RE: [gentoo-council] User Relations authority

[Chrissy Fullam]

Sorry, this is long. I hate long emails but find the topic to be one
warranting discussion.

<snip out Council log comments>
> I note two things.  (1) As I read this, no one here is arguing for
> anything like a permanent ban; (2) The main thrust in this appears to
> address *poisonous developers* except for christel who advocates including
> non-developer users as well.  And I don't see anything suggesting that
> wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant are discussing permanent action, although
> I don't have the complete context.

Lack of an idea previously does not nullify the validity of the idea now.
They were however discussing the root cause, repeat offenders who continued
to have negative effects on the community and isn't that at the heart of the
matter here?

> So, I don't think I have any argument with
> wolf31o2/kloeri/christel/seemant here, but I think what you cited
> *supports* my view.  Let me quote kloeri again, because he seems to be the
> strictest among them:
>
> <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
 
I read 'not just' to mean not exclusive, as in people do it in places other
than solely on mailing lists, such as IRC channels perhaps. 

> My concern goes more to who determines "jerk-ness"
> and what we do about it.  And it bothers me a lot that a small number of
> people believe themselves qualified to make that decision in secret.

Not sure who said they wanted to make any such decisions in secret. As an
active participant in this discussion since the beginning I know secrecy was
not my intent.

> Code of Conduct seems to require that the people applying it are actively
> working with the "jerks" involved.  Even kloeri said he was opening a bug
> on some developer for all to see.

<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  ....

Actually fmccor, kloeri did not state for all to see. He could have opened a
private bug and closed it for only Dev Rel to see for example. That would
also fit with his above quote.

> Nothing in our
> current documentation that I can see indicates that we should have a group
> of people rooting through our archives in order to put together a case for
> imposing a permanent ban on someone, and if you are really suggesting any
> such thing, *something* needs to be updated in order to put the community
> on notice.

I think if someone were to be rooting through archives it would be to
supplement a case, not base one solely on something that happened long ago.
If it were last week I would not consider that to be rooting through
archives, personally last week's emails are readily accessible.
 
> As I understand it, these proposals fit into the context of the Code of
> Conduct, and no matter what you say, I am certain that the Code of Conduct
> was put in place to address problems as they occur in order cut off and
> prevent brush fires.

As someone who was regularly consulted by Council for the creation and
editing of the original CoC I feel I can appropriately comment here. It was
not put in place to only handle something that just happened, it simply was
not deemed a relevant point of discussion as we felt people were competent
enough to make appropriate decisions. Its intent was to be put in place as
an extension of Dev Rel policy and to be applied to developers and users
alike. The discussion regarding time as I recall was limited to how we would
not want to apply it to someone who since changed his/her ways in their
communications and made the desired improvements... such an act would then
be vengeful. 

> In this context, his permanent ban proposals would
> be the final sanction after quite a long run of working with someone
> through the Code of Conduct itself.

It was not designed to replace common sense nor to nullify previous efforts
if they were made after this lovely document; if anything it was deemed the
documentation of what was perceived to be common sense when we found that
sense may not be as common as we would have liked. ;-)

> Now, as I have said, I think providing for moderating the -dev mailing
> list fits much more neatly into the Code of Conduct, and I had thought we
> would have this in place by now

These are two separate items and both are good solid items for discussion.
Discussing one does not mean the other is not relevant or desirable. 

>(although the push for that seems to have
> died --- it's sort of funny that right now I'm the one pushing it).

Not dead in the least. As I understood it infra was looking into the
practical implementation though can appreciate the confusion as we rather
froze the 'who should moderate' discussion after realizing that many of us
could not agree on the who... though tsunam and myself as User Rel and Dev
Rel leads did say that we would be more than willing to discuss implementing
the tasks into our respective groups as a collaborative effort.

> Donnie suggests elsewhere that moderation is not the answer because the
> number of "poisonous people" is small and the group tends to be the same,
> but I don't understand the point.

I recall Donnie being in favor of both moderation as well as banning. Donnie
can comment best to his views though.

> All that says is that the list of
> people being moderated would be pretty static.  To that I answer (1) So
> what?  Does it matter that the moderators have a static list rather than a
> dynamic one?

Sure it does, in the sense that a repeat offender should be reviewed as to
why we allow them to take up our time instead of following processes that we
are currently discussing to put in place in conjunction with the moderation.

> (2) That's invalid anyway because we've never tried it.

It's not invalid. It's why we talk about ways to implement things. As you
likely agree, policies and documents require updating so let's talk about
different ways and determine the one we wish to try. Nothing is concrete.
One doesn't work, try another. We're fluid like that. 

> Oh, yes.  I'm going to stand by my statement that imposing permanent bans
> in secret without involving the parties involved is cowardly.

Who the heck said they wanted to do everything in private? I'm not even sure
where you got this notion from, though you have used it repeatedly on this
and similar threads and that's the only reference I can find. If I'm missing
something, please tell me.

> I'm also going to stand by my statements that the intent behind the Code
> of Conduct has always been to provide a way to react quickly to problems
> as they unfold.  ...  Or we could just ask Christel; she
> wrote it and she knows what she had in mind.  (Actually, I guess I'll ask
> Christel if no one else does.)

Actually while Christel undoubtedly worked hard, this is not how this
happened at all. A group consisting largely of Council but some external
parties... hell I even brought in a professional PR person as part of the
process... held the discussion and Christel was elected to draft up the
thoughts and agreed upon ideas into a more comprehensive document which the
group agreed to name Code of Conduct. 


Kind regards,
Christina Fullam
Gentoo Developer Relations Lead | Gentoo Public Relations 




-- 
gentoo-council@l.g.o mailing list