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

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 2:33 AM, Martin Vaeth <martin@×××××.de> wrote:
> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>>
>> Fred is a community member.  Fred consistently harasses and trolls new
>> contributors in private.
>
> Sure, it's a problem. But not a problem which can be solved by
> closing the mailing list, in no step of the issue.
>
> First of all, this happens in private, so you cannot prevent it
> by closing a mailing list.

Certainly.  Closing lists won't stop the private abuse, nor is it intended to.

What it would stop is this particular thread talking endlessly about it.

>
>> No mention is made of why Fred as booted out, because everything
>> happened in private.
>
> That's the mistake which is made in this example. Be open in the
> decisions. If you cannot be open in order to protect other people's
> privacy, be open at least by saying exactly this.

In the example I can think of this was done, and yet people still
endlessly argued about it, because simply stating that you can't be
open about something won't satisfy people who want there to be
openness.

> Closing a mailing list
> will not close such a debate; it will then just happen elsewhere.

And that is the goal.

> Anyway, such a debate does not belong to dev-ml. The correct solution
> is to continue to point people to have this debate on the appropriate place,
> not on the mainly technically oriented dev-ml.

Could you take this debate to the appropriate place then?


> Making the posters silent
> by blacklisting even more is contra-productive and will give the
> impression that they are actually right.

If the goal is to make them silent on the closed list it is completely
productive.

Nothing can prevent people from getting the impression that there is
some kind of cover-up.  Certainly the last time this sort of thing
happened having hundreds of emails posted on the topic on the lists
didn't do anything to convince the few posters that the right thing
was done.

Now, I do like something that Debian did in this situation which was
to give the person who was booted the option to have the reasoning
disclosed or not.  If they refuse and people question why they were
booted, you can simply state that all people who are booted are given
the option to have the reasons disclosed, and the person leaving made
the choice not to have this done.  IMO something like this would tend
to reduce the legal liabilities.

>
>> Ultimately the leaders just want Fred gone so that new contributors
>> aren't getting driven away.  They can't explain that because then they
>> create potential civil liability for the project.
>
> Why not? Is it against a law to exclude somebody who is hurting a
> project?

Not at all.  Booting somebody from an organization like Gentoo creates
no liability, unless it was based on discrimination/etc.

The liability comes from saying negative things about somebody.

Kicking out Fred is fine.  Stating publicly that Fred was kicked out
for sexual harassment would allow Fred to sue, and then you have to
pay to prove that he was sexually harassing somebody.

>
>> The problem is that
>> the debate goes on for over a year despite intervening elections and
>> now this becomes the issue that is driving new contributors away.
>> What solution would you propose for this problem?
>
> How would closing the mailing list solve the problem? It will give
> the impression that you want to close the debate by taking away the
> medium where people can argue. And the impression is correct, because
> this actually *is* the intention if you are honest.

Certainly this is the intention, at least for my part.  There is no
benefit in arguing about this for more than a year, especially if
those who made the decisions get re-elected to their posts.

> Of course, it will not close said debate. The debate will just happen
> on another channel. (Which in this example might be appropriate, but
> pointing to the proper channel is what should have happened and not
> closing a mailing list and thus excluding random people from posting
> things about clompletely different topics which *are* on-topic on dev-ml).

People have repeatedly pointed out the correct places for such
debates, though honestly if it were my call I'd not allow this debate
to go on further anywhere that Gentoo operates.

People post this stuff on the -dev list for the same reason that
protesters block public streets.  They want to make it hard to ignore
them.

>
>> Sure, but we can at least force the negative advertising of Gentoo to
>> go elsewhere, rather than basically paying to run a negative PR
>> campaign against ourselves.
>
> Closing dev-ml will not help here. If people have a strong
> disagreement with a decision, this will happen on gentoo channels.
> If you want to prevent it technically, you have to close all channels.

Agree.  But, I don't make the decisions.  If it were up to me this
topic would be closed everywhere.

> BTW, I do not think that contributors are that blue-eyed that they
> will stop contributing only because one person does not know how to
> behave.

The problem comes when the person is booted out and a half dozen
people keep arguing that they were innocent, that Gentoo is run by a
cabal in an ivory tower, and that decisions like this should be made
more openly.  IMO this is the sort of thing that is more likely to
drive contributors away, because it has a veneer of legitimacy.  The
arguments in favor of that position are simple, and the arguments
against it are nuanced and often rely on access to non-public
information.

You can ignore their posts but then people assume they're right.  So
either we get endless argument (more than a year), or we need to
exercise prior restraint.  Neither is desirable, but I've yet to see
another option presented.

-- 
Rich