Mailing List Archive

"Rob C" <hyakuhei@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I am a new Gentoo developer but I have worked on a number of other small
> projects. This list is a disgrace and most flames are nothing but
> showboating. If you have an issue then deal with it directly with whomever
> is causing the problem.
Dealing it who causes the problem is what the rules were meant to do:
They should not change anyones behaviour on a working mailing list, but do so,
untill a list works again - that is, is (relatively) free of slandering and
so on.

> Writing cutting comments on the list with no other intention than to
> belittle or discredit a member of the community is unacceptable. *Even* if
> your comments happen correct.
Well, you could hardly forbid people to say "It is a bad idea because xyz
might happen." _even_ if it was only meant to discredit someone, because
you cant know if it was deliberately harmfull or not. therefore a repetition
of the same fact for several times is to be avoided, so there is less picking
on somebody.

> Please, lets use -dev for actual development. Perhaps we can have -bitch or
> -flame for those who really need to vent or to write mails that they know
> are blatant flame fodder.
I feel like the problem is that those who actually flame do feel like it is
absolutely normal and dont seem to see why it is a bad thing to do, thus
kindly asking them to stop it wont work, as far as i know of what happened
yet.

One problem that will likely arise is that some blogs will get even more
stupid, yet it is easier to avoid reading a blog than to avoid reading
the -dev list, not to mention that active developers should of course apply
the same rule of not using invectives in their blog, too.
I think it would brighten the appearence of gentoo somewhat again.
Some users will maybe still flame for a while, but their fuel should run short
after some time I hope.


Sincerely,

Daniel
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Jakub Moc wrote:
> Bryan Østergaard napsal(a):
>> On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 03:46:47AM +0100, Jakub Moc wrote:
>>> And you come here to tell us that people shouldn't get confused by these
>>> 'very few' retirements, that the sun in still shining nicely and we are
>>> recruiting people as always? And that you will continue silently
>>> watching the trolls team associated around mips and ciaranm call people
>>> fuckheads, idiots and making a gutter of something that's supposed to be
>>> a development mailing list?
>
>> Never said anything like that.
>
> So, what are you planning to do about this? Sorry, but all I've seen
> here so far is evading the real problem and saying people they should
> ignore ciaranm and alikes. This apparently doesn't work, any other plan?
>
> Like, any plan to make the mips team totally poisoned by ciaranm's
> stupid elitism and infallibleness behave in a civilized way again?

I should point out here... that not all of the MIPS team are like
Ciaran. I'll admit, I'm not exactly bursting with technical knowledge
-- there are some big gaps there. I'd like to change this, however it
isn't going to happen overnight.

Conversely, I'd like to think that many of us do use significantly more
tact than you make out.

On a somewhat related note... I've sat back and watched this argument
for some time now. Banning people seems like an extremely drastic
measure. Sure, it's easy. It's also easily circumvented, and is only a
short-term solution. I don't think it's the answer.

Nor, I should point out, is treating devrel like the football. They're
in a very difficult position here -- one I would not like to be placed
in myself. And in this circumstance, they can't afford to be hasty --
the wrong decision could cost Gentoo dearly in many ways that may not be
apparent to people now.

How's this for an idea though... Rather than banning *people*... why
not temporarily ban a thread? I know this is easily possible on forum
threads -- mailing lists are more difficult, but if one could lock a
thread for a day or so -- that might allow people to cool off before
picking up the thread again.

I think in such flamewars, it's *everyone* that needs to cool off, not
just those who start them.
--
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter) .'''.
Gentoo Linux/MIPS Cobalt and Docs Developer '.'` :
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .'.'
http://dev.gentoo.org/~redhatter :.'

I haven't lost my mind...
...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.

Stuart Longland <redhatter@gentoo.org>  (Gentoo Foundation) wrote:
> How's this for an idea though... Rather than banning *people*... why
> not temporarily ban a thread? I know this is easily possible on forum
> threads -- mailing lists are more difficult, but if one could lock a
> thread for a day or so -- that might allow people to cool off before
> picking up the thread again.
Nice idea in general, yet people could harm a discussion even more as in they
get a tool to delay them as often as they'd like to. Even more would you
delay a discussion for a day that worked, except that one person felt like it
would be needed to inject a few drops of hostility by using abusive language.

> I think in such flamewars, it's *everyone* that needs to cool off, not
> just those who start them.
Of course everyone needs to cool off, but (hopefully) most of us can do this
themselves, meaning they learned to recognize that they are angry and add the
task of replying to there todo-list and do it later on during the day.

What I want to say is: To me it looks like to is a relatively small group of
people who do get abusive again and again, and after some time others can't
stand this anymore and fight back --> flame-war
By baning those who get abusive again and again, the problem should thus
vanish in mist.
On the other hand, if you lock a thread for one day because xyz got abusive
for the 3rd time this month, everyone is pissed because the discussion is
stopped, xyz is happy because it is something annoying, and xyz is not really
likely to stop that because he personally isnt punished, but everyone.

If you got a class to teach, and someone played a joke on you, it is likely to
work if you punish the whole class with an extra test or more homework,
because the majority of the class will dislike the one who did it.
The same would happen here, but xyz who was abusive again will not feel that
he himself is punished harder than anyone else, since he/she wont be beaten
during the break, speaking metaphorically...


Cheers,

Daniel
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:45:25 +1000
Stuart Longland <redhatter@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On a somewhat related note... I've sat back and watched this
> argument for some time now. Banning people seems like an extremely
> drastic measure. Sure, it's easy. It's also easily circumvented,
> and is only a short-term solution. I don't think it's the answer.

Banning people is not drastic. We do it all the time on #gentoo and we
have rules in place to stop ourselves from becoming power crazed
maniacs as well as giving banned channel users the benefit of the
doubt.

Circumventing (evading) a ban on IRC means giving up your nickname, and
if you happen to value your own name, you won't, hence you will not
evade the ban. The same applies to mailing lists. If you ban a user and
he comes back using a different e-mail address, you just ban him again.
Getting banned from a community happens to be a lot worse than just not
being able to get your point across (i.e. continue the flamewar).

Losing the right to use your own [nick]name / e-mail address within a
community is an extreme penalty indeed, but if the ban is temporary
(in the case of MLs, say two weeks or a month), even the people passing
the ban can live with it.

> How's this for an idea though... Rather than banning
> *people*... why not temporarily ban a thread? I know this is easily
> possible on forum threads -- mailing lists are more difficult, but if
> one could lock a thread for a day or so -- that might allow people to
> cool off before picking up the thread again.

Banning certain threads isn't just infeasible (technically impossible),
it's actually worse than banning someone from your community: by
"banning a thread" you censor whoever is left in the community.

And actually, circumventing a "thread ban" is much easier than getting
back on a mailing list: you just start a new thread. In fact it happens
all the time on this list when someone thinks writing a new subject
will make all the difference, or tries to set a new tone to the
conversation. It just does not work.

Banning certain users, perhaps banning them for a period of time to
maybe cool off, is easy to implement and these bans are easy to
maintain. What you are suggesting, i.e. moderating the content of this
list before it even hits our mailboxes, is censorship of the worst
kind, and would be impossible to uphold.

As someone suggested before, maybe the forums.g.o people might like to
chime in and give their view on "debate management"? I wouldn't think
it gets as heated as IRC does, but maybe there are some parallels
between forums and MLs that could be of interest.


Kind regards,
JeR
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Sunday 04 March 2007, Ilya A. Volynets-Evenbakh wrote:
> Hubert Mercier wrote:
> > That's probably why it is so hard to renew developer pool.
>
> Why do people keep repeating this myth? As kloeri pointed out,
> developer base keeps growing constantly.

Which is a problem, because the growth without any proper structure just makes
things even harder to manage.

Paul

--
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

Ioannis Aslanidis wrote:

> Maybe if Ciaran recognized his past faults, begged pardon and promised
> to be kinder from now and on, everything would be easier for everyone,
> everything would calm down.
>
I share your dream ;)

> Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 14:15:36 -0500 "William L. Thomson Jr."
>> <wltjr@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> So I we can cut him some slack, and we should all have some level of
>>> respect, at least in public, towards the father, creator, and founder
>>> of Gentoo.
>>
>> What kind of response do you think anyone else would have received had
>> they started repeatedly attacking a project when they didn't even know
>> what that project was, repeatedly tried to interfere with the
>> management of a project when they don't know who is involved with or
>> managing said project, repeatedly posted all kinds of outright lies
>> after having been told that something was untrue and repeatedly resorted
>> to ad hominem attacks in a technical discussion?
>>
Bloody hell where did all that come from? Am I missing something, cos I
certainly haven't seen that on the dev m-l. Maybe it's a core/ irc thing,
but afaic in the public domain drobbins hasn't done the above.

Asking questions shouldn't be an issue.

As for his problem with ciaranm, i think a lot of people are fed up with
that attitude which is why ciaran was banned from the forums.

I wish you guys would just let the forum moderators moderate this mailing
list. You'd soon see why the gentoo forums are the envy of the support
world.


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Ciaran McCreesh wrote:

> On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 16:33:31 +0000 Roy Marples <uberlord@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
>> On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 16:17:54 +0000
>> Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@ciaranm.org> wrote:
>> > What, and make everyone move the development discussion elsewhere?
>> > Have you noticed how little development discussion goes on on the
>> > forums? Have you ever considered why?
>>
>> It's full of trolls. Have you considered why little development
>> discussion happens on a development mailing list?
>
> Hm, the development mailing list usually works just fine -- take a
> look at the PMS threads where only well-informed people joined in for
> perfect examoples. It's only when people jump in on projects when they
> don't know what said project is or what it involves and start trying to
> derail it that things get messy.
>
Hmm not sure if the recent rash of sensible PMS questions, while welcome,
quite outweighs all the trolling. You can't keep blaming this on other
people.

Well, you can, i guess ;)

Personally I don't have an issue with you, in the same way that i don't have
an issue with cokehabit. But you both seem to have a knack of making
inflammatory comments. I wish you especially would stop it, as you clearly
have so much talent. What a shame to bury it instead of letting it speak
for itself.

You don't have to prove yourself in this forum; your work will speak for
you, as does the devmanual already.


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Harald van D?k wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 05, 2007 at 03:25:31PM +0000, Steve Long wrote:
>> > Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>> >> What kind of response do you think anyone else would have received had
>> >> they started repeatedly attacking a project when they didn't even know
>> >> what that project was, repeatedly tried to interfere with the
>> >> management of a project when they don't know who is involved with or
>> >> managing said project, repeatedly posted all kinds of outright lies
>> >> after having been told that something was untrue and repeatedly
>> >> resorted to ad hominem attacks in a technical discussion?
>> >>
>> Bloody hell where did all that come from? Am I missing something, cos I
>> certainly haven't seen that on the dev m-l. Maybe it's a core/ irc thing,
>> but afaic in the public domain drobbins hasn't done the above.
>
> drobbins has repeatedly claimed that PMS is not a Gentoo project, that
> Ciaran is leading PMS, that Ciaran's involvement with PMS requires
> developer status, that Gentoo projects require Gentoo copyright, and
> more. Having read some of his past and later messages, I don't doubt his
> intentions are good, but from this thread alone I initially got the same
> impression Ciaran did, except I did not see any actual ad hominem's from
> drobbins's side, myself. I did see Ciaran asking drobbins to stop with
> them in reply to what he apparently considered one.
>
OK my bad i read this thread first. I didn't see any outright lying etc
although i guess the comments about ciaran's status can be seen as
interference. Personally I've found drobbins' comments to be civil at
least, even when he's clearly been wrong. (That top-posting tho, sheesh! ;)

On a broader note, i thought this list was for all aspects of gentoo
development, not just technical ones. Am i wrong about that? If so, sorry-
where does the public discussion about non-technical issues happen? Have to
say, that there's a lot of dev stuff that isn't technical, much to most
coders' chagrin.


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

expose@luftgetrock.net wrote:

> Dear list,
>
> Why not simply naming the "formal logic rules" for the "official venue
> where developers (and ex-developers and users) can talk out their
> disagreements" to be:
> 1. Anyone who is impolite get's kicked off.
> 2. Anyone who repeatedly and seemingly on purpose tries to harm the
> discussion will be kicked off.
>
> Impolite: Do, under _no_ circumstances, use a word MTV would have to mute,
> or that your grandmother (hopefully) wouldnt want to hear you say ;-)
>
> Repeatedly: We are humans, we make faults.
>
> Seemingly: If this wouldnt be part of the rule, there would be endless
> debates on wether it was on purpose or not.
>
I like the idea; i think it'd be a start just to focus on the first. It's
easier to define, or at least to know when someone's overstepped the mark.

> Bryan Østergaard <kloeri@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> Somehow a lot of people seems to think banning is the only possible
>> solution. I tend to think that's a horrible idea myself and most of
>> devrel backs me up on that.
> Of course it is a horrible idea, but isnt it better than seeing someone
> constantly insulting people, instead of being productive, functional,
> objective or at least polite?
> At the moment I feel like there is no real reason _not_ to insult anyone,
> for those who like to do so, which has to be changed or values will be
> lost completely. It can even be fun to get rid of aggressions collected
> throughout the week at once, yet the gym is the correct place to do so,
> not this list.
>
++ to that; the message that gets out is that gentoo thinks abusive
behaviour is acceptable. You have to have limits, and people need to be
told that others think they're crossing the line, or it'll degenerate. If
you don't ban at some point, whatever that is, then there's no sanction.


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