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

[Thomas Deutschmann]

Hi,

On 2020-12-12 08:34, desultory wrote:
> Asking for the council to actually state the problem at hand as it sees
> it seems to be an entirely reasonable thing to do, especially given how
> long it has gone without doing so.

It is difficult for me to believe that those involved in this four-week 
discussion did not understand what it was actually about and then did 
not even ask specifically about it themselves.

But anyway, like said in my initial email, let's forget about the past 
and let's focus on a solution.

Nobody says that forum staff is doing a bad job in general but OTW 
section was often handled like an autonomous zone which we are going to 
end. Hopefully together. But let me be clear on this: The Gentoo 
community will definitely find a solution for this problem. Maybe we 
will grant you time until end of January in case you will tell us that 
forums software will finally get upgraded in January and that the new 
software will play an important role (i.e. warning system, new/easier 
moderation tools, better reporting system...). For such a concession, 
however, it would be important to get clear signals from the forum team 
that they understand what needs to be changed and are willing to solve 
the problem together.

I am sure you can. Please join the process!

Again some guidelines which should be addressed in the proposal/concept:

1) Clear statement/commitment that forums staff intends to enforce 
Gentoo's code of conduct in forum like any other project. This shouldn't 
be a big deal for you but it will help us to understand that we are all 
on the same page.

2) We don't expect that forum staff will read every posting but if 
forums staff will even quote insults and join 'the discussion', we would 
consider this problematic because we expect that any community member 
will step in if he/she will observe a code of conduct violation in 
general and make everyone see reason (notice: this doesn't imply 'block 
warden' mentality).

3) Implement a reporting system which will protect the reporter.

4) Tell us how you plan to address some inconsistency. For example, this 
is not the first time that the user in question has posted such an 
insult. The user was banned for similar postings back in 2016. We would 
expect that such a misbehaving user who has shown in the past that they 
disregard Gentoo values, would have been removed from the community long 
time ago.

5) Remove bad content. If someone posted an insult and we took action, 
don't forget to remove the offending content (soft delete entire posting 
or remove offending paragraph).

6) Just a reminder: You are not alone at the front. If forum staff is 
unsure about certain postings, please ask for help. We have projects to 
deal with things like that and they are happy to assist you.


-- 
Regards,
Thomas Deutschmann / Gentoo Linux Developer
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