Re: [gentoo-project] Re: Trying to become a Gentoo Developer again spanning 8 years...

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 9:02 PM, Raymond Jennings <shentino@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> Speaking of a conflict of interest, I would like to point out for the record
> that devrel and userrel were aliased as "proctors" in previous
> documentation.
>

Actually, the Proctors were a third project distinct from Devrel and
Userrel (though there was probably overlap in membership, etc).  They
lasted all of a few days.  They were created along with the CoC and
never really got to function as intended.  They were intended to
operate a bit like forum mods for the lists, locking discussions that
were out of control, issuing short-term bans to try to discourage
flaming, and so on.  I was around when they were formed and disbanded,
but I wasn't on the inside back then so I didn't appreciate the
politics that caused them to fail.  A few others who were around back
then could better relay the story.

The proctors were never intended to deal with serious complaints about
individual behavior that might warrant kicking somebody out.  There
has been talk of trying to bring back the role, with the goal of
trying to nip bad behavior in the bud before it grows into a big mess.
If we went down that road then Proctors would have a lot less rigor in
their activities, and could hand out "punishments" with almost no due
process/etc, but the "punishments" would be things like a few days ban
from IRC or other minimal sanctions, with a strict upper limit on
their powers.  Basically they'd be handing out slaps on the wrist.
Issues that couldn't be handled in this way could be escalated to
Comrel.  The idea would be that when a problem starts they could
quickly step in and moderate/warn/ban/etc to try to keep the overall
tone of the channel/list/etc in line with the CoC, as opposed to what
happens today where two parties can snipe at each other for months
until both are screaming for blood.

-- 
Rich