Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...)

[Alec Warner]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2020 at 6:58 AM Aaron Bauman <bman@g.o> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07:53PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@g.o>
> > wrote:
> > (1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with
> others.
>
> <snip>
>
> There has been a steady escalation here by the council and various other
> developers. So, this is satisfied (or is that subjective of me to
> assume?). Is there a metric for establishing whether good faith has
> occured?
>

It's my (subjective) belief that a good faith discussion with forum-mods
never occurred. Feel free to disagree!


>
> > (2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
> > people's personal preferences.
>
> No matter how much you want to be objective... we are humans and
> subjectiveness is a part of that. The CoC is a shared policy... hell,
> some may even say it isn't as they weren't there to adopt/formalize it.
> So, there's that.


My point is more like "this belief that everyone dislikes OTW" is poorly
measured and poorly falsifiable. This point was also made on -core where it
was suggested to have a better basis for the decision to avoid
flip-flopping. If you end up with a rational basis then different people
can examine the situation and draw the same conclusions.

Is the CoC a rational basis? I mean there is definitely subjectivity to it,
but I think it's clearly more of a shared belief than "I think X is toxic"
and there are fairly clear guidelines in the CoC today (and we could add
more.) We could ask questions like (quoting the CoC's unacceptable behavior
here):
Does this activity happen on OTW?
---
- Flaming and trolling. What is trolling? You are deemed to be trolling if
you make comments intended to provoke an angry response from others. What
is flaming? Flaming is the act of sending or posting messages that are
deliberately hostile and insulting.
- Posting/participating only to incite drama or negativity rather than to
tactfully share information.
- Being judgmental, mean-spirited or insulting. It is possible to
respectfully challenge someone in a way that empowers without being
judgemental.
- Constantly purveying misinformation despite repeated warnings.
---
I'd argue it does contain some of these things. If it *didn't* contain
those things, would we consider keeping it? I'd like to think yes.


> > (3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
> > provide some data to clarify some various points.
> >
>
> I don't find the data here relevant. Regardless of
> who/what/where/when (which is what data will give us)... I want to
> understand the why.
>
> Quite simply, the why is... because people have nothing better to do on
> a forum meant for something completely different. More on this later.
>

Yeah I don't want to live in a world where I have to "do gentoo" in every
channel all the time. You and I have had numerous discussions of non-gentoo
topics on IRC, but I don't see anyone advocating for deleting IRC as a
medium. People talk about offtopic stuff. It's a thing that will happen and
will continue to happen..basically forever. So this policy where we must
only allow Gentoo topics is...I think it's a bit inane.


>
> > Also FYI: What about the polish OTW (
> > https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-61.html)
> >
>
> Not really sure what relevance this plays as I do not know Polish. Also,
> relying on automatic translation of such content, in this context, seems
> short-sighted.
>

It's a question of scope. Are we deleting "OTW" or "OTW and polish OTW."


>
> >
> > >
> > > Rationale:
> > >
> > > * provides zero value to the distribution
> > >
> >
> > I think the OTW forum does provide value. Can you elaborate on why you
> > think the value is 0?
> >
> > For example, forum-mods move offtopic threads from other forums into OTW,
> > so it serves as a holding bin for those conversations. We could advocate
> > moving those to the dustbin, but the dustbin is readonly, so threads may
> > come back.
> >
> > In addition there are those who believe that the offtopic nature of OTW
> > keeps the rest of the forums a nicer cleaner place, and that suppressing
> > this content can have unintended consequences. So I request that you do
> > consider the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of this decision.
> >
>
> Pump the breaks. So, you are justifying that they do play a role because
> it provides a dumping ground for things that *are not* relevant to the
> forums?
>

I'm refuting an argument. The argument is that the OTW forum has 0 value.
I'm suggesting the value is non-zero.


>
> Furthermore, it is not suppression. It is ensuring that the nature of
> the forums is *relevant* to the goal of the forums... which is to support
> the Gentoo distribution (here comes the subjectiveness). How threads
> discussing politics, conspiracy theories, or other shenanigans relates
> to Gentoo's goals is beyond me.
>

I mean it's clearly suppression. That isn't to say suppression is bad. We
"suppress" SPAM for the same reason and I don't see anyone going around
saying we should let spambots fill up the forums ;)


>
> FTR, there are threads discussing very dark times in the world's
> history such as Hitler etc. Are these really things we want our
> sponsors' monies/hardware and our donations going to support? Are we
> really being good stewards of the monies, hardware, etc donated to
> further our cause as a distro?


>
> Maybe our donors are objective too, but I doubt they would be happy with
> such a situation.
>

Again though, is this a real argument or a boogeyman argument? "Our donors
might be unhappy with X, so you should stop doing X."
So I'd ask...are our donors unhappy? If they are, then sure, we can take
action! But I suspect the answer is "we have no idea what they think about
the forums, or OTW" and so again, it's not a great basis for action.


> > * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others)
> wish
> > >   Gentoo to be associated with
>
> <snip>
>
> The argument from our "elected" official is very valid. Isn't that what
> he is there for? He has to be subjective, but he has also publically
> stated on many mediums *why* OTW is bad for us. Additionally, many
> others agree.
>
> Policies are great, but you cannot legislate common sense (which IMHO is
> where subjectiveness plays a role). Attempting to delineate every
> possible scenario of things we deem "not OK" is asinine. This is what
> the CoC is for and why we have an elected council to interpret
> it/enforce it (along with COMREL).
>
> This brings up a larger point. I am sure there are many developers who
> would argue with COMREL and/or the Council regarding their
> subjectiveness to forcibly retire them. Should we do away with the
> council too? It's a slippery slope toward objectiveness.
>

My point is that dillfridge presented a multi-faceted argument. One point
was "large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others)
wish
Gentoo to be associated with". Perhaps he intended this to mean "large
parts of the content violate the CoC" in which case I'd be open to a
clarification. The point as written is bad though; and it's not
justification for action as written, IMHO.


>
> > > * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the
> forums
> > >   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
> > >
> >
> > According to what data?
> >
> > Looking at the past year:
> > select COUNT(*) as cnt, IF(phpbb_posts.forum_id=10,true, false) as forum,
> > phpbb_users.user_id as user from phpbb_users INNER JOIN phpbb_posts ON
> > phpbb_posts.poster_id=phpbb_users.user_id where phpbb_posts.post_time >
> > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365 DAY)) and
> > phpbb_posts.poster_id IN (select DISTINCT(poster_id) from phpbb_posts
> where
>
> <snip>
>
> Cool data. The problem is the *why*. None of this content, regardless of
> who/what/where/when is relevant to us as a distro.
>

It was raised in the original argument..so I provided additional context.
If you want to agree that the point is irrelevant to the decision, well I
could agree to that ;)


>
> <snip>


> > sailed after repeated failed attempts at gaining that support.
> >
>
> So, like, what is your counter proposal or proposal here? You seem to be
> playing a "devils advocate", but have very strong opinions on why Andreas
> is
> wrong in his approach.
>

> So, what would Alec do?
>

Alec would structure the argument better.
Avoid making points that detract from my case.
Avoid bringing in arguments with no factual basis.
Substantiate my arguments with data.

-A


> --
> Cheers,
> Aaron
>