I assume that you're talking about the US legal situation. [#]
> 

<snip totally irrelevant material>

> [...]
> ====================
> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
> 
> Cheers.
> 
> 
>
 
<snip references>
 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Andreas K. Hüttel
> dilfridge@gentoo.org
> Gentoo Linux developer 
> (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)


Rule 1 is never assume.
That makes the rest of your post irrelevant. 

In the UK, which selfishly, is all that matters to me, if I compile 
and edit a community newsletter, I'm the publisher, with all the liabilities 
of a publisher. Like, say, the News of the World. I have editorial 
control and am liable for the content.

When someone distributes that same newsletter by putting it
through the village letterboxes, they have no liability for the content.

In the same vein, is the council accidentality, through ignorance or
otherwise, in danger of making Gentoo a publisher, with all the 
attached liability for content?

I don't know the answer either.   

Oh, the  News of the World folded after a lawsuit related to an
article it published.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Aaron Bauman]

On December 12, 2020 8:24:44 AM EST, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
>On 2020.12.12 12:07, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
>> > I have a major concern with the concept of the council
>> > deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
>> > At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
>> > The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
>> > carrier.
>> > 
>> > Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
>> > close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
>> > were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
>> > Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
>> > content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
>> > conditions.
>> 
>> This is misinformation at best, and deliberate confusion sowing at
>> worst. 
>> 
>> I assume that you're talking about the US legal situation. [#]
>> 
>
><snip totally irrelevant material>
>
>> [...]
>> ====================
>> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
>> 
>> Cheers.
>> 
>> 
>>
> 
><snip references>
> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Andreas K. Hüttel
>> dilfridge@gentoo.org
>> Gentoo Linux developer 
>> (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)
>
>
>Rule 1 is never assume.
>That makes the rest of your post irrelevant. 
>
>In the UK, which selfishly, is all that matters to me, if I compile 
>and edit a community newsletter, I'm the publisher, with all the
>liabilities 
>of a publisher. Like, say, the News of the World. I have editorial 
>control and am liable for the content.
>
>When someone distributes that same newsletter by putting it
>through the village letterboxes, they have no liability for the
>content.
>
>In the same vein, is the council accidentality, through ignorance or
>otherwise, in danger of making Gentoo a publisher, with all the 
>attached liability for content?
>
>I don't know the answer either.   
>
>Oh, the  News of the World folded after a lawsuit related to an
>article it published.

This doesn't correlate. The problem is and has been, the content is not aligned with our community values and standards. 

Simple enough. No need for legal shenanigans, liability, etc. 

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[desultory]

On 12/12/20 09:47, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> 
> 
> On December 12, 2020 8:24:44 AM EST, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> On 2020.12.12 12:07, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
>>>> I have a major concern with the concept of the council
>>>> deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
>>>> At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
>>>> The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
>>>> carrier.
>>>>
>>>> Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
>>>> close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
>>>> were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
>>>> Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
>>>> content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
>>>> conditions.
>>>
>>> This is misinformation at best, and deliberate confusion sowing at
>>> worst. 
>>>
>>> I assume that you're talking about the US legal situation. [#]
>>>
>>
>> <snip totally irrelevant material>
>>
>>> [...]
>>> ====================
>>> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
>>>
>>> Cheers.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> <snip references>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Andreas K. Hüttel
>>> dilfridge@gentoo.org
>>> Gentoo Linux developer 
>>> (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)
>>
>>
>> Rule 1 is never assume.
>> That makes the rest of your post irrelevant. 
>>
>> In the UK, which selfishly, is all that matters to me, if I compile 
>> and edit a community newsletter, I'm the publisher, with all the
>> liabilities 
>> of a publisher. Like, say, the News of the World. I have editorial 
>> control and am liable for the content.
>>
>> When someone distributes that same newsletter by putting it
>> through the village letterboxes, they have no liability for the
>> content.
>>
>> In the same vein, is the council accidentality, through ignorance or
>> otherwise, in danger of making Gentoo a publisher, with all the 
>> attached liability for content?
>>
>> I don't know the answer either.   
>>
>> Oh, the  News of the World folded after a lawsuit related to an
>> article it published.
> 
> This doesn't correlate. The problem is and has been, the content is not aligned with our community values and standards. 
> 
> Simple enough. No need for legal shenanigans, liability, etc. 
> 
Somehow, I doubt that "But, your honor, I was willfully ignoring that
the law even existed, I can't be held liable." is considered a valid
defense in any jurisdiction. Though you are welcome to try it and report
back.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.12 14:47, Aaron Bauman wrote:
> 
> 
> On December 12, 2020 8:24:44 AM EST, Roy Bamford
> <neddyseagoon@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >On 2020.12.12 12:07, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
> >> > I have a major concern with the concept of the council
> >> > deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> >> > At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> >> > The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the
> >> > carrier.
> >> > 
> >> > Gentoos status could be changed by a council decision to
> >> > close any part of the forum from common carrier to publisher,
> >> > were the council seen to be exercising editorial control.
> >> > Being a publisher makes Gentoo liable for the published
> >> > content. Gentoo could not run the forums at all under those
> >> > conditions.
> >> 
> >> This is misinformation at best, and deliberate confusion sowing at
> >> worst. 
> >> 
> >> I assume that you're talking about the US legal situation. [#]
> >> 
> >
> ><snip totally irrelevant material>
> >
> >> [...]
> >> ====================
> >> https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
> >> 
> >> Cheers.
> >> 
> >> 
> >>
> > 
> ><snip references>
> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> -- 
> >> Andreas K. Hüttel
> >> dilfridge@gentoo.org
> >> Gentoo Linux developer 
> >> (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)
> >
> >
> >Rule 1 is never assume.
> >That makes the rest of your post irrelevant. 
> >
> >In the UK, which selfishly, is all that matters to me, if I compile 
> >and edit a community newsletter, I'm the publisher, with all the
> >liabilities 
> >of a publisher. Like, say, the News of the World. I have editorial 
> >control and am liable for the content.
> >
> >When someone distributes that same newsletter by putting it
> >through the village letterboxes, they have no liability for the
> >content.
> >
> >In the same vein, is the council accidentality, through ignorance or
> >otherwise, in danger of making Gentoo a publisher, with all the 
> >attached liability for content?
> >
> >I don't know the answer either.   
> >
> >Oh, the  News of the World folded after a lawsuit related to an
> >article it published.
> 
> This doesn't correlate. The problem is and has been, the content is
> not aligned with our community values and standards. 
> 
> Simple enough. No need for legal shenanigans, liability, etc. 
> 
> -- 
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
> 
> 
> 

0/20 for answering a question I didn't ask and not addressing the 
one I did.

Care to try addressing the liability question?
I don't care about the US or from 1-Jan-21, the EU. 

I'm in the UK so that's the jurisdiction that applies to me.
 
-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Marek Szuba]

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On 2020-12-13 10:19, Roy Bamford wrote:

> I'm in the UK so that's the jurisdiction that applies to me.

Pretty sure this not the jurisdiction that applies to Gentoo the 
organisation (or to make it more precise, the part of it responsible for 
providing Gentoo Forums to end users), though.

-- 
MS


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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.13 12:10, Marek Szuba wrote:
> On 2020-12-13 10:19, Roy Bamford wrote:
> 
> > I'm in the UK so that's the jurisdiction that applies to me.
> 
> Pretty sure this not the jurisdiction that applies to Gentoo the 
> organisation (or to make it more precise, the part of it responsible
> for 
> providing Gentoo Forums to end users), though.
> 
> -- 
> MS
> 
> 

That's correct. Liability in instance would be a civil problem, 
not criminal, so nobody gets extradited to the USA or Canada, 
where the forums are currently hosted.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[William Hubbs]

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As myself only, I want to add some info to this.

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 01:07:39AM +0000, Roy Bamford wrote:
> On 2020.12.11 21:23, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > The topic has been discussed extensively in the past few weeks; The
> > sad
> > climax was last Tuesday. At this point I will not look back anymore.
> > Maybe all of us could have done a better job but whataboutism doesn’t
> > help anyone. Let's try to focus on a possible solution.
> > 
> > To recall the problem:
> > On November 7th, Gentoo forum member "Old School" named another human
> > being a slut (https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8526392.html#8526392).
> > 
> > This is a violation of Gentoo's code of conduct where we explicit
> > state
> > that "posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting"
> > are
> > unacceptable behaviors 
> > (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/Code_of_conduct).
> > 
> > This is not about free speech. Gentoo is primary a Linux distribution,
> > not a discussion platform. This is about us who defined once how we
> > want
> > to treat each other in the Gentoo community and everyone participating
> > must adhere to our code of conduct. It’s that simple.
> > 
> > I expect that everyone in Gentoo, including forum moderators, agree on
> > that.

The free speech issue is only relevant in terms of government sensorship
(at least in the US that's the case)
it doesn't prevent a private organization from setting community guidelines and taking disciplinary action against people who don't follow them  [1].

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/

> I have a major concern with the concept of the council 
> deciding to close any part of the forum. Its like this ...
> At present, Gentoo is a common carrier, like the mail.
> The content of letters and parcels is of little concern to the 
> carrier.
 
 Common carrier status seems to apply to ISPs and Telecomm companies
 [2].  Gentoo is neither, so I have to disagree with your claim that is
 a common carrier.

 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

William


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[gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[desultory]

On 12/11/20 16:23, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The topic has been discussed extensively in the past few weeks; The sad
> climax was last Tuesday. At this point I will not look back anymore.
> Maybe all of us could have done a better job but whataboutism doesn�t
> help anyone. Let's try to focus on a possible solution.
> 
> To recall the problem:
> On November 7th, Gentoo forum member "Old School" named another human
> being a slut (https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8526392.html#8526392).
> 
Council then claimed primary enforcement responsibility regarding that
post.

Council has since exercised that responsibility by doing precisely
nothing in regard to that post, not even inquiring with forum moderators
regarding what action would have been taken were they free to act in
response to it.

Council, upon being informed (again) that it was possible to make the
entire section in which that post was made visible only to logged in
users, voted to do so, again avoiding doing anything about the supposed
matter at hand.

Council has, as a whole, since effectively demanded that the forums be
proactively moderated in their entirety while ignoring that moderation
is driven by reporting problems to moderators.

> This is a violation of Gentoo's code of conduct where we explicit state
> that "posting messages that are deliberately hostile and insulting" are
> unacceptable behaviors
> (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/Code_of_conduct).
> 
> This is not about free speech. Gentoo is primary a Linux distribution,
> not a discussion platform. This is about us who defined once how we want
> to treat each other in the Gentoo community and everyone participating
> must adhere to our code of conduct. It�s that simple.
> 
> I expect that everyone in Gentoo, including forum moderators, agree on
> that.
> 
> What does that mean for the forum?
> 
> From my point of view, the following things must change:
> 
> 1) We must finally migrate the forum's software. The new software should
> give us new possibilities like introducing a warning system and move to
> a reporting system which doesn't require posting in a public forum. This
> should make life for moderators a lot easier like nobody is expecting
> that moderators will read every posting. But once we get aware of a code
> of conduct violation, we must take action.
> 
I agree that the software should be updated once it is ready.

Warnings already exist, and have since well before I joined the project
over a decade ago.

Making all reports private is largely irrelevant, if there is a reason
to make a report in private any moderator can be reached via private
messaging or the team as a whole or in part can be reached via e-mail.
Indeed having public reports allows users to respond to complaints
against them, this has at times removed the need for moderator action.

Once a violation of any of the forum rules is reported, including the
CoC, action is taken as deemed fit. In this particular case the council
claimed that responsibility for itself and to be frank has botched the
role rather terribly, not even following its own procedures much less
those of the forums.

> 2) Moderators must of course moderate a bit more, at least for the next
> three months until everyone in the community has understood that Gentoo
> should be a place where everyone should feel welcome and where we pay
> attention how we treat each other. I am expecting that not more than 20
> people will have a problem with our rules but consistently applied rules
> should either lead to changes in behavior or result in bans after a
> short time.
> 
Moderation is largely driven by reporting problem posts, and is thus
largely contingent upon the users. Given that the council member who
first complained about the post in question is rather obviously a Gentoo
developer and thus has an e-mail account, has an account on the forums,
and has an account on freenode, he has access to literally every
canonical manner of reporting a post, but instead chose to engage in
this farce. Thus at least one user was deliberately acting against that
goal, and that user is to vote on the matter in the council meeting.

Asking moderators to handle reports is perfectly normal, arguably it is
largely the point of even having moderators. Making a complaint that
they are held to not be free to handle as they would any other report
and holding up inaction on that complaint as evidence of anything other
than tampering with their functions and abilities is pointedly absurd.

> 3) We should consider starting with a new, empty, OTW forum. Some old
> content like the screenshot or Christmas thread can (and should) of
> course be preserved.
> 
In that case, at least for a time, the existing Off the Wall would need
to remain, even if not visible to the public and not writable to users,
in order to facilitate harvesting of content deemed worthy of retention.

> Like said, these are only the things which I believe have to change. I
> am looking forward for other opinions, especially from current forums
> moderators how they believe that the problem should be resolved.
> 
> If the situation will not change and forum remains a place where our
> code of conduct will be ignored, we will have no choice but to close it.
> 
> Let's work together to solve the problem and keep the forum open! Don�t
> let less than 20 people who don't share our values take our forum away
> from us!
> 
> 

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Michał Górny]

On Tue, 2020-12-01 at 05:15 +0200, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
> This leaves us with two options:
> 
> 1) shut down OTW
> or
> 2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to
> fulfill the
>    moderator role in OTW
> 
> I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons 
> * that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
> * and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
> ), so 1) it is.
> 

The more I think about it, the more this seems to resemble gentoo-dev
moderation.

To recap, we've closed down gentoo-dev to public because of a few
people misbehaving.  This was the wrong solution to the problem,
and in my opinion -- and I say that as someone who originally pushed
for it and then regretted it -- this has done more harm than good.
It did not solve the problem, and it has done harm to our community. 
In the end, the problematic individual was banned anyway, and the list
was reopened.

I feel like the whole OTW situation is similar.  OTW is not the root of
the problem, it is just its biggest symptom.  I feel that we're trying
to eliminate one symptom and hoping that would be enough to cure
the disease.  Sure, that works for a common cold but I think it's
a long shot for the Forums situation.

Andreas is right that replacing Forum moderators isn't easy.  However,
if we leave things as-is and just apply a drive-through band-aid,
the problem will return in one form or another.  I know that political
correctness asks us to discuss problems, not people -- but what *if*
people are the problem?  I really feel like we should not be discussing
'applying this or that band-aid to Forums' but 'saying "thank you" to
our Forums team and starting over'.

Sure, it will take some time before a new team forms, from people
actually willing to keep Forums a quality ground for everyone.  It
might be necessary to disable the most problematic Forums for the time
being, or even the new team may decide not to have such a forum at all.
The experience with many projects inside Gentoo proves that once
the most problematic people left the project or were forcibly removed
from it, long-defunct projects started thriving again.  I don't see why
the same couldn't work for Forums.

I don't feel like us arbitrarily making decisions Forums team disagrees
with and then hoping that things will work out is right.  If Forums
team does not have the best Gentoo interest at heart (and I feel like
at least some of the Forum moderators have lost contact with 'Gentoo
the distribution' a long time ago), then it is time to make a new
Forums team.  A team that cares about Forums benefitting Gentoo users
more than about chit-chatting with their buddies from the old days.


-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.12 13:24, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Tue, 2020-12-01 at 05:15 +0200, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
> > This leaves us with two options:
> > 
> > 1) shut down OTW
> > or
> > 2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to
> > fulfill the
> >    moderator role in OTW
> > 
> > I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons 
> > * that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
> > * and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
> > ), so 1) it is.
> > 
> 
> The more I think about it, the more this seems to resemble gentoo-dev
> moderation.
> 
> To recap, we've closed down gentoo-dev to public because of a few
> people misbehaving.  This was the wrong solution to the problem,
> and in my opinion -- and I say that as someone who originally pushed
> for it and then regretted it -- this has done more harm than good.
> It did not solve the problem, and it has done harm to our community. 
> In the end, the problematic individual was banned anyway, and the list
> was reopened.
> 
> I feel like the whole OTW situation is similar.  OTW is not the root
> of
> the problem, it is just its biggest symptom.  I feel that we're trying
> to eliminate one symptom and hoping that would be enough to cure
> the disease.  Sure, that works for a common cold but I think it's
> a long shot for the Forums situation.
> 
> Andreas is right that replacing Forum moderators isn't easy.  However,
> if we leave things as-is and just apply a drive-through band-aid,
> the problem will return in one form or another.  I know that political
> correctness asks us to discuss problems, not people -- but what *if*
> people are the problem?  I really feel like we should not be
> discussing
> 'applying this or that band-aid to Forums' but 'saying "thank you" to
> our Forums team and starting over'.
> 
> Sure, it will take some time before a new team forms, from people
> actually willing to keep Forums a quality ground for everyone.  It
> might be necessary to disable the most problematic Forums for the time
> being, or even the new team may decide not to have such a forum at
> all.
> The experience with many projects inside Gentoo proves that once
> the most problematic people left the project or were forcibly removed
> from it, long-defunct projects started thriving again.  I don't see
> why
> the same couldn't work for Forums.
> 
> I don't feel like us arbitrarily making decisions Forums team
> disagrees
> with and then hoping that things will work out is right.  If Forums
> team does not have the best Gentoo interest at heart (and I feel like
> at least some of the Forum moderators have lost contact with 'Gentoo
> the distribution' a long time ago), then it is time to make a new
> Forums team.  A team that cares about Forums benefitting Gentoo users
> more than about chit-chatting with their buddies from the old days.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
My view is that its more like the original Proctors project than the 
-dev ml but I see the parallels you draw.

The original Proctors project was created by the council of the day to 
be a quick reaction short slap response team to CoC violations.
Then one day, a council member did something to get slapped.
Instead of calming down and reflecting on events, by which time, the 
slap would have worn off, said council member appealed directly to
council and managed to get the Proctors disbanded.

That sent the message to the community that the CoC did not apply
to council members. The CoC has never recovered.

Now we have a council member appealing directly to council again ...
that sends the message to the community, yet again, that the 
processes that council are supposed to enforce don't apply to council 
members.
Will the damage from that message ever be undone?

As to potential solutions to perceived problems, we are going to apply
any fix in one planned well publicised sequence of events, exactly 
once.  Not piecemeal by council knee-jerk reaction votes month 
after month.

The first step in that process is for all interested parties to compile
a comprehensive problem statement, encompassing all the perceived 
problems (real or not). So far, several months after the original post to
the closed list, nothing like that exists.

Should anyone be too shy to post in public, I'll offer to do the 
compilation based on signed emails to my gentoo address.

It's time to put up or shut up.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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[gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020, Roy Bamford wrote:

> The original Proctors project was created by the council of the day
> to be a quick reaction short slap response team to CoC violations.
> Then one day, a council member did something to get slapped.
> Instead of calming down and reflecting on events, by which time, the
> slap would have worn off, said council member appealed directly to
> council and managed to get the Proctors disbanded.

That's very different from my recollection of events. The relevant
Council log [1] also tells a different story.

> That sent the message to the community that the CoC did not apply
> to council members. The CoC has never recovered.

Sure.

Ulrich

[1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20070712.txt

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.12 15:15, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >>>>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020, Roy Bamford wrote:
> 
> > The original Proctors project was created by the council of the day
> > to be a quick reaction short slap response team to CoC violations.
> > Then one day, a council member did something to get slapped.
> > Instead of calming down and reflecting on events, by which time, the
> > slap would have worn off, said council member appealed directly to
> > council and managed to get the Proctors disbanded.
> 
> That's very different from my recollection of events. The relevant
> Council log [1] also tells a different story.
> 
> > That sent the message to the community that the CoC did not apply
> > to council members. The CoC has never recovered.
> 
> Sure.
> 
> Ulrich
> 
> [1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20070712.txt
> 

Ulrich,

I have the 'benefit', that may not be the right word, of being the on 
the proctors team at the time.  

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Ulrich Mueller]

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>>>>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020, Roy Bamford wrote:

> On 2020.12.12 15:15, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
>> >>>>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020, Roy Bamford wrote:
>> > The original Proctors project was created by the council of the day
>> > to be a quick reaction short slap response team to CoC violations.
>> > Then one day, a council member did something to get slapped.
>> > Instead of calming down and reflecting on events, by which time, the
>> > slap would have worn off, said council member appealed directly to
>> > council and managed to get the Proctors disbanded.
>> 
>> That's very different from my recollection of events. The relevant
>> Council log [1] also tells a different story.

> I have the 'benefit', that may not be the right word, of being the on 
> the proctors team at the time.  

OK, then let's look into the details. As I recall it, disbanding of was
triggered by the infamous "Living in a bubble" thread on the gentoo-dev
mailing list in 2007:

- beejay posts a bad joke, disparaging Paludis and insulting ciaranm [2] 
- As can be expected, several people react to this
- A Proctor (neddyseagoon) issues a warning [3], about half an hour
  after the original posting
- Shortly after that, another Proctor (amne) suspends two peoples'
  (ciaranm and geoman) accounts [4]
- At which point a Council member (wolf31o2) complains about the
  Proctors' action (in his opinion, banning the wrong people) and calls
  for disbanding of the Proctors [5]
- amne rage-quits [6]
- A discussion follows about the Proctors project, and that they should
  develop some guidelines. Which never happens.

There's also a summary of this by marienz, from a Proctor's point of
view [7].

So please tell me, where in the above chain of event do you see a CoC
violation by a Council member?

And of course, nothing of this is relevant for the present discussion.
Still, if you make accusations like this:

>> > That sent the message to the community that the CoC did not apply
>> > to council members. The CoC has never recovered.

... then I pretty much think that you should back them by actual facts.

Ulrich

>> [1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20070712.txt
[2] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/6feb6e4bb68ca5e7bffc68a3db3b9567
[3] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/c407c20291a64f371979f54ed7b1025c
[4] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/028d7f7cb5dbba891c3278ca4e51f11f
[5] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/1d81fae0e3fad23f894a092255edfbe6
[6] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/4378a6d6f0986a6e1384231d4ba86b02
[7] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/6707daa4c9368ba48d6997ca16162c16

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Roy Bamford]

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On 2020.12.12 19:32, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >>>>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020, Roy Bamford wrote:
> 
> > On 2020.12.12 15:15, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> >> >>>>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2020, Roy Bamford wrote:
> >> > The original Proctors project was created by the council of the
> day
> >> > to be a quick reaction short slap response team to CoC
> violations.
> >> > Then one day, a council member did something to get slapped.
> >> > Instead of calming down and reflecting on events, by which time,
> the
> >> > slap would have worn off, said council member appealed directly
> to
> >> > council and managed to get the Proctors disbanded.
> >> 
> >> That's very different from my recollection of events. The relevant
> >> Council log [1] also tells a different story.
> 
> > I have the 'benefit', that may not be the right word, of being the
> on 
> > the proctors team at the time.  
> 
> OK, then let's look into the details. As I recall it, disbanding of
> was
> triggered by the infamous "Living in a bubble" thread on the
> gentoo-dev
> mailing list in 2007:
> 
> - beejay posts a bad joke, disparaging Paludis and insulting ciaranm
> [2] 
> - As can be expected, several people react to this
> - A Proctor (neddyseagoon) issues a warning [3], about half an hour
>   after the original posting
> - Shortly after that, another Proctor (amne) suspends two peoples'
>   (ciaranm and geoman) accounts [4]
> - At which point a Council member (wolf31o2) complains about the
>   Proctors' action (in his opinion, banning the wrong people) and
> calls
>   for disbanding of the Proctors [5]
> - amne rage-quits [6]
> - A discussion follows about the Proctors project, and that they
> should
>   develop some guidelines. Which never happens.
> 
> There's also a summary of this by marienz, from a Proctor's point of
> view [7].
> 
> So please tell me, where in the above chain of event do you see a CoC
> violation by a Council member?
> 
> And of course, nothing of this is relevant for the present discussion.
> Still, if you make accusations like this:
> 
> >> > That sent the message to the community that the CoC did not apply
> >> > to council members. The CoC has never recovered.
> 
> ... then I pretty much think that you should back them by actual
> facts.
> 
> Ulrich
> 
> >> [1] https://projects.gentoo.org/council/meeting-logs/20070712.txt
> [2] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/6feb6e4bb68ca5e7bffc68a3db3b9567
> [3] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/c407c20291a64f371979f54ed7b1025c
> [4] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/028d7f7cb5dbba891c3278ca4e51f11f
> [5] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/1d81fae0e3fad23f894a092255edfbe6
> [6] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/4378a6d6f0986a6e1384231d4ba86b02
> [7] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/6707daa4c9368ba48d6997ca16162c16
> 

Ulrich,

You are missing that wolf31o2 gets suspended for ignoring the
Proctors warning and makes it known that he's not happy. 
There is a lot of email and IRC traffic, including from the dev-rel lead. 
I don't recall how much was public but probably not a lot. 
Most of the Proctors team quits inside the next 12 hours or so, due
to demonstrable lack of support from people who should support the 
CoC and its enforcement but choose not to.  

The Council subsequently disbands the Proctors.

The Proctors were acting to defend the CoC. A warning was issued and
ignored. The poster that ignored the warning happened to be a council
member. The council was supposed to support the Proctors in the CoC
defence not protest the actions and subsequently destroy them.

Its not a direct CoC violation, its visibly going against a CoC enforcement.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
forum-mods
arm64

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[Andreas K. Hüttel]

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<snip>
> 
> The Council subsequently disbands the Proctors.
> 
<snip>

Can we please stop this noise? It's been 13 years ago, and the thread starts 
to smell like a conversation with wltjr.

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer 
(council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall

[desultory]

On 12/12/20 17:29, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
> <snip>
>>
>> The Council subsequently disbands the Proctors.
>>
> <snip>
> 
> Can we please stop this noise? It's been 13 years ago, and the thread starts 
> to smell like a conversation with wltjr.
> 
Learning from relevant history can help to avoid repeating the same
mistakes, regardless of how comfortable you are with that history.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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On 2020-12-12 15:42, Roy Bamford wrote:
> Now we have a council member appealing directly to council again ...
> that sends the message to the community, yet again, that the
> processes that council are supposed to enforce don't apply to council
> members.
> Will the damage from that message ever be undone?

I really don't get your point here. What's your problem?

Council members are community members like everyone else.

So in this case, Matt, who is also in council, brought up the code of 
conduct violations. Sure we can talk about the tone. But did anything 
happen? Did we break any rules? Did we treat his request preferentially 
in any way?

 From my POV his request was handled the same and is currently going 
through the same process like any other request: It was brought to 
mailing list, is getting discussed and a motion was formulated. If you 
don't agree on this motion feel free to either convince the community 
why this motion should get rejected or maybe formulate your own motion 
you want to pass.


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[desultory]

On 12/12/20 10:34, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> On 2020-12-12 15:42, Roy Bamford wrote:
>> Now we have a council member appealing directly to council again ...
>> that sends the message to the community, yet again, that the
>> processes that council are supposed to enforce don't apply to council
>> members.
>> Will the damage from that message ever be undone?
> 
> I really don't get your point here. What's your problem?
> 
> Council members are community members like everyone else.
> 
> So in this case, Matt, who is also in council, brought up the code of
> conduct violations. Sure we can talk about the tone. But did anything
> happen? Did we break any rules? Did we treat his request preferentially
> in any way?
> 
Either those were all rhetorical questions or I have been giving you far
too much credit. In short, yes, to all of them.

> From my POV his request was handled the same and is currently going
> through the same process like any other request: It was brought to
> mailing list, is getting discussed and a motion was formulated. If you
> don't agree on this motion feel free to either convince the community
> why this motion should get rejected or maybe formulate your own motion
> you want to pass.
> 
> 
I already offered alternative motions, none were included in the meeting
agenda.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Andreas K. Hüttel]

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> I already offered alternative motions, none were included in the meeting
> agenda.

I'm sorry, they must have gotten lost in the avalanche of unfiltered posts. 
Please re-state them in a concise, understandable and actionable way as a 
reply to this mail. We still have time. Thank you.

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer 
(council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Thomas Deutschmann]

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On 2020-12-13 08:28, desultory wrote:
> On 12/12/20 10:34, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
>> So in this case, Matt, who is also in council, brought up the code of
>> conduct violations. Sure we can talk about the tone. But did anything
>> happen? Did we break any rules? Did we treat his request preferentially
>> in any way?
>>
> Either those were all rhetorical questions or I have been giving you far
> too much credit. In short, yes, to all of them.

Seriously, please outline in detail what you believe is wrong and also 
explain. I don't understand why you and neddyseagoon are keeping 
repeating this but I *really* would like to get your point.


> I already offered alternative motions, none were included in the meeting
> agenda.

Like dilfridge asked you, please take your time and post this again. I 
am also failing to find anything like that.


Finally please also allow me to ask why 30+ days after all of this 
started, nobody from forums team took yet any action, i.e. the post I 
showed on Friday is still untouched. Have I missed an issued 
warning/ban? Did forums team reviewed the posting after it was brought 
to your attention through the mailing list (yes, not your favored 
channel but I hope nobody is saying 'we ignored it because you didn't 
use the correct channel to report') and decided that no further action 
is required?

I must admit that at this point I am really lacking a signal from forums 
team that they at least understand and acknowledge that there is a 
problem. Doesn't matter if we agree on the solution yet but at least a 
*clear* signal that the message was received and we are all one the same 
page would be appreciated.


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
C4DD 695F A713 8F24 2AA1 5638 5849 7EE5 1D5D 74A5


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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[David Seifert]

On Sun, 2020-12-13 at 15:36 +0100, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> Finally please also allow me to ask why 30+ days after all of this 
> started, nobody from forums team took yet any action, i.e. the post I 
> showed on Friday is still untouched. Have I missed an issued 
> warning/ban? Did forums team reviewed the posting after it was
> brought 
> to your attention through the mailing list (yes, not your favored 
> channel but I hope nobody is saying 'we ignored it because you didn't 
> use the correct channel to report') and decided that no further
> action 
> is required?
> 
> I must admit that at this point I am really lacking a signal from
> forums 
> team that they at least understand and acknowledge that there is a 
> problem. Doesn't matter if we agree on the solution yet but at least
> a 
> *clear* signal that the message was received and we are all one the
> same 
> page would be appreciated.

I think the forum mods agree with you:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8543599.html#8543599

> Of the random set I surveyed, I did not find any posts that, in my
> opinion, rose to the level of a violation.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

David Seifert schrieb:
> On Sun, 2020-12-13 at 15:36 +0100, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
>> Finally please also allow me to ask why 30+ days after all of this
>> started, nobody from forums team took yet any action, i.e. the post I
>> showed on Friday is still untouched. Have I missed an issued
>> warning/ban?

> I think the forum mods agree with you:
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8543599.html#8543599
> 
>> Of the random set I surveyed, I did not find any posts that, in my
>> opinion, rose to the level of a violation.

"I will note that due to the volume of poorly explained reports, I gave up 
before reading nearly all the reported posts, so some of the reported posts 
may well deserve to be reported."

Ok, so overloading the forum moderation with frivolous requests will 
obviously lead to the legitimate requests getting inadequate attention.

I consider those who started digging in historical posts and mass reporting 
them as acting in bad faith here.

Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Michał Górny]

On Tue, 2020-12-15 at 12:03 +0100, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn wrote:
> David Seifert schrieb:
> > On Sun, 2020-12-13 at 15:36 +0100, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> > > Finally please also allow me to ask why 30+ days after all of
> > > this
> > > started, nobody from forums team took yet any action, i.e. the
> > > post I
> > > showed on Friday is still untouched. Have I missed an issued
> > > warning/ban?
> 
> > I think the forum mods agree with you:
> > https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8543599.html#8543599
> > 
> > > Of the random set I surveyed, I did not find any posts that, in
> > > my
> > > opinion, rose to the level of a violation.
> 
> "I will note that due to the volume of poorly explained reports, I
> gave up 
> before reading nearly all the reported posts, so some of the reported
> posts 
> may well deserve to be reported."
> 
> Ok, so overloading the forum moderation with frivolous requests will 
> obviously lead to the legitimate requests getting inadequate
> attention.
> 
> I consider those who started digging in historical posts and mass
> reporting 
> them as acting in bad faith here.

Do you consider the one who's overloading everyone with huge volume of
replies with no or almost no actual information in them on the mailing
lists to be acting in good faith?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Michał Górny schrieb:
>> Ok, so overloading the forum moderation with frivolous requests will
>> obviously lead to the legitimate requests getting inadequate
>> attention.
>>
>> I consider those who started digging in historical posts and mass
>> reporting
>> them as acting in bad faith here.
> 
> Do you consider the one who's overloading everyone with huge volume of
> replies with no or almost no actual information in them on the mailing
> lists to be acting in good faith?

If they have a legitimate point to make, then I consider that in good faith. 
Continuing past making one's point in order fuel more drama, that would cross 
the line into bad faith.

Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Sam James]

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> On 15 Dec 2020, at 11:03, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn <chithanh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> David Seifert schrieb:
>> On Sun, 2020-12-13 at 15:36 +0100, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
>>> Finally please also allow me to ask why 30+ days after all of this
>>> started, nobody from forums team took yet any action, i.e. the post I
>>> showed on Friday is still untouched. Have I missed an issued
>>> warning/ban?
> 
>> I think the forum mods agree with you:
>> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8543599.html#8543599
>>> Of the random set I surveyed, I did not find any posts that, in my
>>> opinion, rose to the level of a violation.
> 
> "I will note that due to the volume of poorly explained reports, I gave up before reading nearly all the reported posts, so some of the reported posts may well deserve to be reported."
> 
> Ok, so overloading the forum moderation with frivolous requests will obviously lead to the legitimate requests getting inadequate attention.
> 
> I consider those who started digging in historical posts and mass reporting them as acting in bad faith here.

That isn’t what actually happened though. Soap and I both reported posts we individually found offensive on the first few pages of the forum. There was no effort to go back through 13+ years of archives and report any infringing material - that would be a huge waste of time on our part and the moderators.

It’s a misrepresentation of two people who figured they’d better follow the formal process to see if _that_ changes anything.

> 
> Best regards,
> Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
> 


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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn]

Sam James schrieb:
>> "I will note that due to the volume of poorly explained reports, I gave up before reading nearly all the reported posts, so some of the reported posts may well deserve to be reported."
>>
>> Ok, so overloading the forum moderation with frivolous requests will obviously lead to the legitimate requests getting inadequate attention.
>>
>> I consider those who started digging in historical posts and mass reporting them as acting in bad faith here.
> 
> That isn’t what actually happened though. Soap and I both reported posts we individually found offensive on the first few pages of the forum. There was no effort to go back through 13+ years of archives and report any infringing material - that would be a huge waste of time on our part and the moderators.
> 
> It’s a misrepresentation of two people who figured they’d better follow the formal process to see if _that_ changes anything.

If you two reported only a small number of recent posts and explained why 
they are CoC violations, then I'd assume that the moderator's complaints are 
not about your reports.

Best regards,
Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Jimi Huotari]

On Tue, 15 Dec 2020 11:20:06 +0000
Sam James <sam@gentoo.org> wrote:

> > On 15 Dec 2020, at 11:03, Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
> > <chithanh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 
> > David Seifert schrieb:  
> >> On Sun, 2020-12-13 at 15:36 +0100, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:  
> >>> Finally please also allow me to ask why 30+ days after all of this
> >>> started, nobody from forums team took yet any action, i.e. the post I
> >>> showed on Friday is still untouched. Have I missed an issued
> >>> warning/ban?  
> >   
> >> I think the forum mods agree with you:
> >> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8543599.html#8543599  
> >>> Of the random set I surveyed, I did not find any posts that, in my
> >>> opinion, rose to the level of a violation.  
> > 
> > "I will note that due to the volume of poorly explained reports, I
> > gave up before reading nearly all the reported posts, so some of the
> > reported posts may well deserve to be reported."
> > 
> > Ok, so overloading the forum moderation with frivolous requests will
> > obviously lead to the legitimate requests getting inadequate attention.
> > 
> > I consider those who started digging in historical posts and mass
> > reporting them as acting in bad faith here.  
> 
> That isn’t what actually happened though. Soap and I both reported posts
> we individually found offensive on the first few pages of the forum.
> There was no effort to go back through 13+ years of archives and report
> any infringing material - that would be a huge waste of time on our part
> and the moderators.
> 
> It’s a misrepresentation of two people who figured they’d better follow
> the formal process to see if _that_ changes anything.

While there might have been some good intentions there, the timing was
quite poor.

The voting for what will happen with Off the Wall was right around the
corner, though things had already been pretty much decided before that
point.

Indeed, I would say this wasn't a very good use of anyone's time
and/or energy.

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Raymond Jennings]

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On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:11 AM Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn <
chithanh@gentoo.org> wrote:

> David Seifert schrieb:
> > On Sun, 2020-12-13 at 15:36 +0100, Thomas Deutschmann wrote:
> >> Finally please also allow me to ask why 30+ days after all of this
> >> started, nobody from forums team took yet any action, i.e. the post I
> >> showed on Friday is still untouched. Have I missed an issued
> >> warning/ban?
>
> > I think the forum mods agree with you:
> > https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8543599.html#8543599
> >
> >> Of the random set I surveyed, I did not find any posts that, in my
> >> opinion, rose to the level of a violation.
>
> "I will note that due to the volume of poorly explained reports, I gave up
> before reading nearly all the reported posts, so some of the reported
> posts
> may well deserve to be reported."
>
> Ok, so overloading the forum moderation with frivolous requests will
> obviously lead to the legitimate requests getting inadequate attention.
>

I would like to point out an analogy that also applies IRL.

Another forum I used to frequent banned people from using the report
function if they abused it, and people who breached various kinds of
subordinate bans from threads, topics, forums, etc were punished for ban
evasion with a formal ban from the entire forum, in some cases permanently.

Similarly, IRL it's usually a crime to file a false police report or to
make false statements to officials, and various bar associations and courts
can also brand attorneys as vexatious litigants.

So in general, it's not like frivolous requests go unpunished in other
contexts, and I think the same can apply to frivolous requests to forum
moderators.  I'd also opine the same could apply in other contexts such as
to proctors, chanops, comrel, but that's for another context and scope.

Aside, I'd also like to observe that this topic has apparently proved quite
contentious and I'd opine that that itself is grounds to consider the
action at hand is not yet ripe for a decision by the council.


> I consider those who started digging in historical posts and mass
> reporting
> them as acting in bad faith here.
>
> Best regards,
> Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn
>
>

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 06:18:46AM -0800, Raymond Jennings wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2020 at 3:11 AM Chí-Thanh Christopher Nguyễn <
> chithanh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 

<snip>

> 
> Aside, I'd also like to observe that this topic has apparently proved quite
> contentious and I'd opine that that itself is grounds to consider the
> action at hand is not yet ripe for a decision by the council.
>

This is precisely why we have an elected council. To handle contentious
matters that require resolution.

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Michał Górny]

On Sat, 2020-12-12 at 14:42 +0000, Roy Bamford wrote:
> Now we have a council member appealing directly to council again ...
> that sends the message to the community, yet again, that the 
> processes that council are supposed to enforce don't apply to
> council 
> members.
> Will the damage from that message ever be undone?

Is this really a message sent 'by the event', or a deliberate FUD
spread by people who don't like the message?  Because when people start
disputing the process and not the actual arguments, the message I get
is 'they are right and we can't argue with that, so let's try to sweep
it under the rug'.  Then we get walls of meaningless text, arguments
about the process, conflicts of interest, etc.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Alec Warner]

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On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 2:23 PM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 2020-12-12 at 14:42 +0000, Roy Bamford wrote:
> > Now we have a council member appealing directly to council again ...
> > that sends the message to the community, yet again, that the
> > processes that council are supposed to enforce don't apply to
> > council
> > members.
> > Will the damage from that message ever be undone?
>
> Is this really a message sent 'by the event', or a deliberate FUD
> spread by people who don't like the message?  Because when people start
> disputing the process and not the actual arguments, the message I get
> is 'they are right and we can't argue with that, so let's try to sweep
> it under the rug'.  Then we get walls of meaningless text, arguments
> about the process, conflicts of interest, etc.
>

When a group uses their powers, IMHO, the process is important to provide a
justification of using said powers. Otherwise we lose faith in the
institution because instead of using its powers to solve problems, it uses
its powers in an arbitrarily and poorly justified way. This is why people
care about the process.

I even agree we should do something about the forum; but my expectation is
more messages like the one whissi wrote (where we actually attempt to
resolve the issue) and less the dilfridge message. I assume Dilfridge did
try to work with the forums-mods, but if he did it was not clear what was
discussed, proposed, or otherwise. If I'm a council member, what facts am I
supposed to use to make a decision? Certainly dilfridge's email is not
sufficient to really make one one way or the other...there are not enough
facts there to justify action IMHO. It's not even clear *who* owns the
problem.

If we had said "Hey forums team, you have a CoC problem in OTW, you have
six months to implement moderation in OTW that meets our requirements or we
will shut off OTW" then I think it clearly assigns the problem (ball in
forum-mods court) and there is a clear timeline to resolve the issue and we
could add more text around the actual requirements (and again if you
reference whissi's latest mail you see more of this information and tone.)
However in the previous bug report we didn't even accurately describe the
problem, assign it to anyone, or provide any timeline to resolution.

-A


>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
>
>
>
>

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Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[desultory]

On 12/12/20 20:50, Alec Warner wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 2:23 PM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 2020-12-12 at 14:42 +0000, Roy Bamford wrote:
>>> Now we have a council member appealing directly to council again ...
>>> that sends the message to the community, yet again, that the
>>> processes that council are supposed to enforce don't apply to
>>> council
>>> members.
>>> Will the damage from that message ever be undone?
>>
>> Is this really a message sent 'by the event', or a deliberate FUD
>> spread by people who don't like the message?  Because when people start
>> disputing the process and not the actual arguments, the message I get
>> is 'they are right and we can't argue with that, so let's try to sweep
>> it under the rug'.  Then we get walls of meaningless text, arguments
>> about the process, conflicts of interest, etc.
>>
> 
> When a group uses their powers, IMHO, the process is important to provide a
> justification of using said powers. Otherwise we lose faith in the
> institution because instead of using its powers to solve problems, it uses
> its powers in an arbitrarily and poorly justified way. This is why people
> care about the process.
> 
> I even agree we should do something about the forum; but my expectation is
> more messages like the one whissi wrote (where we actually attempt to
> resolve the issue) and less the dilfridge message. I assume Dilfridge did
> try to work with the forums-mods, but if he did it was not clear what was
> discussed, proposed, or otherwise. If I'm a council member, what facts am I
> supposed to use to make a decision? Certainly dilfridge's email is not
> sufficient to really make one one way or the other...there are not enough
> facts there to justify action IMHO. It's not even clear *who* owns the
> problem.
> 
Your assumption is, alas, incorrect; dilfridge has not attempted to work
with moderators in any manner which I have been able to discern.

> If we had said "Hey forums team, you have a CoC problem in OTW, you have
> six months to implement moderation in OTW that meets our requirements or we
> will shut off OTW" then I think it clearly assigns the problem (ball in
> forum-mods court) and there is a clear timeline to resolve the issue and we
> could add more text around the actual requirements (and again if you
> reference whissi's latest mail you see more of this information and tone.)
> However in the previous bug report we didn't even accurately describe the
> problem, assign it to anyone, or provide any timeline to resolution.
> 
> -A
> 
> 
>>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> Michał Górny
>>
>>
>>
>>
> 

Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[desultory]

On 12/12/20 17:23, Michał Górny wrote:
> On Sat, 2020-12-12 at 14:42 +0000, Roy Bamford wrote:
>> Now we have a council member appealing directly to council again ...
>> that sends the message to the community, yet again, that the 
>> processes that council are supposed to enforce don't apply to
>> council 
>> members.
>> Will the damage from that message ever be undone?
> 
> Is this really a message sent 'by the event', or a deliberate FUD
> spread by people who don't like the message?  Because when people start
> disputing the process and not the actual arguments, the message I get
> is 'they are right and we can't argue with that, so let's try to sweep
> it under the rug'.  Then we get walls of meaningless text, arguments
> about the process, conflicts of interest, etc.
> 
Sometimes, such as in this case, it really is the case that the process
has been abused to the point where even bothering with arguing what
points have actually (finally) been made is a largely quixotic exercise.

The direct counterarguments to "I don't like it, make it go away" are,
broadly:
1. Yes.
Which would imply that there was no need to make the complaint in the
first place, as the thing being complained about was being removed
anyway, which was not the case in this instance.

2. No.
Which is simply dismissing the complaint out of hand, which did not
happen in this case.

3. Learn to like it.
Which presumes that there is no fault in the thing being objected to,
which is not an argument which any moderator has made regarding Off the
Wall.

4. Tell us why and we can work from there.
Which can indeed at least be a path to discover whether common ground
exists. Unfortunately the complainant in this case, by their own
admission, deliberately avoided this and other council members delayed
until ridiculously close to their meeting to bother even starting with
if they even started at all.

Instead we got trolling, various snide remarks, council usurping the
role of moderator with respect to the subject of the complaint, council
proceeding to do nothing regarding the post being complained about, a
council vote calling for the entire section to be removed from public
view instead of anything in regard to the supposed subject of the
initial complaint, and at no point were we cleared to actually respond
to the cited post.

In short, there are actual problems with the process as executed.