Re: [gentoo-project] Evidence of idella4's damage to Gentoo, please

[Alec Warner]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 5:43 AM, Daniel Campbell <zlg@g.o> wrote:

> I'm not going to mince words here: why did we kick out a contributor who
> was helping the Gentoo cause? I've looked over logs that were shared
> with me and the worst thing I could find was an off-color joke. Worse
> things occur on these mailing lists that never see Comrel's inbox, so
> why this?
>

So I'd expect a thread like this when you had exhausted some other avenues
of escalation. Its not clear you have.

1) Did you talk to comrel? It appears maybe you did, and they shared some
logs with you, and you evaluated them and disagreed with the outcome.
2) Did you ask them why they chose to enforce the rule against this
particular developer, or why they are not working on removing other
developers who say worse things? FWIW discretion in rule enforcement can be
a big deal, so I appreciate you bringing it up.

If you don't like their answers, I think this thread is an appropriate
forum to being them up, but not beforehand.


>
> Ian's ban was recently lifted (or so I heard). Correspondence from a
> member of Proxy Maintainers was shared with me, calling for Ian to be
> banned from #gentoo-proxy-maint on Freenode, despite Ian not visiting
> said channel recently. What is the reasoning for this?
>
>
Did you ask the channel owners? If their answer is unsatisfactory, escalate
upward.

I'm not going to speculate on why the idea was proposed (he isn't banned
there currently, according to my IRC client.)

What I'm looking for is undeniable proof that Ian was irrevocably
> damaging and threatening to Gentoo, to justify his dismissal and
> accompanying ban. If such information will not or cannot be provided,
> then it indicates to me that there *is* no proof, and without it I will
> call for his reinstatement for the next council meeting.
>

I suspect "irrevocably damaging and threatening to Gentoo" is likely not
the bar for dismissal from the project (and the bar is perhaps lower.)

You can dislike the bar, and I wholeheartedly encourage any efforts to
change it.


> I am not alone in requesting accountability from the top of Gentoo. I
> will take the results of this conversation into consideration when it's
> time to vote next year, as Gentoo is suffering from staffing issues and
> practices like this actively damage Gentoo's ability to attract and
> retain contributors. I have personally met people who have suffered as a
> result of this debacle; people willing and eager to help us out that are
> still struggling to join our ranks. So what gives?
>

> This distribution should not turn away anyone willing (and able) to
> help. This is a critical flaw that could accelerate our decline.
>

So if I openly insult people of other nationalities or races on a regular
basis on mailing lists or in chat, but I'm also a prolific Gentoo
contributor; that is OK?

I get that there are essentially two main problems with excluding people.

1) Prosecutorial Discretion (why kick out person1 but not person2; who was
also bad) which leads to people upset at uneven enforcement.
2) Judging contributors as good / bad can be tricky, because sometimes you
will allow bad people to stay in the project and good people will get
kicked out.

We can avoid this by just never excluding people. I doubt that is really
tractable because in the case of actual harassment, I expect the organs of
the community to act. In the oughts' this was the case (mailing lists got
bad and we had the code of conduct, Proctors, etc.) Would people leave if
we went back to that?


>
> Thank you for your time.
> --
> Daniel Campbell - Gentoo Developer
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>