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

[Aaron Bauman]

On Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 08:16:16AM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> 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:
> It's my (subjective) belief that a good faith discussion with forum-mods
> 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?
>
> 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.
>

The reasoning is simply based on the fact that it is a hosted forum.
Paid for by others who donate to us in good faith to support the
distribution. If this entails such discussions as seen in OTW... I would
be highly surprised. So, the question is quite a rhetorical one.

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

Is that what it is? I don't read/speak Polish.

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

Sure, but you are refuting it by stating that OTW does play a role and
that role is to house all the things that don't belong.

>
> >
> > 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.
>

If you want to attempt quantifying the matter go for it. It is mostly a
rhetorical question. If you cannot rationalize this on your own there is
a larger concern.

Let's use an example here... if I donate to "Alec for President"
and you go spend all my donations on ice cream. I may be a little angry,
no? This is not the "good faith" I would be assuming by donating. I
don't think we need to attempt to quantify this. Any amount spent
or donated resource used is wrong.

There is a purpose to my donations which is to support the distro. Not make a
cozy forum for people to rant/rave on about Hitler, politics, and conspiracy
theories. It is antithetical.

I suppose your next suggestion would be a document stating what donations
should/could/would be used for?

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron