[gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness

[Duncan]

Alec Warner posted on Wed, 21 Mar 2018 10:44:48 -0400 as excerpted:

> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 1:36 AM, Eray Aslan <eras@g.o> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 10:28:48AM -0500, Matthew Thode wrote:
>> > While I personally do no agree with mailing list moderation infra has
>> > been tasked with moving forward on it.
>>
>> You can always resign from infra.
>>
>>
>> That was a somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment but not wholly.  You cant
>> cop out by saying it was an order from council.  I understand if you
>> dont but do consider it.  Fight the good fight.
>>
>>
> So when there is conflict its pretty often that you have 3 options.
>
> 1) Accept 2) Leave 3) Escalate

Wise words.

Here the context was/is infra, but they apply to general devs and users 
who disagree with this as well, thus my own personal interest, altho I'm 
not so much a "disagree" as a "concerned and sad it has to come to this", 
as I see both sides.

[Note:  I intend this to be my only post to this thread, unless a reply 
calls for further reply on my part.  It's my position of record on the 
moderation/whitelisting and may also be my last to the list before it 
goes moderated.  If that's not of interest to you I'd rather you skip the 
rest of the post and use the time for something you consider more 
constructive.  =:^) ]

> I'm not sure 3 is possible (the council is already the highest body). I
> also think that as a organization this is how we arranged it to be.

Astute observation.

> Speaking for myself, this is not the worst issue I've seen in Gentoo and
> so I thing doing 2 is probably not very effective. Its also likely I can
> only do 2 once (because maybe I would not be welcome'd back or want to
> contribute anymore.)

Also astute.

I'm ignoring my urge to point to "real world" examples as this list is 
*definitely* not the place, but in the safer general realm it can simply 
be observed that there's /always/ a leave/stay-and-accept (if only 
temporarily/strategically) argument to be made, even in the /worst/ cases 
(which must here be left to imagination and history) where arguably 
"leave" is the only morally acceptable alternative.

Fortunately, I believe most will agree this isn't a "worst" case in that 
regard, tho it may be bad enough that some find they must leave.

But for both users and devs there remain the practical questions:

Where else would I go?  Is that alternative actually practically viable?  
Would I be more effective there than here, hoping to eventually reverse 
the decision (or for those like me more on the sad-it-came-to-this-but-I-
see-why-some-believe-it-has side, hoping a short trial is demonstration 
enough of capacity and that it lowers the threat to where even those that 
agree it has to come to that now feel comfortable in reverting it, tho 
possibly retaining the capacity to reimpliment if necessary)?

In practice, there are certainly from-source alternatives.  However, 
again practically, gentoo does seem to be the biggest, and most others 
seem to either be mostly-compatible offshoots such as funtoo and exherbo 
that to some degree still depend on the larger gentoo tree and community, 
or to make choices that put them to one side or the other of gentoo's 
"automated/scripted from-source" approach (arch's core-binary approach on 
the toward-binaries side, and lfs/linux-from-scratch's much more manual-
but-still-guided, approach on the other).

There's also the very practical "but I already know and am familiar with 
gentoo and how it works (both technically and socially) and would have to 
learn the others" factor.

For both those reasons and I suppose others, gentooers who have been 
around a few years, at least long enough to develop that familiarity, 
tend to stay around as long as they remain interested in gentoo's general 
automated-from-source approach (tho many ultimately lose that interest 
and go binary-distro or leave the FLOSS community entirely), unless of 
course forced out as incompatible with continuing community interest, in 
which case, given little choice, they often land at one of those 
alternatives.

> That leaves 1 and one interests me for many reasons.
>
> a) as noted earlier, decisions are not set in stone. Its possible we
> could turn on this whitelisting solution for a brief period and the
> decision is overturned at the next council meeting, or perhaps at the
> next council election once the existing council is replaced.

Agreed.  I've already mentioned what I believe would be my ideal outcome, 
above.  Try the whitelisting as proposed for awhile, then having 
demonstrated the capacity/threat, relax things, while maintaining the 
capacity, such that hopefully the toxic people that created the initial 
need will not find it worth their while to be toxic here once again, but 
with the capacity to reinstitute should they do so.

(Yes, I know that unused tools fall into disrepair over time, but often, 
repair, or even redo if necessary, is easier the second time around.  So 
hopefully the capacity would remain available or at least easier to 
implement again, if again needed.)

(Points B and C omitted as infra specific, because I've nothing to add.)

> d) Infra as a organization wields a lot of power in Gentoo and I think
> its organizationally dangerous to wield that power in this way. [...]
> e) In the past, infra *has* wielded its power in a fashion that had
> negative impacts on the distribution (e.g. arbitrarily removing commit
> rights for developers with no warning, process, or oversight).

Having lived thru much of that, I 100% agree that it's not something 
gentoo should ever want to go back to.  While individuals are certainly 
free to resign should they feel the need, having even infra subject to an 
_elected_ council is a _good_ thing!


Meanwhile, I've already stated my position.  I'm sad to see it come to 
this, and hope it to be eventually reversed, but the elected council has 
spoken, I understand the events that lead to their decision, and remain 
and abide is my chosen option.

And as for the effect on my own posts as a non-dev, personally...

* My posting intent on any list, including this one, is positive 
contribution.  Should I ever believe my posts have ceased to be that, 
I'll immediately apologize if it was one-off/short-term, or stop posting 
if I don't believe my posts to be a positive contribution going forward.

(I've often spent quite some time composing a post, only to ultimately 
close the window without sending, because on consideration before hitting 
send, I decided it wasn't unquestionably a positive contribution to the 
list/discussion in question.  Sometimes just writing it for me was what I 
needed to do.  Sometimes I simply thought better of it, period.)

* I'm acutely mindful of the fact that this _is_ gentoo-*dev*, and that 
as a user, not a dev, I'm but a guest here.

(And yes, that sometimes influences my "don't send it after all" 
decision.)

* While there are complaints of my verbosity, I've never been /banned/ 
and I'm proud of that.

* I've had personal offers to whitelist, for which I am grateful.  

(The given reason was that while I'm often too wordy, I often do have a 
valid point/question, that may not have been brought up by others.  I do 
struggle with the wordiness, believe me, but I'm grateful that at least 
some devs consider my posts a positive enough contribution to extend the 
whitelisting offer.)

* For the time being, I've thanked, but turned down that whitelisting 
offer.  When I'd otherwise post, I'm going to take the opportunity to 
reconsider the positive contribution of my posts even more, try again to 
whittle down the wordiness further, and then, if I still consider it 
worth the effort, I'm going to forward the post to the person I'm 
replying to or possibly to someone else (like the person who offered the 
whitelisting), asking them to forward it... but *only* if they too 
consider it a positive contribution to the current discussion.

Tho I may eventually request whitelisting, in the mean time I intend to 
learn what I can from the forward/rejection/rejection-with-feedback on 
those attempted contributions, to try to make future attempted 
contributions even better! =:^)

That's keeping in mind that as a user not a dev, I /do/ consider myself a 
guest on this list, and arguably, posting to it has /always/ been a 
privilege, not a right.  And given the coming whitelisting, devs, thru 
their elected council, have clearly expressed their desire to cut down 
the outside noise from "guests", ensuring that any such "guest posts" 
allowed thru are signal, not noise, or worse yet, negative signal.

As one of those guests, abiding by that expressed intent to the best of 
my ability is my goal, and I intend to take the presented opportunity to 
try to improve my own attempts at contribution!

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman