* Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [120430 19:11]:
> I want our technical discussions to be welcoming to anyone who has
> information to share and who can bring additional clarity and insight to
> the discussion. But once things start getting heated or people start
> throwing around accusations or verge towards personal attacks, there's a
> real psychological difference between people who are contributing to
> Debian and people who aren't.

I'd rather argue that abusive behaviour from contributors is far worse
than from non-contributors. It's easier to ignore people not involved
and people not doing anything are usually not around for long.

There is also nothing keeping anyone with technical arguments out of a
discussion as someone insulting anyone with different opinions and if
running out of insults accusing people as not being contributors.

My suggestion to everyone feeling the need to tell anyone on a public
mailing list that they should shut up because they are no contributors
is thus: Please refrain from any more posts to this discussion. I do
not care if you rationalize it as "no need to feed the troll" or if
you understand you left the level of technical discussion and have
little chance to come back to it till the discussion will be over, but
once that point is reached there really is no sense it keeping it up.

Bernhard R. Link


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"Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> writes:

> My suggestion to everyone feeling the need to tell anyone on a public
> mailing list that they should shut up because they are no contributors
> is thus: Please refrain from any more posts to this discussion.

I have nothing against this principle, and I do this. But I also stop
reading such threads. And this means I read less and less of this list.

d


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David Bremner <bremner@debian.org> writes:
> "Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> writes:

>> My suggestion to everyone feeling the need to tell anyone on a public
>> mailing list that they should shut up because they are no contributors
>> is thus: Please refrain from any more posts to this discussion.

> I have nothing against this principle, and I do this. But I also stop
> reading such threads. And this means I read less and less of this list.

Right. As good as that idea sounds on the surface, what that actually
translates into in practice is making debian-devel useless.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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* Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [120501 18:18]:
> David Bremner <bremner@debian.org> writes:
> > "Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> writes:
>
> >> My suggestion to everyone feeling the need to tell anyone on a public
> >> mailing list that they should shut up because they are no contributors
> >> is thus: Please refrain from any more posts to this discussion.
>
> > I have nothing against this principle, and I do this. But I also stop
> > reading such threads. And this means I read less and less of this list.
>
> Right. As good as that idea sounds on the surface, what that actually
> translates into in practice is making debian-devel useless.

And how does enhancing the noise rate by adding mails not about technical
arguments make the mailing lists useful?

Bernhard R. Link


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"Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> writes:
> * Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [120501 18:18]:
>> David Bremner <bremner@debian.org> writes:
>>> "Bernhard R. Link" <brlink@debian.org> writes:

>>>> My suggestion to everyone feeling the need to tell anyone on a public
>>>> mailing list that they should shut up because they are no contributors
>>>> is thus: Please refrain from any more posts to this discussion.

>>> I have nothing against this principle, and I do this. But I also stop
>>> reading such threads. And this means I read less and less of this list.

>> Right. As good as that idea sounds on the surface, what that actually
>> translates into in practice is making debian-devel useless.

> And how does enhancing the noise rate by adding mails not about
> technical arguments make the mailing lists useful?

That's why I drew the distinction between "on the surface" and "in
practice." On the surface, it's a good idea because one doesn't add to
the noise. In practice, it leaves the problem unaddressed and technical
contributors just leave.

Telling people that there's nothing they can do about the noise and they
should just give up and ignore it means that people will stop reading the
mailing list and the only people left to have discussions are the people
who enjoy the noise. I don't want technical decisions in this project to
only be discussed by people who enjoy the noise.

So, while "don't add to the noise" is *part* of the solution, if one just
says that and puts a period at the end, it makes the problem worse. It
needs to be part of a solution that actually *reduces the noise*.

--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>


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* Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> [120502 18:06]:
> I don't want technical decisions in this project to
> only be discussed by people who enjoy the noise.

That's why it is cruical to get the noise reduced. If in any discussion
there is a DD escalating the flames then there won't be any people with
technical arguments left. Getting some non-contributers out of the
picture will not change it much. I wholeheartly believe that the only
reason you see those people so prominently is that everything else
already is in ignore mode because of contributors heating the flames.

> So, while "don't add to the noise" is *part* of the solution, if one just
> says that and puts a period at the end, it makes the problem worse. It
> needs to be part of a solution that actually *reduces the noise*.

Not adding to the noise is reducing the noise. And especially telling
people that you do not care about their arguments because you they are
not insiders, which this is from some point of view, is the noise that
makes an discussion in my eyes the most unwelcoming and thus a good
reason to only expect noise and no more signal.

Bernhard R. Link


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Hi,

On Wed, 02 May 2012, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
> Not adding to the noise is reducing the noise. And especially telling
> people that you do not care about their arguments because you they are
> not insiders, which this is from some point of view, is the noise that
> makes an discussion in my eyes the most unwelcoming and thus a good
> reason to only expect noise and no more signal.

Which is why I reply to those "outsiders" privately and gently point
them to a page that lists some of the mistakes they are doing
(FTR it's http://raphaelhertzog.com/go/ml/).

I certainly agree with Russ that several non-contributors had a
significant negative impact on recent discussions and that we ought
to be doing something about this.

When I see that the bad patterns tend to continue, I mail the listmasters
and ask them to send a warning to to the person. If enough persons
complain, they might even put a filter if that person doesn't stop.

But it's difficult to do it on a regular basis because:
- if I'm alone doing it, it won't have much impact
- given I have no way to know that others are doing the same, I tend to
assume that it doesn't help much, and thus loses some of the motivation
to draft gentle replies pointing out the problematic behaviour

Maybe we need a private DD-only list where people interested in
improving our lists can CC their private complaints. listmasters
could follow the list and take action when they notice that
the same person got multiple complaints.

Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
liberate it: http://debian-handbook.info/liberation/


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Riku Voipio <riku.voipio@iki.fi> writes:

> On Thu, May 03, 2012 at 01:23:29PM +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
>> 3) public, but contributors-only list
>
>> This has been implemented by other FOSS projects. A notable example is
>> Ubuntu who have a split between ubuntu-devel (project members only +
>> whitelisting) and ubuntu-devel-discuss (free for all). I've never asked,
>> but I have always suspected that they've done so in an attempt to
>> improve over the experience of debian-devel participants.
>
>> The obvious drawback of this "solution" is that non-contributors will
>> need someone to vouch for them to be whitelisted.
>
> How about a "automated" contributors-only list.
>
> To post to debian-devel, one would have to either submit a patch to a
> bug, close a rt ticket, commit to one of the scm.debian.org or upload a
> package to debian.

Require that for *every* post to debian-devel? That seems a tiiiny bit
excessive. As good as it might be to increase contributions, I'm afraid
this would have the opposite effect: decrease the posts to the list,
while not gaining anything.

It also rules out contributions done on this very list, which - despite
the tone of some recent threads - is not without precedent.

On the other hand, if I can participate in a thread by pre-seeding my
bucket of contributions, that might work.

And just for the heck of it, this mail, and any other mail in the
thread would have been made possible by the following things:
http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/dh-exec/news/20120503T114724Z.html
https://github.com/algernon/dh-exec/compare/b893f1eab5...bccacdb201

Nevertheless, if we adopt something like this - which I hope we don't
have to -, another problem arises: how recent the contributions must be?
Does opening bugs count? What if the contribution would be answering a
question on the list? What if upstream wants to chime in to a discussion
about his software on devel?

Truth be told, a moderated debian-devel@ would make me very, very sad,
no matter how the moderation would work. There must be a less forceful
way.

--
|8]


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Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> writes:

> 2) "don't feed the troll" + report abuses to listmasters and act
> accordingly

Of the three, this is the least disruptive, in my opinion. Of course,
all the problems you mention (social awkwardity, effort from the
community and extra burden on listmasters) apply, BUT!

Perhaps a compromise could be to close threads forcibly, and temporarily
ban everyone from posting to the list, if they attempt to post to a
closed thread after its closing has been announced (a little window
of error should be given, of course, half an hour tops, or thereabouts).

This reduces the social awkwardness, as we'd be reporting bad threads
instead of bad people, and threads don't mind. It would reduce the load
on listmasters, as threads are fewer than people, and there's less
emotion involved, and justification is easier.

And if so need be, the temporary bans can gradually increase in length
if one keeps on posting to closed threads.

I've seen things like this work reasonably well on web-based forums, and
while it is considerably harder to implement it on a mailing list (and
probably impossible to make it entirely correct at that), something
reasonably similar that works in most cases shouldn't be terribly hard
to implement. People abusing the shortcomings of the solution can still
be banned on a case-by-case basis.

--
|8]


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On Thursday, May 03, 2012 10:49:22, Gergely Nagy wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@debian.org> writes:
> > 2) "don't feed the troll" + report abuses to listmasters and act
> >
> > accordingly
>
> Of the three, this is the least disruptive, in my opinion. Of course,
> all the problems you mention (social awkwardity, effort from the
> community and extra burden on listmasters) apply, BUT!
>
> Perhaps a compromise could be to close threads forcibly, and temporarily
> ban everyone from posting to the list, if they attempt to post to a
> closed thread after its closing has been announced (a little window
> of error should be given, of course, half an hour tops, or thereabouts).

I've been helping moderate a LUG mailing list for a couple of years that uses
this strategy, and I think it works. The message of "this thread is closed,
anyone posting will be temporarily banned from posting if they reply" comes as
a relief when the thread has gone on long enough to have touched on seemingly
all the possibilities for solving an issue, but feels slightly heavy-handed
and "muzzle-ing" if done too quickly. Feedback on the list typically helps
the list moderators attain a reasonable equilibrium for the cuttoff point.

There are a couple of downsides to this strategy:

- one or more moderators need to be monitoring posts, and thus it's work.
The volume that this particular mailing list gets I think it's not a
one person task. [Come to think of it, how many DDs are currently
allowed to officially moderate the list?]

- There's a tendency to forget that the 'mod bit' is set for the user
that's been temporarily banned from posting

> This reduces the social awkwardness, as we'd be reporting bad threads
> instead of bad people, and threads don't mind. It would reduce the load
> on listmasters, as threads are fewer than people, and there's less
> emotion involved, and justification is easier.
>
> And if so need be, the temporary bans can gradually increase in length
> if one keeps on posting to closed threads.

Yes, this works. Thankfully it very rarely ever comes to this, but I've seen
a couple of instances where this became necessary.

> I've seen things like this work reasonably well on web-based forums, and
> while it is considerably harder to implement it on a mailing list (and
> probably impossible to make it entirely correct at that), something
> reasonably similar that works in most cases shouldn't be terribly hard
> to implement. People abusing the shortcomings of the solution can still
> be banned on a case-by-case basis.

It's always a judgement call. Not all judgements are going to be correct.

-- Chris

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Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle@coredump.us
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