Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: "Michał Górny" <mgorny@g.o>
To: gentoo-project <gentoo-project@l.g.o>
Cc: gentoo-dev <gentoo-dev@l.g.o>
Subject: [gentoo-project] [RFC] Splitting developer-oriented and expert user mailing lists
Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2017 23:18:14
Message-Id: 1512256684.30000.48.camel@gentoo.org
1 Hello, everyone.
2
3 This is something that's been talked about privately a lot lately but it
4 seems that nobody went forward to put things into motion. SO here's
5 a proposal that aims to improve the condition of our mailing lists
6 and solve some of the problems they are facing today.
7
8
9 Problems
10 ========
11
12 Currently the developer-oriented mailing lists gentoo-dev and gentoo-
13 project are open to posting by everyone. While this has been generally
14 beneficial, we seem to be having major problems with some
15 of the posters for more than a year. Off hand, I can think of three:
16
17 1. Repeating attacks against Gentoo and/or Gentoo developers (including
18 pure personal attacks). While it is understandable that some people may
19 be frustrated and need to vent off, repeating attacks from the same
20 person are seriously demotivating to everyone.
21
22 2. Frequent off-topics, often irrelevant to the thread at hand.
23 I understand that some of those topics are really interesting but it is
24 really time-consuming to filter through all the off-topic mails
25 in search of data relevant to the topic at hand. What's worst, sometimes
26 you don't even get a single on-topic reply.
27
28 3. Support requests. Some of our 'expert users' have been abusing
29 the mailing lists to request support (because it's easier to ask
30 everyone than go through proper channels) and/or complain about bug
31 resolutions. This is a minor issue but still it is one.
32
33
34 All of those issues are slowly rendering the mailing lists impossible to
35 use. People waste a lot of time trying to gather feedback, and get
36 demotivated in the process. A steadily growing number of developers
37 either stop reading the mailing lists altogether, or reduce their
38 activity.
39
40 For example, eclass reviews usually don't get more than one reply,
41 and even that is not always on-topic. And after all, getting this kind
42 of feedback is one of the purposes of the -dev mailing list!
43
44
45 Proposal
46 ========
47
48 Give the failure of other solutions tried for this, I'd like to
49 establish the following changes to the mailing lists:
50
51 1. Posting to gentoo-dev@ and gentoo-project@ mailing lists will be
52 initially restricted to active Gentoo developers.
53
54 1a. Subscription (reading) and archives will still be open.
55
56 1b. Active Gentoo contributors will be able to obtain posting access
57 upon being vouched for by an active Gentoo developer.
58
59 2. A new mailing list 'gentoo-expert' will be formed to provide
60 a discussion medium for expert Gentoo users and developers.
61
62 2a. gentoo-expert will have open posting access like gentoo-dev has now.
63
64
65 Rationale
66 =========
67
68 I expect that some of you will find this a drastic measure. However, I
69 would like to point out that I believe we've already exhausted all other
70 options to no avail.
71
72 The problems of more abusive behavior from some of the mailing list
73 members have been reported to ComRel numerous times. After the failure
74 of initial enforcement, I'm not aware of ComRel doing anything to solve
75 the problem. The main arguments I've heard from ComRel members were:
76
77 A. Bans can be trivially evaded, and history proves that those evasions
78 create more noise than leaving the issue as is.
79
80 B. People should be allowed to express their opinion [even if it's pure
81 hate speech that carries no value to anyone].
82
83 C. The replies of Gentoo developers were worse [no surprise that people
84 lose their patience after being attacked for a few months].
85
86
87 The alternative suggested by ComRel pretty much boiled down to 'ignore
88 the trolls'. While we can see this is actually starting to happen right
89 now (even the most determined developers stopped replying), this doesn't
90 really solve the problem because:
91
92 I. Some people are really determined and continue sending mails even if
93 nobody replies to them. In fact, they are perfectly capable of replying
94 to themselves.
95
96 II. This practically assumes that every new mailing list subscriber will
97 be able to recognize the problem. Otherwise, new people will repeatedly
98 be lured into discussing with them.
99
100 III. In the end, it puts Gentoo in a bad position. Firstly, because it
101 silently consents to misbehavior on the mailing lists. Secondly, because
102 the lack of any statement in reply to accusations could be seen
103 as a sign of shameful silent admittance.
104
105
106 Yet another alternative that was proposed was to establish moderation of
107 the mailing lists. However, Infrastructure has replied already that we
108 can't deploy effective moderation with the current mailing list software
109 and I'm not aware of anyone willing to undergo all the necessary work to
110 change that.
111
112 Even if we were able to overcome that and be able to find a good
113 moderation team that can effectively and fairly moderate e-mails without
114 causing huge delays, moderation has a number of own problems:
115
116 α) the delays will make discussions more cumbersome, and render posting
117 confusing to users,
118
119 β) they will implicitly cause some overlap of replies (e.g. when N
120 different people answer the same question because they don't see earlier
121 replies until they're past moderation),
122
123 γ) the problem will be solved only partially -- what if a reply contains
124 both valuable info and personal attack?
125
126
127 Seeing that no other effort so far has succeeded in solving the problem,
128 splitting the mailing lists seems the best solution so far. Most
129 notably:
130
131 а. Developer mailing lists are restored to their original purpose.
132
133 б. It is 'fair'. Unlike with disciplinary actions, there is no judgment
134 problem, just a clear split between 'developers' and 'non-developers'.
135
136 в. 'Expert users' are still provided with a mailing list where they can
137 discuss Gentoo without being pushed down into 'user support' channels.
138
139 г. Active contributors (in particular recruits) can still obtain posting
140 access to the mailing lists, much like they do obtain it to #gentoo-dev
141 right now. However, if they start misbehaving we can just remove that
142 without the risk of evasion.
143
144 --
145 Best regards,
146 Michał Górny

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