Hi Russ, I realize I'm very late with this (sometimes one is just delayed with reading emails), but I wanted to thank you for this mail. I think it captures quite well how this all works, and why it is difficult to write down a set of rigid rules (occasionally, that is also why I did not add such a rigid set of rules to the code of conduct, when I wrote it).
So, thanks! On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 08:57:33AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Roberto C. Sánchez <robe...@debian.org> writes: > > > I'm afraid that you miss the point. I specifically chose flat earth, & > > co., as a contrast. My position is that we are all adults, capable of > > deciding for ourselves and that, absent some behavior that is a clear > > violation of the Code of Conduct and/or mailing list rules (e.g., > > harassment), simply uttering something that some people do not like does > > not form cause for removing someone, or even for issuing any sort of > > warning. Else, why bother having a Code of Conduct and mailing list > > rules? > > Let me propose an alternate way of thinking about this, which I think is a > bit more accurate description of what happens in practice. > > 1. Someone has something they feel passionately about but which is not > very related to the work of Debian. One can argue some connection (we > are people living in the world -- there will always be some > connection), but it's not obviously directly relevant to our work. > They start using project resources (mailing lists, etc.) to talk about > this topic. > > 2. Those discussions upset other people in the project. Often this is > because they directly disagree, sometimes it's just because they don't > want to talk about that topic here. The former is usually what creates > the initial reaction, of course, and the latter is more of a fallback > position among the vocal people, but I suspect is a more common initial > position among the quieter people who just want to do Debian work. > > 3. We reach some sort of rough consensus as a community that this > discussion is disruptive and we don't want to have it here. This is > the critical point: for many previous controversial discussions, we > *didn't* reach this consensus for one reason or another. Perhaps > there's ongoing disagreement over whether this topic is directly > relevant to Debian or not. But sometimes we reach a pretty > overwhelming consensus (by this I mean nearly everyone speaking up is > arguing in that direction) that regardless of the merits of the > argument we don't want to talk about it on project resources. > > 4. The person who feels passionately about this thinks that consensus is > wrong and keeps talking about it anyway. > > 5. Eventually DAM gets involved, judges the consensus about declaring this > off-topic, and asks the person to stop. > > 6. The person refuses to stop because this topic is of overwhelming > importance to them and for some reason they feel like they have to > discuss it in Debian. > > 7. Eventually, DAM takes action to force them to stop. At this point, I > would argue that it doesn't make sense for them to continue as members > of the project because they're pretty clearly unwilling to respect a > boundary the project is trying to draw (step 3). That's a fairly > irreconcilable difference and it's better for everyone to go their > separate ways. > > I think this is a pretty typical process for just about any community > space where people interact. I've seen versions of this play out in just > about every community I've been involved in. Usually things stop at step > 2 because discussing something when other people are upset at the > discussion isn't very fun and usually people don't like to keep doing it. > Very often the process stops at step 3 because no sufficiently strong > consensus emerges. Hopefully the rest of the time the process stops at > step 5. Very rarely it runs through the whole list. > > If this is a reasonably accurate model, I think it makes it somewhat > obvious that you can't have a list of banned topics written down in > advance because steps 2 and 3 are really important (and step 3 can change > over time!). The point isn't that there is a specific set of off-topic > topics. The point is that if you talk about something that makes other > community members actively upset (step 2) *and* they can build a project > consensus that we want to shut down this specific topic here (step 3), > then the rest of the process potentially comes into play. > > Nearly all controversial topics in Debian do not get past step 3. We have > endless recurring topics that run up to step 3 every year or so, and never > progress any farther. > > At least in my opinion, having watched this specific incident from the > start, we passed point 3 fairly clearly with a rather remarkable consensus > by Debian standards (not unanimity, but a pretty strong consensus). I > realize other people may disagree, and that perhaps part of your point in > getting involved in this discussion is to register your disagreement with > the conclusion that we reached a step 3 consensus. But I do think we did. > > This process is *inherently subjective*, because it depends on the people > in the community and what upsets them and what topics they form a step 3 > consensus about. It's not a question of absolute right or wrong or any > generalizable universal moral judgment. It's a question of self-policing > and a community's ability to declare what they do and don't want the > community discussion space to be used for. And yes, that inherently > requires someone with power in the community to make a judgment call about > whether step 3 was truly satisfied, and that judgment call is often going > to be controversial, and we as a community should guard against making it > prematurely or too easily, and there may be ongoing disagreements over > whether that happened. > > But I don't think the process *as such* is inherently unfair; in fact, I > think it would be hard to have a community of humans that didn't have some > sort of process similar to this. Not everything is going to be talked > about everywhere all the time; people are occasionally going to say "hey, > please don't talk about this here," and I think that's a reasonable thing > to want. And there's really no way to build a comprehensive list of such > topics in advance. > > -- > Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> > > -- w@uter.{be,co.za} wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org} I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.
