Re: [gentoo-dev] Proctors - improve the concept or discard it?

[Wulf C. Krueger]

Hello Chris!

I'm shortening your mail greatly and respond to only a few aspects because 
the two of us seem to agree on a great deal of those points you made.

On Thursday, June 7, 2007 01:45:43 AM Chris Gianelloni wrote:
[Proctors]
> Well, they've been asked to write guidelines for Council approval, as
> well as changes to the Code of Conduct.  Neither of which have been
> done.

I'm well aware of that. Of course, one could argue that the council should 
have a) set a fixed date for those tasks and b) monitored the 
progress. :-)

> Why do we need the -dev mailing list?  How much real "development" (or
> even discussion about it) happens on the mailing list?

Rarely any. We still need it, though, because it's the only 
development-related mailinglist that everyone may at least read.

That said, before I became a dev I've read this list but I've never posted 
to it because I felt it was inappropriate. I've contacted either 
individual devs or herds and that worked fairly well.

Users have lots of ways to communicate with us - our mail aliases, the 
other mailinglists, the forums and what not. So let's make this list 
read-only for anyone but devs and staff (as was suggested by others here 
as well) and keep it.

> Most of the traffic on this list is political in nature and simply
> doesn't belong on this list.  Since we've pretty much shown over the
> past couple years that the development list isn't being used properly,
> why have it?

Because devs will need a place to vent sometimes. -core is not the list 
for such purposes. Furthermore, we generally don't need to hide (and we 
shouldn't either) from our users. Thus, there should be a mailinglist for 
all to read. Just like we have #gentoo-dev on IRC.

> I mean no disrespect to people's age, but I think part of the problem
> why we have such a hard time, collectively, acting like adults is we
> aren't adults.

Thank you for bringing this up. I didn't want to state it that clearly 
because some will feel it's unfair but I think that's indeed one of the 
problems.

> It isn't their fault, it is just simply a
> lack of life experience.  We simply cannot reasonably expect everyone
> to act like a level-headed thirty year old computer professional.

Exactly. About ten to twelve years ago, I often reacted like Ciaran, too. 

Twice, I was almost fired because of that. Fortunately for me, there were 
two colleagues who were willing to tolerate me anyway and by just 
treating me much friendlier and more patiently than I did treat them, 
I've learned there are better ways to handle frustration and latent 
aggressions.

> I have heard people say that our lack of being paid developers compounds
> this, as we have people from all walks of life.

The latter I definitely consider one of our strengths because we're *not* 
all from the isolated ebony towers of university. We're from all over the 
world and from all professions. 

> but I do know that paid developers tend to be older and
> more professional.  After all, if they constantly acted like a tool,
> they'd be fired.

Of course.

> Developer Relations has gone through a few good spots intermixed with
> lots of failures.

Yes, I agree. Of course, both of our views are highly subjective and some 
others may, as subjectively, feel that it's exactly the other way round.

> I have always felt that a properly-running distribution should have the
> need for a group whose purpose is to resolve internal conflict.

I'm guessing you meant to write "should NOT have"?

> We will always need recruiters, but the existence of a group just
> to make the 300 or so of us play nice together shows that our culture is
> broken.

No, I don't think so. The fact that we all come from different cultures, 
are aged from 15 or so up to 70 (? Neddy, correct me if I'm wrong. ;-) ) 
makes it impossible to avoid conflicts among ourselves. Thus, we'll 
always need some people to mediate.

Granted, personally, I don't need DevRel. I just ignore those who annoy me 
or I'll let them know what I think about them directly without making a 
public fuss about it. We can't expect that from others, though.

> > Do we really need an entire team for dealing with one former dev in
> > case he goes too far? Or could we just agree to ignore him if he
> > again behaves inappropriately (or what some of us *feel* might be
> > inappropriate)?

This was targetted at the proctors again, not DevRel. I should have made 
that clear, sorry.

> > When I first read the CoC I had just read about the entire
> > Ciaran-incident on the respective bugs, Forums, mailinglists, blogs
> > and many other sources. CoC, while not bad in itself, seemed (and
> > still seems) to me like a "Lex Ciaran" - a document with that what I
> > had just read clearly in mind and targetted at preventing it.
> The Code of Conduct was written with the hopes that its existence would
> help to curb the flamewars

Yes, I know. I was sceptical about that when I first heard of it and I 
still am. :)

> The perception is all that really matters, as it is all that gets
> propagated to the world.  I think this is something that people seem
> to forget.  It doesn't matter what the real truth is for anything.
> All that matters "to the world" is what they perceive.

Exactly! That's the point: In an ideal world, the absolute truth would be 
all that mattered. We all know, though, that neither the world outside 
the virtual walls of our electronic communications media is perfect nor 
that our own little Gentoo world is perfect. 

Thus, we really have to think about how we (and others) perceive what 
we're doing. 

> > While preventing it is a good goal in itself, writing a CoC based on
> > an actual case which has only recently occurred, usually leads to
> > this result and damages the whatever good intentions were involved
> > because other people will see the similarities as well.
> The Code of Conduct wasn't written in response to a particular case.

Yes, it was not intended to be but that's again a question of perception 
*and* one of the timing. Just look at the dates of both the incident in 
question and the time the CoC was written. 

Furthermore, lay both the DevRel bug and the CoC next to each other and 
compare the accusations and the CoC regulations with each other - even 
the ordering is pretty much the same. :-)

Of course, the CoC was not intended as a Ciaran-response but it was 
(probably even unintentionally) written with it in mind and it shows.

> The timing suggests that it was written against Ciaran.  It wasn't.  I
> know this will sound a bit harsh, but if we really were trying to just
> get rid of Ciaran, we would have just banned him and been done with it.

Don't worry about sounding harsh and I'll do the same: You wouldn't have 
gotten rid of him. If you were able to get rid of him, he wouldn't be 
able to post to this mailinglist.

Yesterday on IRC, I suggested banning Ciaran from here but, as I expected, 
that was met with enraged shouting about "censorship".

If we're not even able to deal with someone who has proven to me even (and 
I wasn't convinced retiring him was right after reading all I've listed 
in my previous mail) that he's a troublemaker above anything else, we 
aren't able to deal with anyone as decided as him.

> > More than that, it puts a strain on those who are entrusted with
> > enforcing the CoC because they will try, with the best motives, to
> > prevent anything like that happening again. And they will do it, as
> > the proctors stated themselves, pro-actively.
> No, re-actively.

Agreed - they were talking about *pro*-actively themselves, though. :-)

> I think they've failed.

I agree.

> voicing of their failure as a direct personal assault.  It wasn't meant
> that way, but I'm not going to apologize for my observations.  I see no
> point in apologizing for what *I* perceived, even if it does hurt a few
> feelings.  I just think people are being overly-sensitive.  It's
> Gentoo's curse.

Absolutely! That's exactly my feeling, too, and the reason why I've voiced 
my hope that people would finally grow a thicker skin as I put it.

> If Developer Relations were able to act fast, it would help immensely.

Define a right to a "speedy decision" and make that 30 days at most.

> > If, after both sides were investigated properly, the complaining
> > party is found to be exaggerating or too easily offended,
> > disciplinary action should be taken against it. Of course, this
> > should be done light-handedly but it should give the complaining
> > party some time to learn from their mistake. Maybe this is what's
> > already intended - it's just that I haven't found any examples. :)
> It is actually what was intended.  The problem is that even the most
> light-handed actions have been met with resignations, flames, people
> being general assholes, and all kinds of other fun things that compound
> the problems rather than resolve them.

Tough luck. Make DevRel a body that people are being elected to for, e. g. 
one year, and let people resign over their decisions if they feel they 
have to. It already happened and at least one dev came back after some 
rest.

You said it yourself: People are overly sensitive and DevRel must not hurt 
their feelings because of that? Sorry, that's not the way it works.

> We are an open source project that is completely community-based.  We
> simply don't all think alike and can't expect that to ever change.

No, of course not. But I've seen (and am a part of) much bigger projects 
survive for much longer (more than 20 years in one example) than Gentoo 
in spite of having basically the same problems we have.

> We don't really have any sort of replacement for the proctors.

And we don't need one.

> original User Relations was supposed to do that job,

I've never understood what that was about either but that's another 
story. :-)

> I know I am planning on bringing up discussion on this at the next
> Council meeting and we'll simply go from there.

That would be on the 14th this month, right?

Best regards, Wulf