Re: [gentoo-project] Temporary DevRel actions for CoC violations

[IAN DELANEY]

On Fri, 21 Jun 2013 00:19:47 +0100
Markos Chandras <hwoarang@g.o> wrote:

>
> No it is not accurate. You need to read the threads again. For
> example, nobody ever said that
> we will punish people for calling a software "crap". Please read more
> carefully what I wrote.
> I also said that we will warn people before we kick them out. Again,
> please read more carefully what
> I wrote before.

I'd like to pitch in here possibly in the magnitude of a grenade,
don't really know, although I'm a little late to this party.  the bulk
of this I've copied from an attempt over a week ago which didn't make
it thru to project ML, but it mostly pertinent to the topic at hand.
It prob. belongs as a reply to the opening thread by Marcos. 

"
To attempt a succinct summary here (an extended one will lose everyone),
from the body of knowledge I gained from back in the day, sure people's
basic personal traits are formed and set for life at various
CRITICAL stages of youth, and the pages once writ aren't subject to
being re-written.  Our admins and devs are adults, predominantly very
young adults with an established persona and values at entry to gentoo.

The task here isn't to change the person at their core. If anyone is
'trained' to do that it's a psycho-analyst, not a gentoo dev or a
Foundation member.  The task here is to change that relatively
thin shell that encompasses a person, namely outward behaviour.

> If you need a slap to make you behave
> nicely, then this is not going to work in the long-term. And you can't
> improve a distribution technical wise, if you have people who can't
> work together.
> - We've been requesting this for a very very long time, yet 2 days ago
> we had another incident. So I'd say, no, we can't.

Snide, aggressive, hostile, insolent remarks wrapped in a common
package of abuse and oft used 4 letter expletives are the topic at hand
here I gather, and I don't know offhand what the recent incident is, but
in the light of lxnay's extended highlighting of the subject and his
declaration to collect his marbles and wander back home, for all the
back slapping and encouraging to stick around because you're a good
'guy' / 'bloke' 'citizen', dev .. ' ' .., still the display of brash
ignorance carries on it seems with impunity, undented, unaddressed,
unabated, until now...........

This isn't a case of managing the unmanageable, however its management
frankly cries out for management skills that are simply not in the
personal toolboxes of most who are in any way vaguely authorised and
therefore in a position to 'pounce' on those of us who come out with
naughty behaviour.  To sketch out a rather black or bleak picture of
this whole affair, assuming NeddySeagoon's depiction of devs (well and
developer or admin personnel) as predominantly alpha males with
retarded social skills, what we have here in >95% of cases is a case of
1 alpha male with retarded social skills made responsible for managing /
reeling naughty outward behaviour of an alpha male with retarded
social skills. Grief!  No wonder lxnay buckled!!

This outward behaviour is INDEED changeable, and hence manageable.

in case you missed that

This outward behaviour is INDEED changeable, and hence manageable.
Outward behaviour is changeable, modifiable, malleable even.  Modifying
behaviour is for cryin' out loud a whole stream of the science known as
psychology.  Its technicians are termed behaviourists.
Now for the bad news.  Due to the rampant incidence of the above, we
can anticipate this behaviour management coming to pass in our
precious gentoo haven just as sure as we can expect pigs to sprout
wings and fly.

So despite my assertion that hwoarang's statement is erred in fact (a
prior thread but never mind), it kind of becomes an utterly moot point
since the formula to achieve this end requires, well, behaviourists.
Let's invite all such duplicate qualified devs to submit their
nominations for executing the CoC and ., eeer, oh bump, damn those
flying pigs, got me right in the head.

If there is any positive slant to this, my guess is that it's that
behaviourists don't hold a monopoly on how to talk someone into finally
gaining an insight that 'they're not the messiah, they're but very
naughty boys'.  So much of psychology has its roots in real life, hence
many of the behaviourist's tools are to be found in the toolboxes of
Joey Blogs with a cool composure and a mature head.  This kind of
maturity is in fact not confined to those experiencing the onset of
greyed or absent hair, but also in some quick developers who are still
in the category oft termed 'youngens', well, young adults. 

My experience of these outbursts of slander come insolence lead me to
assert that;
1. The chief protagonists are also the chief outstanding
contributors in gentoo, 
2. They piously misbelieve that they have earned a right to throw out a
series of 1 liner put downs at whim without hesitation since they have
earned impunity by holding anyone who dares rebutt them to ransom by
virtue of their prolific contribution history, therefore 
3. despite being technical intellects, they are naively ignorant of how
wrong they are in the prior assertions. They are, in a word, ignorant.

We're not talking rapists and robbers behaviour, we're talking 'naughty
talking'. Get a grip. This relatively 'minor' level of erroneous /
aberrant behaviour surely falls into the category of unlearning what
they internalised as 'ok / acceptable / normative' and re-learning
higher social standards / norms.  Any mature heads out there??????
"
------------------------------------------------

I'd like to propose a longer term method of this real issue.  The key
word is mentor.  The aspect of rebuttal by punishment leaves a sour
taste in everyone's mouth.  I don't think that a punishment response
here is the catchall fix, rather, an involuntary internship of
offenders to one with a mature head.   On devrel becoming notified and
becoming aware of a dev being an offender, devrel then assesses and
reviews the 'offensive data' and then can elect to put the dev under
the supervision of one with a mature head, a new level mentor.  Picking
them is the hard part.  

Applying a simple principle of behaviourist theory, the rights of the
dev are switched from being open slather, e.g. on all MLs, to you can't
submit to this ML until your intended submission is vetted and
approved by the ALLOCATED mentor.  He has his wings clipped. Clipping
wings in irc channels would be more difficult really.  Commit rights I
don't see as an apt target to be clipped since commits are purely
technical data.  

The process here is to make an offender accountable for being (socially
not technically) an ignorant dimwit shooting and shouting without
due cause. He (there are no shes) then need earn his way back to a
status of a full wing spread to re-use my analogy.

Offensive remarks are basically remarks put in a clumsy hostile manner
and I reckon mostly without even knowing it. Offensive is not cast in
stone but is open to perception of the remark, so there is no choice
here but to deal with the many shades of grey.

There are many ways to skin the proverbial cat, and the task of the
mentor is essentially to take on the involuntary and disgruntled
mentoree and thrash out some come all of these many other ways that the
remark can be revised re-worked, re-packaged and re-presented to the
offendee minus its ugly uncalled for insolence and unwelcome baggage.
Rationale; level headed valid feedback, back peddle on fundamental
approach to expressing oneself, unlearn, re-learn, learn more.
done
The offendee's new level mentoreeship finishes when and only when agreed
upon by the mentor unilaterally or in consensus with those of devrel.

and that's the short version.  Now for the flack.

-- 
kind regards

Ian Delaney