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

[Alec Warner]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:07 PM Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 7:15 PM Andreas K. Hüttel <dilfridge@g.o>
> wrote:
>
>> > Please respond to this message with agenda items. Do not hesitate to
>> > repeat your agenda item here with a pointer if you previously
>> > suggested one (since the last meeting).
>>
>> I would like to propose the council consider shutting down the "Off the
>> Wall"
>> (OTW) forum on forums.gentoo.org permanently and without replacement.
>>
>
> FWIW my reply is very long but mostly comes down to what I feel is..lets
> try to call it 3 principles.
>
> (1) I strongly prefer folks to make a good faith effort to work with
> others.
> (2) I want to make decisions based on shared goals and policies, not
> people's personal preferences.
> (3) I want to make decisions based on data. To that end I've tried to
> provide some data to clarify some various points.
>

Branching this thread, because I'm interested more in the process parts.

More principles here and in general decision making. If we ditch a thing
because "you like it" or "you think it's toxic" it's a subjective basis for
decision making. It poses a few challenges.

 - It's functionally easy to reverse, because subjective decisions are
basically  capricious. We can elect a new council and they can just undo it
because there is no rational basis for the decision.
 - If I'm the forums mod team and I'm told a forum needs to be deleted
because it violates the CoC, I have somewhat concrete action items I can
take to save it. If I am instead told that a forum needs to be deleted
because "community members find it toxic" I'm less clear on what the next
steps are; particularly if I think the forum is following the CoC.
 - Similarly, It's unclear what the scope of 'toxicity' is, and so the lack
of options (to defend against it) leads to toxicity being used as a weapon
(much as people feared the CoC might be used.)

I also don't see a ton of the steps here (admittedly there are significant
numbers of threads stretching back years on this topic.) For instance I
might start by getting in sync with forums mods.

 - Do they agree that comments in OTW violate the CoC? I think the answer
is currently unclear (but maybe it is clear, I dunno.)
 - Do they agree that the CoC is clear (and so are comfortable enforcing
it?) They seem to enforce some kind of moderation in other forums, so that
is a good sign at least. It also means if the CoC is unclear, we can
discuss and amend it..but I don't think that discussion ever really took
place.
 - Do they agree that if the Coc was amended or clarified, they would
enforce it in OTW?
 - Do you agree that OTW could stay if the CoC was enforced satisfactorily?

I think this framing also helps us understand where we are, and where the
process went wrong.

If we disagree that OTW can stay if the CoC was enforced...then any further
conversation seems pointless.

If forum-mods refuse to enforce the CoC in OTW, then we are forced to
either find new mods for OTW, or close it.

If the forum-mods disagree that OTW posts violate the CoC, then we need to
either convince them or modify the CoC.

Many of these problems have clear next steps...but I have no idea where we
landed in this process at all or why it is suddenly deemed futile to stop
trying and go directly to "close forum."

-A


>
> Also FYI: What about the polish OTW (
> https://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum-f-61.html)
>

>
>>
>> Rationale:
>>
>> * provides zero value to the distribution
>>
>
> I think the OTW forum does provide value. Can you elaborate on why you
> think the value is 0?
>
> For example, forum-mods move offtopic threads from other forums into OTW,
> so it serves as a holding bin for those conversations. We could advocate
> moving those to the dustbin, but the dustbin is readonly, so threads may
> come back.
>
> In addition there are those who believe that the offtopic nature of OTW
> keeps the rest of the forums a nicer cleaner place, and that suppressing
> this content can have unintended consequences. So I request that you do
> consider the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of this decision.
>
> * large parts of the content are toxic and not something I (and others)
>> wish
>>   Gentoo to be associated with
>>
>
> The argument about it being toxic and you not liking it is...well...it's a
> bad argument! All of a sudden you can just delete projects from Gentoo
> because you "don't want to be associated with them because you think they
> are toxic?" Isn't this a bit of a slippery slope? I think you have a good
> argument, but you muddle it with this stuff. E.g. the following:
>
>    - OTW contains some content that clearly violates the CoC
>    - OTW is not necessary for operation of Gentoo
>    - Moderating OTW is not currently happening to the council's
>    satisfaction, and thus the CoC is being violated on a routine basis
>    - It's unclear we have a plan for changing the OTW moderation, so our
>    options are the two you proposed below.
>
> This mostly has nothing to do with 'how much you hate OTW' and more to do
> with actually enforcing policies you were elected to enforce and I'd (if I
> actually believed the 4th item was true) would clearly support this vote.
> But this item sounds like you are deleting OTW because you dislike it and
> my answer is "that is not a policy I can support." In short, I don't think
> this argument supports your conclusion, it erodes it because we shouldn't
> make policy decisions based on what you like or dislike.
>
>
>> * it caters to a set of users somewhat distinct from the rest of the
>> forums
>>   (e.g., >5000 posts in OTW, <100 elsewhere)
>>
>
> According to what data?
>
> Looking at the past year:
> select COUNT(*) as cnt, IF(phpbb_posts.forum_id=10,true, false) as forum,
> phpbb_users.user_id as user from phpbb_users INNER JOIN phpbb_posts ON
> phpbb_posts.poster_id=phpbb_users.user_id where phpbb_posts.post_time >
> UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365 DAY)) and
> phpbb_posts.poster_id IN (select DISTINCT(poster_id) from phpbb_posts where
> forum_id=10 and post_time > UNIX_TIMESTAMP(DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 365
> DAY))) group by user, forum order by user, cnt, forum desc;
>
> Which basically says "find everyone who posted in OTW in the past year,
> group their posts by (COUNT, OTW, !OTW) and you will find that most of them
> post in other forums fairly regularly. Are there people who only post in
> OTW? Sure. Is it "everyone in OTW?" No.
>
> I suspect the underlying issue is that OTW is dominated by a small number
> of posters; I've tried to provide data to clarify the distribution of
> posters (forgive my bad mysql.)
>
> OTW has ~1.4 million posts total
> OTW has ~10500 posts in the past 365 days.
> The top poster has 1187 posts in OTW in the past 365 days (~1/10 posts)
> The top 20 posters have 9251 posts in OTW in the past 365 days (9/10 posts
> are these 20 people)
> COUNT of all posters who posted to OTW in the past 365 days is 159, which
> means for those 139 remaining users, they handle the remaining 1200 (10%)
> of posts in OTW.
>
> I avoided doing the analysis historically because there are tons of people
> who posted like 100k times in 2008 and don't post anymore and they mess up
> the numbers; so I stuck to the past 365 days of data.
>
> If you want to conclude that "OTW is mostly a place for 20 people to chat"
> I think the data supports this conclusion.
> If you want to conclude that "The 20 people who chat in OTW mostly don't
> chat in other forums" I think the data does not support this conclusion.
>
>
>> * forum moderators have made clear they are not going to fulfill their
>> roles
>>   (e.g., regarding the code of conduct) in OTW, following a similar
>> discussion
>>   one year ago
>>
>
> If you want to say 'desultory has made it clear' I'd believe that
> argument. I'm not really convinced the other moderators necessarily agree
> (but more on this below.)
>
>
>>
>> This leaves us with two options:
>>
>> 1) shut down OTW
>> or
>> 2) replace or supplement forum moderators with people willing to fulfill
>> the
>>    moderator role in OTW
>>
>
> In 2019 I wrote:
> ---
> Why do we specifically target the forums?
> (i) Because it contains content that violates the CoC?
> (ii) Because it contains content unrelated to Gentoo?
> (iii) Because it contains content we find objectionable?
> I'm trying to narrow down the scope here. Most UCG sites contain (i), and
> (ii) and probably (iii). I have concerns that basically no one in the
> council even uses the forum, we have no data that describes a problem on
> the forum, and we are (as described in the 10/02 meeting log notes)
> trying to legislate the job of a moderation team that we have essentially
> failed to achieve any common ground with.
> ---
>
> I continue to sustain that the forums contains i, i is primarily the
> problem, and we have failed to convince the mods to do anything. Part of my
> concern (again restating above) is that the argument used against OTW isn't
> just i, but is also ii and iii and I find these arguments less relevant.
>
> ii: If we banned every medium that had content unrelated to Gentoo, we
> would likely have no mediums left.
> iii: If we banned content that we found objectionable but didn't violate
> the CoC, we should consider amending the CoC to cover that content and then
> that relabels iii into i.
>
> I personally don't find the situation very recoverable because in theory
> I'd like to see the moderators moderate OTW more, but I think that ship has
> sailed after repeated failed attempts at gaining that support.
>
> -A
>
>
>> I dont see 2) happen (for the simple reasons
>> * that it will be difficult to find someone to do the work
>> * and that noone has volunteered to do it over the past year
>> ), so 1) it is.
>>
>> Cheers, Andreas
>>
>> --
>> Andreas K. Hüttel
>> dilfridge@g.o
>> Gentoo Linux developer
>> (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)
>
>