2018-03-27 18:39 GMT+02:00 Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org>: > On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Martin Vaeth <mar...@mvath.de> wrote: > > Rich Freeman <ri...@gentoo.org> wrote: > >> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth <mar...@mvath.de> wrote: > >>> > >>> It is about openness vs. isolation. > >> > >> I'm pretty sure most developers, myself included, want to welcome > >> contributions. > > > > Closing of the mailing list does not sound like that. > > > > Sure, but it is actually part of the motivation. > > Consider this scenario. > > Fred is a community member. Fred consistently harasses and trolls new > contributors in private. New contributors end up leaving because of > Fred.
> Fred gets booted out as a result. No mention is made of why Fred as > booted out, because everything happened in private. > And how this work on forums? Do moderators have the ability to ban Fred for his harrasments on private channels? > > Now a bunch of community members get upset about Fred being booted out > without reason. Fred claims it is because he disagrees with the > leadership on something. People start arguing endlessly about > openness. > Very same efect you will get when Fred is whitelisted by a developer, and kicked out when he starts acting inappriopriate. Please kindly show me the difference. > > Ultimately the leaders just want Fred gone so that new contributors > aren't getting driven away. They can't explain that because then they > create potential civil liability for the project. The problem is that > the debate goes on for over a year despite intervening elections and > now this becomes the issue that is driving new contributors away. > Please explain. I can imagine a troll on some #gentoo-${ISO3166-1_alpha-2} who is banned by channel operator. Does this create potential civil liability for the project? > > What solution would you propose for this problem? It isn't > hypothetical at all - I can think of one case in Gentoo's past where > this happened that I'm aware of, and I'd be shocked if it were the > only one. > Saying as an ex-dev and community member by last 12 years - banning trolls and explaining reasons to others is always better solution. > > > And anyway, you can be sure that the problem will appear again, > > no matter how closed the list will be. > > Sure, but we can at least force the negative advertising of Gentoo to > go elsewhere, rather than basically paying to run a negative PR > campaign against ourselves. > > >> A lot of this comes down to considering that most people in these > >> debates probably are well-intended. > > > > Taking away freedom is never justified by good intention. > > You might want to choose a BSD-based distro then. :) > > And what about the freedom to endlessly troll and harass you and > others? Is this truly a freedom we want to stand for? How about the > freedom to harass members of legally-protected classes (something that > also has happened historically in the community)? > Trolls are trolls, and when banned/blacklisted by default THEN, they will start their trolling on private channels. > > Surely Gentoo's mission isn't to run completely unrestricated forums > for discussion of anything and everything. Our main purpose here is > to maintain a Linux distro, not provide a platform for anybody who has > an opinion on anything. Free expression has to be balanced against > the interests of people who want to actually contribute to the distro > without being endlessly trolled and harassed. > > -- > Rich > > -- Pozdrawiam Dawid Węgliński