Re: [gentoo-project] ComRel / disciplinary action reform proposal

[Dean Stephens <desultory@gentoo.org>]

On 01/16/17 08:22, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote:
> On 16/01/2017 05:56, Dean Stephens wrote:
>> I think this proposal is utterly unworkable in practice. While the
>> intention is rather obvious, and heavily geared toward actual
>> contributing members of the community at large, the proposed
>> definitional scope and structure are incompatible with actual workloads
>> already in place.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> As it stands, disciplinary actions are handled per medium and channel,
>> with appeals going first to those with direct authority over that medium
>> or channel, then to ComRel, then the Council. This is simple,
>> consistent, and most of all it is on the whole effective; all while
>> minimizing the amount of make work. If there is meant to be an implicit
>> argument that this is somehow insufficiently documented, by all means
>> make that point, ask people to document things more pervasively, do not
>> discard a working system because someone could not be bothered to read
>> the documentation.
> 
> Good points.
> 
> IMO the proposal also has good points, and just needs to be updated to
> take scalability issues into account.
> 
The proposal is, in a nutshell, to file lots of bugs for the Council and
make them the first, last, and only point of appeal. Which effectively
makes the role of the Council to try keeping up with scrollback
literally everywhere that Gentoo staff/developers have disciplinary
authority due to their roles as Gentoo staff/developers; which, to be at
all realistic, is just not going to happen. It presents no novel net
benefits while incurring novel net costs. In short, the status quo is
superior to the proposed model.

> Maybe routine things like spam could go through forums-specific channel.
They already do, as do all other disciplinary actions on the forums. The
question should not be: "what can be special cased into being allowed to
have local handling by those responsible for a communications medium or
channel?" If anything, it should be: "what, if anything, should be
forced to be handled by people who are not necessarily involved with the
medium or channel in question?" To answer the latter with "first pass
appeals" serves to increase workloads generally and confusion on the
part of those not familiar with the process, though I suppose it would
suit functionaries fond of dismissing inquires with a quick "nothing I
can do".

> I don't see a reason to get a bug filed for each of these.
> 
Which is rather my point: filing the bugs as required by the proposal is
pointless, and rather excessive, make work. Disciplinary actions are
already documented, either in situ or privately as befits the action(s)
taken, and such documentation can be dumped to a suitable bug if and
when necessary, but making all such documentation into bugs serves no
useful purpose even if fully automated (which it most certainly is not
at the moment)... unless the goal is to force Council members to filter
their e-mail.

> Paweł
>