Re: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Donnie Berkholz]

On 12:26 Thu 10 Jul     , Ferris McCormick wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 22:49 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> 2.  But for both devrel and userrel, the Code of Conduct loses almost
> all its impact unless response is immediate --- CoC's intent, I think,
> is to help keep the mailing lists and #gentoo-dev channel on track
> pretty much in real time.  I know this was the original idea behind it,
> and this was one reason we felt we needed people outside devrel to help
> enforce it (devrel is not set up for immediate responses);

The concepts of poisonous people and repeat offenders are explicitly 
mentioned numerous times in the 20070308 council meeting. Here are some 
examples:

<wolf31o2|mobile> kloeri: banning people from the lists, not 
necessarily... but reducing the requirements on devrel to suspend 
"repeat offenders" might just make them think about their actions before 
doing them, and that could decrease the flames a bit

<kloeri> there's some devs that are persistently poisoning the project 
that I want to deal with but that's not just related to mailinglists

<wolf31o2|mobile> christel: agreed... I think we need to be a bit more 
strict on our developers... after all, in the flames involving users, 
developers are just as much at fault as the users... perhaps if the devs 
didn't respond in kind, the flames would subside much quicker, etc

<kloeri> I don't want to ban anybody but I do want to be much harder on 
devs poisoning things consistently and I'm going to file at least one 
devrel bug in that regard

<kloeri> I don't think we can force people to follow netiquette in 
general but we can do more to smack devs up when they're constantly 
being a pain in the ass


On the topic of userrel's power to ban people from lists, which is a 
long-term action:

<robbat2> on the side of devrel not having 'teeth' - kloeri mentioned 
before that infra previously wasn't very responsive to requests to do 
things (he cited a userrel request to remove user from the ML)

<christel> i have a question, if we are to start enforcing etiquette 
policy, i think we may want to ensure we have one which also cover users

> 4.  That is, we (devrel, userrel, averyone else perhaps) should use Code
> of Conduct to stop elaborate flame wars before they can burn out of
> control.  Whether a flame war ever merits a bug will vary from situation
> to situation, but generally if we have a flame war and wish to impose
> some sort of sanctions because of it, we really need to be hitting
> several people or none with warnings or brief "vacations."

I agree that we should attempt to take short-term actions in response to 
immediate offenses.

> 5.  I am not sure where the current Code of Conduct document is, but
> I'll volunteer to help update it to bring it into line with how we wish
> to use it and to help clarify who has what authority under it, and that
> sort of thing.  I have come to support it, and I'd like to help make it
> more effectively used in the rather narrow context for which it was
> designed before we consider extending its reach.

On the topic of trying to write down every possible way to go about 
this, I also agree with them:

<g2boojum> christel: I actually think you want it to be more vague than 
specific.  "Don't be a jerk."  Please don't define "jerk", or you get a 
five-page treatise on why the bahavior doesn't really fit the 
definition.

<seemant> we really need to be careful in adopting document upon 
document upon document

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com