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

[Aaron Bauman]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2020 at 10:30:25PM -0800, Alec Warner wrote:
> 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.

So is the nature of democracy.

>  - 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.

Simply because this has become the "norm" does not justify it. You
are making an assumption that "enforcement here" and "not there" is
because of some conscious decision to do the "right thing" by the CoC.
It is not. It has clearly been stated and proven that mods mostly ignore
OTW and let it go. Over time, that has become a problem... so "fixing
it" is difficult.

>  - Do they agree that if the Coc was amended or clarified, they would
> enforce it in OTW?

See below. This is silly.

>  - Do you agree that OTW could stay if the CoC was enforced satisfactorily?
>

Yes, but it is a lost cause. Also, finding someone to "clean it up" will
likely be more difficult than finding a tax specialist who only uses
open source software. Because, principles.

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

See previous comments regarding the steady decline of OTW and the
inability to properly moderate it now.

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

Remove privileges, delete the forum subsection (or whatever it is), and
burn the content. It contains very offensive (oh, subjectiveness)
content. I wouldn't want an individual with privileges who finds such
content acceptable.

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

As I stated in my reply to the other thread... you cannot legislate
common sense. The inability of someone to rationally interpret the CoC
and understand the relevance of the forums to the distro is *not* a
reason to modify our CoC.

Sure, we can "convince them" but at this stage... they likely don't
share a common view of the distro with the rest of the community.

> 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."
>

As said in other thread, there has been clear escalation. There are bugs
to show it. I was fairly certain you were "aware of it."

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron