Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: desultory <desultory@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o, "Andreas K. Hüttel" <dilfridge@g.o>
Subject: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2020 05:14:24
Message-Id: 3e99a0f3-a801-3910-b626-baeaeac2b3a6@gentoo.org
In Reply to: Shutting down the Off the Wall (was: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items ...) by "Andreas K. Hüttel"
1 On 11/30/20 22:15, Andreas K. Hüttel wrote:
2 >> Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
3 >> repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
4 >> suggested one (since the last meeting).
5 >
6 > I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the Wall"
7 > (OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
8 >
9 To start with, your motion is badly stated, "without replacement" could
10 be construed as forbidding the creation of any subforums in the future,
11 especially considering how established process has been egregiously
12 abused by the council in regard to this issue so far. Beyond that,
13 "without replacement" without qualification could be construed as
14 covering any discussion which has taken place in Off the Wall, including
15 solicitation and coordination of donations to Gentoo and various
16 discussions which are either tangentially or indeed directly related to
17 Gentoo. Further, given the existence of multiple (given multiple
18 languages) Gentoo related chat sub-forums, such a decision could be
19 construed as forbidding them as well. Though we have apparently already
20 established that clarity and consistency are distinctly aside from the
21 goals of at least some council members.
22
23 > Rationale:
24 >
25 > * provides zero value to the distribution
26 Which has been shown to be false.
27
28 > * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others) wish
29 > Gentoo to be associated with
30 Which is, at very best, debatable. To call prose "toxic" is to imply
31 that it is, by its very nature, corrupting and destructive to those
32 exposed to it, which attributes to those words literally magical powers.
33 It has been my experience that those claiming that mere words are some
34 manner of unstoppable corrupting influence either lack a counterargument
35 to such "toxic" words; or they outright concede the "toxic" prose to be
36 unassailably correct, yet still counter to their preferences.
37
38 > * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the forums
39 > (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
40 Even stipulating that your figures were accurate, by this logic any
41 software in the tree or project serving a niche userbase would need to
42 be removed and any overlays serving such software or provided by such
43 teams would need to be removed from Gentoo controlled infrastructure.
44 Given that you have not made such an argument, your arguments lack
45 logical consistency.
46
47 > * forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their roles
48 > (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar discussion
49 > one year ago
50 Which is, to put none too fine a point on it, false. It also holds forum
51 moderators to a distinctly different standard than any other body in
52 Gentoo. As it is implicitly insisting that forum moderators be fully
53 proactive in their actions, even in areas which are expressly subject to
54 much lesser moderation. While other bodies are left go so far as to
55 expressly state that they intend to avoid doing anything, even when
56 action would be called for under the rules by which they nominally
57 operate, as they wish to avoid the potential for negative feedback, and
58 yet they are allowed to remain unchanged. Again, your statements are
59 based on major logical inconsistencies.
60
61 >
62 > This leaves us with two options:
63 >
64 > 1) shut down OTW
65 > or
66 > 2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill the
67 > moderator role in OTW
68 >
69 Curiously, you have in no way show that the existing moderators are not
70 "people willing to fulfill the moderator role in OTW", yet you take it
71 as a given. Moderation is, by and large, driven by users reporting
72 problems, whether it be spam, a post that breaks layout, or posts which
73 are counter to forum rules in some other way, even including spurious
74 reports (everything from jokes to false claims that confirmed facts were
75 confabulated misinformation), there have historically been extremely few
76 reports of posts in Off the Wall. Which is especially notable
77 considering that at least several council members have forum accounts
78 and *all* council members have e-mail by which they could properly
79 contact moderators about whatever they consider to be problematic.
80 Further, valid reports regarding posts in Off the Wall are handled in
81 essentially the same timeframe as any other. That a section is given
82 more free rein than other sections does not mean that it is given carte
83 blanche. In short, your inferences are wrong.
84
85 Not to mention that there are indeed other options for the council to
86 take, which have better logical support than those you propose.
87
88 Option 3:
89 Given the precedent set by multiple council members, yourself included,
90 in the discussion of this very topic on the core mailing list, the code
91 of conduct does not apply to any medium which is not visible to the
92 public at large. Thus, given the council decision to restrict public
93 visibility of Off the Wall, there are definitionally no code of conduct
94 concerns there. If you want to maintain logical self consistency,
95 multiple council members, along with other developers, would need to
96 receive sanctions analogous to whatever would be otherwise done to Off
97 the Wall.
98
99 Then again, given how strictly council members have been adhering to the
100 code of conduct in this public discussion, one could make the argument
101 that the code of conduct is itself null and void. Which would again
102 imply that there would be no call for the council to take the action you
103 propose. Though it would further imply that there is no reason for Off
104 the Wall to be subject to restricted access.
105
106 Option 4:
107 Given that this latest farce was instigated by a member of the council
108 making an appeal to the council while bypassing normal channels of
109 complaint, thereby asserting primary enforcement responsibility for the
110 complaint before any action could be taken by those who would otherwise
111 have been responsible for handling it. Further given that such authority
112 was at no point deferred back to forum moderators, despite the rather
113 obviously increased delay induced by making such enforcement a council
114 matter. Further still, given that the council, having claimed primary
115 enforcement responsibility, proceeded to take no direct action on the
116 subject of the complaint, instead opting to separately decide to simply
117 hide the entire sub-forum. It seems perfectly sensible for the council,
118 which is a technical conflict resolution panel, to resolve to not
119 manufacture social conflicts itself.
120
121 Note that option 4 is not mutually exclusive with any other option.
122
123 > I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons
124 > * that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
125 > * and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
126 > ), so 1) it is.
127 >
128 Having undertaken the laborious process of not looking, I can understand
129 how you came to the conclusion that they would be hard to find.
130
131 > Cheers, Andreas
132 >
133
134 In short, all of your arguments are either extremely weak or outright
135 false and your proposed solution is unfounded.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Shutting down the Off the Wall Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o>