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

[M. J. Everitt]

On 27/03/18 17:39, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Martin Vaeth <martin@×××××.de> wrote:
>> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth <martin@×××××.de> wrote:
>>>> It is about openness vs. isolation.
>>> I'm pretty sure most developers, myself included, want to welcome
>>> contributions.
>> Closing of the mailing list does not sound like that.
>>
> Sure, but it is actually part of the motivation.
>
> Consider this scenario.
>
> Fred is a community member.  Fred consistently harasses and trolls new
> contributors in private.  New contributors end up leaving because of
> Fred.
>
> Fred gets booted out as a result.  No mention is made of why Fred as
> booted out, because everything happened in private.
>
> Now a bunch of community members get upset about Fred being booted out
> without reason.  Fred claims it is because he disagrees with the
> leadership on something.  People start arguing endlessly about
> openness.
>
> 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.  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?  It isn't
> hypothetical at all - I can think of one case in Gentoo's past where
> this happened that I'm aware of, and I'd be shocked if it were the
> only one.
>
>> And anyway, you can be sure that the problem will appear again,
>> no matter how closed the list will be.
> 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.
>
>>> A lot of this comes down to considering that most people in these
>>> debates probably are well-intended.
>> Taking away freedom is never justified by good intention.
> You might want to choose a BSD-based distro then.  :)
>
> And what about the freedom to endlessly troll and harass you and
> others?  Is this truly a freedom we want to stand for?  How about the
> freedom to harass members of legally-protected classes (something that
> also has happened historically in the community)?
>
> Surely Gentoo's mission isn't to run completely unrestricated forums
> for discussion of anything and everything.  Our main purpose here is
> to maintain a Linux distro, not provide a platform for anybody who has
> an opinion on anything.  Free expression has to be balanced against
> the interests of people who want to actually contribute to the distro
> without being endlessly trolled and harassed.
>
It sounds a lot to me like you're replacing one set of problems with
another .. solving not a lot. Whether you take action on "Fred" or not,
you're going to lose out, so what do you do... Where is the greater
damage, with one/two people, 10/20 people or 100/200 people .. its a
huge value judgement - certainly not one I'd like to make!

You may or may not have heard the expression "throwing out the baby with
the bathwater" .. alas I feel this measure is a good example of this. To
try to rid the mailing list of one or two bad apples, you've cut the
whole tree down so it can't bear fruit. I think this is a foolish step,
but only time will tell that for sure ... The next "logical" step would
simply be to delete the whole mailing list - I suppose that's the next
"measure" when the trolling from white-listed members resurfaces.... And
don't go telling me it doesn't exist .. set a bad example, others will
surely follow ...

Ooops, another $2 spent on a lost cause .. >,<