Michael Hennebry writes:

 > The point seems to have been missed.

The same could be said here, but it would be valid.

 > The primary salutary effect of a *collective*
 > decision would be on prospective smokers,
 > e.g. children.

You make me curious what experience in open source maintenance you have.

In mine, again, that's true for smokers, not so for volunteer
maintainers.  Over the years in several projects, one fairly toxic,
others more polite, I've seen potential maintainers (and list
moderators) balk at taking responsibility because of visible
harrassment from users.  There just isn't a whole generation of
"young" users waiting to grow into "adult smoker" maintainers the way
a half-century ago there was a whole generation of children waiting to
grow into adult smokers *because* that was a mark of adulthood.  Few
users *want* to be maintainers, so any disincentive to accepting
responsibility that isn't itself productive work is a bad idea when
dealing with volunteers.

The other thing I've seen happen more than once is that the people
doing the work set up alternative channels, or even go to private
channels.  The rules there are not necessarily "safe space", either,
but pure harassment about WONTFIX issues gets one ejected.  You'll
notice that the people defending the decision here aren't the people
who made it -- *they* escaped to some other channel long ago.

Harassing volunteer maintainers in open source is just a toxic lose-
lose proposition.  Even if they're so bad you just want them gone,
forking the project is almost always cheaper, faster, and more
effective.  You don't get that trifecta often in software, take it
while the taking's good. :-D

Steve
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