Rich Freeman wrote:
On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 9:49 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

Then they created moderators with people to enforce some rules.  It got better.  Actually, a lot better.

That is actually really good to hear.  The whole CoC/Proctors thing
has been a bit of a mess and incredibly contentious.  It has also been
mostly inactive, in part because for the most part these threads have
actually done a pretty good job of moderating themselves.  Maybe it is
because people fear moderation.  Maybe it is because nobody really
wants to have to see us have to deal with it.  Bugs get filed asking
for moderation, and maybe that is all it takes for the parties
involved to decide to cool things down.

As much as some seem to think otherwise, the reality is that most of
the Proctors really don't like kicking that hornets nest.  In any case
all Proctors actions are completely public in bugzilla so anybody can
see for themselves.  If you don't see much it is because there isn't
actually much to see...

I admit, I don't monitor what they do much but I've seen a huge improvement.  I moderated a political site for a few years.  Still have access but health and life takes up a lot of time.  I always referred to it as herding cats.  You can herd up pretty much any animal, cows, pigs, sheep and the list goes on but herding cats is a tough thing to accomplish.  After being a moderator that has to deal with things that can be opinion with no one in the right or wrong, I know first hand how difficult and thankless the job can be.  Still, without it, it gets bad pretty fast.  I didn't like doing timeouts, banning and such either.  Thing is, when it needed doing, I did it.  I was the lead moderator for a good long while. 

I think instead of dying, Gentoo is stronger even if it involves fewer people.  Sure, there is packages that need some attention but if they are in demand, usually someone steps up and gives them the attention they need to get back up to date. I'm not sure why people keep thinking Gentoo is dying.  Sometimes I think it is more about the difference between binary distros they are coming from and Gentoo being source based than Gentoo actually dying.  When people consider switching to Gentoo, it's different from what they expect.  They may need to research what Gentoo is first.  Gentoo certainly doesn't hold a persons hand during the install or even after the install.  Heck, I been around a long time and it doesn't hold my hand even today. 

Compared to the bad times, -dev is like heaven today.  It was beyond words to describe during its worst days.

Dale

:-)  :-)