1.1

Top posting because it's brief.

This reflects my own views pretty much exactly, and states them better
than I've been able to.  So I'll try to refrain from posting further.


On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 21:20 +0200, Tobias Scherbaum wrote:
> Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> > Can people be entirely banned from Gentoo?
> 
> At least from a technical pov I tend to say "no". Implementing a
> "feature" we (as in Gentoo) cannot technically enforce is useless, as
> enforcing it would require lots of manpower and manual interaction which
> we need more urgently in lots of other areas of Gentoo.
> 
> > - What would such a ban include? Some ideas -- the person could not:
> >   - Post to any gentoo mailing list;
> >   - Post to gentoo bugzilla;
> >   - Participate in #gentoo- IRC channels; 
> >   - Contribute to gentoo (hence my corner case of a security fix) except 
> >     perhaps through a proxy;
> > 
> > - Why would we do it?
> 
> don't know, I don't see the need. People play wanker on #gentoo -> they
> get banned from that channel. People play wanker in the forums -> they
> get a warning and finally their account will get locked. I think these
> mechanisms are quite effective and proved to be good (tm), creating a
> next step of a "full Gentoo ban" isn't needed (nor doable) from my pov.
> 
> > - Under whose authority would it happen?
> 
> As people who would be banned are no developers any more this clearly
> falls under Userrels authority.
> 
> > - Would it be reversible? What conditions would cause this?
> 
> It needs to be reversible, people change, their attitude changes.
> Therefore we would need to implement a process which allows every banned
> user (after a fixed timeframe following the ban) to let userrel re-check
> the ban.
> 
> >   Since the banned person couldn't participate in Gentoo, we'd never 
> >   know whether anything changed.
> 
> They could still talk to people on IRC or via mail - or request to
> re-check if their ban is still necessary or if they deserve a second
> chance as described above.
> 
> > - How would one appeal this? Would there be a chance to respond before
> >   the ban?
> 
> As such a ban would require fast intervention to just stop people
> playing wankers we would need to have different steps of bans, temporary
> bans followed by a longer ban and permanent bans as the last resort.
> Having several steps (i.e. short bans for a few days or a week at last)
> before someone gets banned permanently there's no need to be able to
> appeal these decisions - except a permanent ban would require such a
> process being in place.
> 
> > - Would moderating the gentoo-dev mailing list obsolete this concept?
> 
> It wouldn't obsolete this concept, but for now I see no need to ban
> people from interacting with our (developer) community - besides that I
> question if such a ban would be technically doable.
> As we had the most problems with our dev-ml in the past (and we have
> other working mechanisms like operators on #gentoo or mods in forums
> already in place) putting the ml on moderation would help and *might*
> obsolete the need for bans if the implementation works and will be
> accepted.
> 
>   Tobias

Regards,
Ferris
-- 
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@g.o>
Developer, Gentoo Linux (Devrel, Sparc, Userrel, Trustees)