On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 5:41 PM, Kristian Fiskerstrand <k...@gentoo.org> wrote: > On 12/05/2017 11:37 PM, Rich Freeman wrote: >> Honestly, I'm not really a big fan of even on-topic posts from people >> who have caused a lot of harm to others in private. I'm not sure >> which is the lesser evil but do we really want a community where we >> tolerate absolutely any kind of abuse of other members? > > We do not, but that presumes actual abuse has been demonstrated. > "spamming the mailing list", where the posts are regarding Gentoo, isn't > automatically abuse because some people are uncomfortable about the > information being presented, or they disagree with it. >
We have had cases where people who were the subject of comrel complaints about harassment go on to just post endlessly on mailing lists, sometimes professing that they have no reason why comrel booted them (despite evidence to the contrary existing). It just leads to a one-sided discussion because we don't defend Gentoo's reputation in these cases so instead our lists just get used to smear us. I don't have any issue with discussion of facts, or even the offering of opinion, but the problem is that in these sorts of situations one side presents their side of the story and nobody is free to counter with the other side because of policy (and a reasonable policy at that). And so the allegations just go unchallenged and are repeatedly posted. What value does this add? At best it misleads people into thinking that things like comrel actions are unfounded, and drives away potential contributors. If these were discussions about policy in the abstract and not in the specific then there wouldn't be as much difficulty (indeed, this is the form our disagreement is taking right now). We can certainly have a free conversation about whether somebody who sexually harasses another developer ought to be booted or not. The problem comes in when somebody has been the subject of a decision made based on their individual behavior - there is no way to have a reasonable public conversation about this. IMO discussions about individual comrel/etc decisions simply should not be considered on-topic for our lists. -- Rich
