Re: [gentoo-project] Deferred decision: Forums (specifically OTW)

[desultory]

On 06/04/19 09:30, Kristian Fiskerstrand wrote:
> On 6/4/19 3:15 PM, Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
>>  I looked at the links a bit, but there's very little substance there. Does
>> anyone want to give some more context and background?
>
> There are several elements being discussed; but noting, in no particular
> order, some of them;
>
> (a) The forums are hosted on Gentoo infra and in the name of the
> distribution, but there is a very split user and developer base; are the
> forums properly moderated wrt (i) CoC (ii) legal liability / copyrights
> (iii) potential PR issues towards the distribution for user contributed
> content;
>
Since that is a bit of a tangle of claims, allow me to break that down
into addressable components.

> (a) The forums are hosted on Gentoo infra and in the name of the
> distribution,
Yes, the forums are operating on some, but not all, of the hardware
donated for that express purpose.

> but there is a very split user and developer base;
Which is, at least in large part, due to the behavior of some, but by no
means all, developers who actively antagonize users. That there is a
disconnect between one set of users (some developers) and another set of
users (people other than those in the first set) seems a rather curious
thing to place blame for on people who have invested as much time as the
forums team has on attempting to bridge that gap where possible.

> are the forums properly moderated wrt (i) CoC
So far as I have found, the forums are one of the very few places where
the CoC is actually enforced. But, since you brought it up (as a new
claim, mind), do you have any specific complaints, or are you expecting
us to somehow prove that we have not, as a team, ever failed to fully
and properly enforce the CoC according to your standards? If so, that is
an utterly ridiculous standard to meet, especially given that the CoC is
open to interpretation. Not to mention that it would call for us to
prove a negative (which is functionally impossible regardless of
available time), on a few days notice.

> (ii) legal liability / copyrights
Again, this is a new claim and no related problems have been previously
raised. Given the nature of the forums, Gentoo neither holds nor claims
to hold copyright to users posts, so this appears to be ridiculous from
first principles.

> (iii) potential PR issues towards the distribution for user contributed
> content;
>
This is a rather fantastical standard to put to any project: might it,
at some point, potentially, in theory, even indirectly, be related to
something which someone does not like? Allow me to reveal the answer to
that: yes. Someone, somewhere will find something that someone does or
says offensive, no matter how harmless that thing was in context,
because there are people who actively seek even ludicrously convoluted
ways in which to claim offense and that they should be sheltered from
such things because they are too delicate for this world.

Just to drive home the point of how ridiculous this is, by this
standard: The security team should be disbanded because they are too
secretive, no matter that their "secretive" actions are intended to, and
indeed serve to, improve the security of installed systems, they are a
strange frightening cabal and must be stopped. All games must be removed
as there is some aspect of each that someone dislikes, sudoku might
terrify people with math anxiety, tetris could terrify people with fear
of falling objects, and fortune databases even have USE flags to include
"offensive material", this must be stopped. Action must be immediately
undertaken to remove systemd and all support for it, because some people
don't like it. Action must be immediately undertaken to remove openrc
and all support for it, because some people don't like it. Action must
be immediately undertaken to remove chrome, and firefox, and chromium,
and opera, and well, pretty much everything, because, somewhere, someone
doesn't like that particular thing, it is offensive and must be expunged
from existence because that would make the world a better, and utterly
barren, place.

Could we please, pretty please, have some sane standards, even during
lame duck sessions?

> (b) Part of (a) discussion is appeals process, so a user banned from
> forums can appeal a ban to other parts (comrel, council), so a decision
> with regards to forums also affects other projects / groups within the
> distribution. Is the additional overhead worthwhile?
>
Exactly when was this in question? Are you telling us that it is the
opinion of the council that the forums team has absolute final word on
CoC (and forum guidelines in general) enforcement on the forums? If so,
this would be news to me.

If you have somehow conflated this with proctors "offering" to insert
itself as another layer between forums and ComRel, and my rejection of
that arrangement as a bad idea for all involved, you would be mistaken.

> (c) The discussion has mostly focused on OTW (Off-The-Wall) section of
> the forums, one argument for keeping it is it is a convenient place for
> moderators to move threads that are started in other forums but doesn't
> belong there instead of deleting it, and keeping off-topic discussion in
> separate threads minimize the noise for the rest of forums.
>
And the argument for removing it has come from people who rarely, if
ever, use the forums at all, by all appearances primarily spurred on by
a developer who publicly admits to maintaining a grudge against the
entire project due to negative feedback (from me) on a bad idea they
proposed quite some time ago (which was not implemented). So on one side
of the argument you have the people actually doing the work who do
consider Off the Wall to have at least sufficient value to continue to
exist, and on the other you have people you by their own admission are
ignorant of the thing in practice and who are therefore operating on the
basis of ignorance, disinformation, and to some extent paranoia.

I will, doubtlessly, have further commentary on the matter, but for now
this about covers what immediately comes to mind.
>