Hi,
And first, thanks for the work done.
I'd like to make a few comments about this Code of Conduct.
Over the past years, Gentoo has been organised over a large part of
paper-rules, and other theorical precepts. But human nature is just not
theorical. And therefore, we have to constantly adapt to people whom we
meet, who, what is more, evolve by themselves. I'd like to quote the
forum guidelines :
/The guidelines outlined in this guide are not intended to be
universal and are not to be followed in a rigid way, due to the
different nature of situations that might occur. That is, there will
be times when all of the guidelines should be partially or
completely ignored. The moderator's judgment should be the primary
influence when making a decision./
Yes, that's right, we sometimes have to deal with real situations that
were not explicitely planned in the guidelines. And we sometimes have to
make unilateral decisions (with the agreement of other moderators, of
course). My personal point of view is that, sometimes, we should just
rely on showing common sense. Yes, this can be quite subjective. But
when 100% of the moderation team agrees, maybe common sense is just the
right answer to our problems.
=> Yes, I think that banning may be the right answer to some recent
problems Gentoo had to deal with one of its ex-developer. Allowing this
user (he is not a dev anymore) to relay its anger through *our*
mailing-list is, I think, a real problem for our *actual* developer
base. Some usefull and/or very active developers retired or gave up.
And, in fact, this is a shame for Gentoo.
Of course, it implies that we must have a group of developers, able to
quickly make decisions, as well as to ensure these decisions are
adequate. In fact, a "gentoo wise men council".
I think our actual council structure is not the right place to do this
job, because treating such problems needs to be very fast (meeting once
a month does not sound fast enough to me for this particular task).
You could then tell me that I was, in the first lines of this mail,
complaining about paperwork. I think that this Code of Conduct, and any
other document of this kind, should be merged, to allow the same rules
to apply *in any part of the Gentoo project*. Respect is just not an
option : it should be the rule, whenever you are user, developer, or
retired developer, and whatever media you are using.
Thanks for reading,
Cheers,
Hubert.
PS : The first sentence of the Preambule could maybe be added to the
Gentoo Social Contract ?
" Gentoo prides itself on being a community driven distribution and
everything we do we do with the best interest of the community at heart."
