[gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
Rich Freeman wrote: > > Fred is a community member. Fred consistently harasses and trolls new > contributors in private. Sure, it's a problem. But not a problem which can be solved by closing the mailing list, in no step of the issue. First of all, this happens in private, so you cannot prevent it by closing a mailing list. > No mention is made of why Fred as booted out, because everything > happened in private. That's the mistake which is made in this example. Be open in the decisions. If you cannot be open in order to protect other people's privacy, be open at least by saying exactly this. > 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. Yes, this might happen due to the non-openness. This might happen even if you are open. And nothing will prevent it. Closing a mailing list will not close such a debate; it will then just happen elsewhere. Anyway, such a debate does not belong to dev-ml. The correct solution is to continue to point people to have this debate on the appropriate place, not on the mainly technically oriented dev-ml. Making the posters silent by blacklisting even more is contra-productive and will give the impression that they are actually right. As it is a commonplace: You cannot solve social problems by technical measurements. > 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. Why not? Is it against a law to exclude somebody who is hurting a project? If it is (or if there is a danger that it is), then the problem is not that they cannot explain it but that they must not do it in the first place. In any case, this is a different problem and cannot be solved by closing a mailing list. > 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. > What solution would you propose for this problem? How would closing the mailing list solve the problem? It will give the impression that you want to close the debate by taking away the medium where people can argue. And the impression is correct, because this actually *is* the intention if you are honest. Of course, it will not close said debate. The debate will just happen on another channel. (Which in this example might be appropriate, but pointing to the proper channel is what should have happened and not closing a mailing list and thus excluding random people from posting things about clompletely different topics which *are* on-topic on dev-ml). > 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. Closing dev-ml will not help here. If people have a strong disagreement with a decision, this will happen on gentoo channels. If you want to prevent it technically, you have to close all channels. > And what about the freedom to endlessly troll and harass you and > others? [...] Closing a mailing list will not prevent this. Somebody who behaves this way (or feels being treated wrong) will not stop this only because one channel is closed for him. What is really happening by closing the mailing list is that you stop innocent contributors. In any case, that's the discussion blacklisting vs. whitelisting: To stop one specific single poster, blacklisting is enough, at least for the beginning. Sure, technically it can be circumvented, but you will not stop this social problem anyway by technical means. > 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. Sure, pointing to the right channel is appropriate. This is something completely else than to prevent posting *by default*. > without being endlessly trolled and harassed. This is unrelated about closing the mailing list. Especially if this happened in private, anyway. BTW, I do not think that contributors are that blue-eyed that they will stop contributing only because one person does not know how to behave. Especially if it is made clear somewhere that this happens in disagreement with gentoo as a whole. *This* might be a way how one might react to such a problem. Anyway, this discussion now is getting off-topic: All these problems have nothing to do with closing a ml and cannot be solved by this.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
2018-03-27 18:39 GMT+02:00 Rich Freeman :
> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Martin Vaeth wrote:
> > Rich Freeman wrote:
> >> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth 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
[gentoo-dev] Re: New Portage fork: sys-apps/portage-mgorny
Vadim A. Misbakh-Soloviov posted on Sun, 25 Mar 2018 17:13:28 +0700 as
excerpted:
> Well, in *my* opinion, in turn, having possibility to {R,}DEPEND on
> package from exact repo is much and much more needed functionality.
>
> Say, I have pkg2 in my repo, that depends on pkg1, which is in my repo
> too. Then, I (or user) add other repo having pkg1 too. Or, say, gentoo
> maintainers bump pkg1 to a newer version (while I'm slacking a bit).
> And my pkg1 is a bit different from gentoo's (let it be patchset, or,
> say, lua.eclass support for lua overlay).
>
> So, that changes results in random unexpected behaviour as blocks,
> runtime breakage and so on.
> Currently, it is no way to say "only dep-pkg from that exact repo is
> 100% works as expected", so there is still the chance, that someday pkg4
> would fail to build because suddenly pkg3 was reinstalled from another
> "incompatible" repo...
> And, honestly, current ways to resolve that issue (adding
> dummy-useflags, copy_here&rename, and so on) looks as very dirty hacks.
[Note that while the following is written using second-person "you",
nothing personal or accusatory intended. I simply started with second
person and then realized half way thru that because it was written in
second person it could be taken as offensive, which wasn't my intent, but
didn't want to go back and adjust the whole thing to detached third-party
viewpoint just to keep the technical point I had already made, so I chose
the disclaimer method instead. And as a second disclaimer, please see
the last paragraph; maybe I'm missing the obvious...]
Actually, I'd argue that the problem as described is well within what USE
flags are designed for, and that using a USE flag in this case makes
/perfect/ sense. Consider the description above:
* pkg2 deps on pkg1, both of which are in your repo.
* But your pkg1 is different in some way, custom patch set, say, or lua
eclass support from its overlay.
* Your pkg2 deps on that difference.
Seems a perfect match for USE flag deps to me. Make your pkg2 dep on pkg1
conditional on a USE flag added to pkg1 when you changed it from what's
likely to appear in gentoo or another overlay, making that change in
behavior conditional on the USE flag and setting it up so flag-missing
behavior is -flag.
Problem solved.
That creates an optional change in behavior toggled by a USE flag, and
makes some other package dependent on that option by depending on that
USE flag. Isn't that exactly what USE flags and USE flag deps are
/supposed/ to do?
Of course that pre-supposes that you want to go to all the work of doing
it /correctly/ and making your change fully optional and togglable by
individual per-package USE flags and deps that fit the individual cases,
instead of taking the hacky shortcut of simply hard-coding your copy to
do it your way, but "dummy USE flags" that do nothing but control the
repo, because the behavior is hardcoded instead of setup via actually
togglable USE flag aren't any more hacky than that hard-coding that makes
them required in the first place. It's really just part of the same
hack, and if you're satisfied with the hacky hardcoded shortcut, it seems
you should be satisfied with the hacky USE flag to make it work because
you hardcoded the behavior as a shortcut instead of making it properly
togglable, as well.
But if you /do/ want to simply take the expedient route and do hacks such
as hardcoding choices (hey, I've taken the hardcoded behavior shortcut
myself a few times) etc, and you're doing it pretty much globally,
affecting many otherwise independent things thru the entire overlay, then
it would seem to me that the most efficient method would be to simply do
the fake-flag (call it overlayname-hardcoded or some such, obviously
replacing overlayname as appropriate) hack by policy, adding it to your
global USE flag settings in make.conf, and to every package as soon as
you add it to your overlay. Then you can depend on the flag as
necessary, without having to worry about what it does in an individual
package.
Tho even that's actually pretty comparable to how users work with global
USE flags. And if it's named overlayname-hardcoded or similar, you /are/
actually describing the USE flag, and how you're using it in the deps,
reasonably accurately, even if there's no actual option to turn it off in
the packages in your overlay.
... Tho it's quite possible there's holes in this argument that I'm
simply not seeing, thus making my posting as much or more about asking
others to point out the holes I can't see, so I /can/ see them, as it is
about attempting to convince anyone of the correctness of my viewpoint as
I'm posting it. Sure I could be wrong, but if I am, please point it out
so I can see it too! =:^)
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
Hello, I joined this mailing list a week ago, and the first email I received apparently restarted these long arguments for and against censorship here. There are lots of reasons for and against both sides, and lots of people on either side apparently. These are now the majority of the emails I've now received. The first reply was essentially "We've already talked about this, can we just move on?". The fact that discussion has continued so long is in some ways ironic. At what point is this discussion both disruptive of development as well as reflecting badly on the community, and so should be moved off-channel? --UnderSampled
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
I really do hate discussing this. I will pray for Gentoo, friends, as I hope the distribution continues to receive useful contributions. On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Rich Freeman wrote: > 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. > Explain why the user was removed. > 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. > This is insane. If they sue produce the emails. At least in the US, the suit will be thrown out, as truth is a defense to defamation. If I am not a lawyer and as such can not understand the law and my opinion should not be trusted, then, as I assume you are not a lawyer, your opinion should not be trusted either. Even if you have consulted with a lawyer you are not a lawyer and there is no reason to believe you could have understood what the lawyer told you. I do not present this as sophistry: for any progress to be made in the discussion of your hypothetical situation I sincerely think you need to consider the above. At what point is one's knowledge of the law enough to act within society? > 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. > Stop using the law as a boogeyman. Be transparent in why decisions were made. There are no legal concerns save fair use (the copyright of any published emails) and the publication of private facts.[1] For a tort involving the disclosure of public facts, you would need to have no reason to publish those facts save for the damage they could cause. You may also need to publish them in a manner far more public than a Linux distribution mailing list. To continue the example I doubt anyone would care if it was just a single Fred, though they may be slightly put off. Multiple Fred (or related) incidents later it would seem rather strange. As I have tried to explain my issue with the closure of the mailing list is not the removal of a user, but the lack of openness with which decisions are made. Points are brought up in good faith and then ignored. Requests for clarification may not be greeted amicably. Overall, this makes it seem like the closure of the development list is to keep decisions from being questioned. If there were hecklers asking stupid questions that would be one thing, but that is not what it looks like to me. I will note most developers go quietly about maintaining their charges and make reasonable decisions. Cheers, R0b0t1 [1]: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/publication-private-facts
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
On 27/03/18 17:39, Rich Freeman wrote: > On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Martin Vaeth wrote: >> Rich Freeman wrote: >>> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth 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. > > 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. > > 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. > > 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. > >> 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)? > > 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. > It sounds a lot to me like you're replacing one set of problems with another .. solving not a lot. Whether you take action on "Fred" or not, you're going to lose out, so what do you do... Where is the greater damage, with one/two people, 10/20 people or 100/200 people .. its a huge value judgement - certainly not one I'd like to make! You may or may not have heard the expression "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" .. alas I feel this measure is a good example of this. To try to rid the mailing list of one or two bad apples, you've cut the whole tree down so it can't bear fruit. I think this is a foolish step, but only time will tell that for sure ... The next "logical" step would simply be to delete the whole mailing list - I suppose that's the next "measure" when the trolling from white-listed members resurfaces And don't go telling me it doesn't exist .. set a bad example, others will surely follow ... Ooops, another $2 spent on a lost cause .. >,< signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 12:12 PM, Martin Vaeth wrote: > Rich Freeman wrote: >> On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth 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. 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. 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. 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. > 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)? 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
[gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
Rich Freeman wrote: > On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth 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. > Much of the concern is that the lists have been turning into endless > arguing over things like very topic. Yes. Some people could not be stopped from continuously expressing their opinion. Some developers do not want to hear them. So the list is being closed. > If a newcomer comes along and reads your post, they're going to get > the impression that the developers live in an ivory tower. IMHO this impression is completely right. > Why would somebody want to > contribute to Gentoo in the first place if that is their first > impression? Exactly. This is why closing the list is the absolutely wrong signal. Sticking at least to a blacklist-only mode might mitigate the IMHO severe damage which has already happened by the decision to close the list. > The problem is when it turns into a personal attack or > hyperbole, which IMO the part I quoted falls into. Personal animosities are always a problem. This can and will not be solved by technical measurements. Taking all non-developers as hostages - including those which were not involved at all in the debate and even worse even possible future contributors - is certainly not a solution for that type of problem. And anyway, you can be sure that the problem will appear again, no matter how closed the list will be. > The intent isn't to stifle debate/discussion. But this is exactly what is happening by closing the list to non-developers. > 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.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 3:34 AM, Martin Vaeth wrote: > > It is the general attitude: Does Gentoo welcome contributions > or want to make their developers live in an ivory tower? > > It is about openness vs. isolation. > I'm pretty sure most developers, myself included, want to welcome contributions. Much of the concern is that the lists have been turning into endless arguing over things like very topic. If a newcomer comes along and reads your post, they're going to get the impression that the developers live in an ivory tower. Why would somebody want to contribute to Gentoo in the first place if that is their first impression? Before it was the debate over mailing list policy it was a debate over discipline policies. Apparently developers live in an ivory tower and like to kick people out of the tower as well. In that particular debate the people most informed about what was actually happening were forbidden by policy from explaining what was going on, which basically left everybody who knew nothing of the details to spin conspiracy theories. It is natural that people are going to disagree on some of these issues. The problem is when it turns into a personal attack or hyperbole, which IMO the part I quoted falls into. The intent isn't to stifle debate/discussion. Whitelisting vs blacklisting on a mailing list have obvious pros/cons, and you made a legitimate point in the second half of your email (one that was hardly unknown to the Council I'm sure). The problem becomes when we try to attach motives to everybody else's actions. It isn't enough to point out the pros/cons of whitelisting/blacklisting/etc. Now we need to talk about "ivory towers" and "attitude" and in other posts "cabals" and so on. This kind of language can be demotivating because it demonizes those trying to fix things no matter what they do. Are they promoting "ivory towers" or are they allowing "toxic people" to attack new contributors (which also hardly is welcoming to new contributors)? And then everybody feels like they have to lead some kind of revolution to save Gentoo from itself. A lot of this comes down to considering that most people in these debates probably are well-intended. -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH] eclass: freedict: require EAPI=6
> On Mon, 26 Mar 2018, Marty E Plummer wrote: > As a pretty simple eclass, which only inherited multilib in > order to get $(get_libdir) and eutils for who knows why, and > all its consumers bumped to EAPI=6, it makes sense to require > EAPI 6 for this eclass While at it: - Drop the IUSE="" assignment, it is useless (pun intended :) - Update HOMEPAGE, freedict.de is dead - LICENSE should be "GPL-2+" (sources say "GNU General Public License ver. 2.0 and any later version") - DEPEND is not needed (should be RDEPEND instead, I guess) - Use canonical ordering of variables (DESCRIPTION, HOMEPAGE, SRC_URI in first block; LICENSE, SLOT in second; then dependencies; then S) Ulrich
[gentoo-dev] Re: Mailing list moderation and community openness
Rich Freeman wrote: > On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 7:54 PM, Benda Xu wrote: >> >> It boils down to an attitude of assuming outsiders are good (blacklist >> to ML) or bad (whitelist to ML) by default. ++ This is the most crucial point. It is the general attitude: Does Gentoo welcome contributions or want to make their developers live in an ivory tower? It is about openness vs. isolation. > It is > basically impossible to blacklist somebody on a mailing list, since > all they need to do is roll up a new email address. That may be technically true but it is not a problem the mailing list is currently facing. If it should eventually happen to be the case that the mailing list is filled by tons of spam of anonymous posters or faked identities causing serious problems, one can still think about changing the modus operandi. But without such an absolute need, it is very bad to restrict freedom.
Re: [gentoo-dev] Mailing list moderation and community openness
On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 10:38 PM, kuzetsa wrote: > > I think this may be a misunderstanding? no? there might be some mailing > list jargon term: "moderation" which I was unaware of: > Historically moderation meant having list traffic held prior to distribution for approval from a moderator. > I've never used mailing list software which has that feature (I think > that may be what you're referring to) - I mostly meant someone (or a > team) with the specific duty to hold people accountable for their posts > (since the list is public-facing, this should include @gentoo.org devs > too because it sets a weird precedent to have disparate enforcement) Well, ultimately the question is whether unverified members of the community can post or not. If they can, then there is no way to hold anybody accountable for anything, because they can just create a new email address to continue posting. If you require verification prior to posting it gives everybody a reputation to have to be concerned about. > the "require whitelist / default deny" version of having a closed list > seems the same - expecting users to contact a dev to relay messages, or > go through the dubiously [un]documented process of getting whitelisted. The process is simple, and certainly could be documented on the wiki (it was already described in emails). Get a dev to whitelist you. It can be any dev, and it is up to that dev to agree to the request or not. > unless that process has a standardized format, it seems worse than the > greylist because individual developers have the autonomy to [not] > sponsor people for whitelist, or approve posting on a user's behalf. I'd consider that a feature, not a bug. Gentoo has well over 100 developers. All it takes is the approval of any one of them to be whitelisted. That is a very permissive system. If every single one of them is unwilling to whitelist somebody, is it really necessary to have every single one of them make some kind of case for their individual decisions? Who would even judge such a case, considering that all of comrel and the council (and even the current Trustees) are all developers who presumably could have done the whitelisting themselves? You could still layer something like the proctors or comrel on top of this, and they would presumably be a bit more formalized in how they operate. (The typical conception is that Proctors would have a lot of discretion but would generally only enforce short-term "punishments" like bans of a few days, warnings, and so on. On the other hand comrel would be much more formalized but would be able to take long-term action. The goal of course would be for Proctors to defuse situations before they ever get to Comrel.) -- Rich
