Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo Council Reminder for August 7

[Tom Wesley]

Hi,

For clarity, I am tomaw, a member of freenode staff.  For even more
clarity, I am a member of OFTC staff, although that's not relevant to
this posting.  I have spent many hours discussing this issue with
Chrissy and others and feel some points require clarification.

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008 08:39:41 -0700
"Chrissy Fullam" <musikc@g.o> wrote:

> > Fair enough. Let me wrap up the IRC part.
> >
> > 1. I'd like to ask Council to discuss possible reactions to our
> > developer being banned from Freenode without providing us with a
> > reason. The situation looks like one of Freenode staffers
> > overreacted over something Chris said during previous Council
> > meeting and banned him to prevent him from attending next meetings
> > when he was supposed to provide more information on the CoC topic.
> > The ban was removed after an hour,
>
> The ban was put in place on Sunday; the ban was lifted on Tuesday
> evening = way longer than one hour. Chris tried to speak to Freenode
> staff on Freenode but was told he was evading the ban and they would
> not speak to him there. He had to find out from me what the email

I have previously indicated on IRC that the omission of the email
address to respond to with questions about klines in this kline message
was a mistake.  He did not have to find out which email address to use
from you.  I told him myself.  I am quite upset that you did not feel it
prudent to indicate that we admit this mistake in your email.

> address was (as it's not documented on Freenode's site) and email
> them to ask why he was banned. Christel responded later that day and
> simply apologized and removed the ban. Chris again emailed to ask
> *why* he was banned but Freenode staff has ignored his second email
> requesting information about his own ban.

I responded personally to this request.  I did consider writing
another response earlier today asking for more time due to staff
availability but decided doing so was overly verbose.  If your personal
knowledge of the person in question indicates that he prefers more
verbose interaction please have him convey this to us and I will be
happy to help.

> To me it looks like they
> not only will not tell us, they will not tell the individual who was
> actually banned and that is in poor professional taste and only
> further serves to drive a wedge between our ability to work with
> Freenode.

freenode can currently only discuss this with the person banned due to
legal issues.  I am not a lawyer, but I suspect much of what fmccor
said to be true.

> > 2. I want Council to consider moving their meetings somewhere where
> > third parties can't control who in Gentoo can attend and who can't.
>
> This is an interesting idea. Perhaps a good trial for a transition?
>
> > 3. I want Council to consider creating and using irc.gentoo.org
> > alias instead of irc.freenode.net in our docs, news items and so
> > on.
>
> Seems pretty logical so I just want to say that I like this whoever
> came up with this. :)

This seems sensible.

Thanks,

-- 
Tom Wesley <tom@×××××.net>