Donnie Berkholz wrote:

> On 15:21 Fri 11 Jul     , Roy Bamford wrote:
>> - From memory, the CoC was not intended to change *rels authority or
>> scope of action in any way at all.
Hmm, pro-active moderation of dev m-l was definitely a change in scope imo.

>> It was intended to document some 
>> behaviours that anyone at all could use as a reference to remind other
>> participants in a medium that they we not behaving as other users had a
>> right to expect. I recall it was based on some of the concepts behind
>> freenodes catalyst idea.
>>
That's a good thing to have, and indeed the message was given at the time
that this was stuff that others should seek to help with, in the same way
as everyone should try and file bugs or help new users. However the whole
point of the CoC as a new document was to give the proctors a mandate (and
it definitely took long enough to achieve the consensus that much more
proactive moderation was needed.)

>> See dberkholzs' earlier ideas on CoC enforcement - anyone can do it.
>>
Yeah, just like anyone can become a dev, or write a kernel.. It takes skill
and experience (both of the group and of tricky situations) to moderate
effectively. The forum mods are the examplar within Gentoo imo.

>> There was no statute of limitations implied with the creation of the
>> CoC. While the CoC was being drafted, it was recognised that many CoC
>> breaches come from anger/emotion/misunderstandings and their writers
>> not sleeping on a post before they make it.
>> It was also recognised that *rel take in comparison to these
>> outbursts, a long time to act. The Proctors was created at the same
>> time as the CoC as a rapid reaction group to deal with rapidly
>> developing situations and calm things down, leaving *rel to deal with
>> the persistent offenders in slower time as they always had done.
>> 
>> In short, the publishing of the CoC changed nothing, it only documented
>> something that had always been implied previously.
>>
I disagree as stated above. The CoC was based on the existing principles of
the Gentoo community, so perhaps in legal terms it could be argued to be
the same thing. In spirit, and in authority over all participants on all
Gentoo media, it was very different.
 
>> Note that the Forums mods and #gentoo channel ops had been enforcing
>> the standards in the CoC long before it was written. It follows that
>> the CoC is just documenting a part of what had been Gentoos' common
>> law.
Yeah, for the forums and irc (and I note that #gentoo-dev does not exactly
live up to the standard of #gentoo wrt professionalism. Focus fair enough,
everyone needs to talk off-topic, but rank stupidity and power-games?) but
not for the m-l, so again a change in scope.