On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 7:37 PM, Matt Turner <[email protected]> wrote: > > With gentoo being a non-profit organization, an alternative way to > view it could be the trade-off of seeing developers / maintainers / > staff leave
It isn't just the risk of leaving, but the risk of them never joining in the first place. If a flamewar goes back and forth, then it creates an environment where only people who like to participate in flamewars will want to join (thus creating a positive feedback loop). If a troll periodically posts and everybody ignores them, then it creates an environment where it seems as if the developers ignore the users (an outsider could mistake trolling for questions/feedback), and thus people will assume it is a toxic environment and not want to join. While I'm sure toxic coworkers are a problem in any organization, I suspect they're far more impactful when the organization effectively broadcasts their activity to the entire world. I'm all for free expression. That doesn't mean that Gentoo needs to expend its resources to broadcast messages that actually harm Gentoo, or provide a platform for people who have done egregious things (like unwanted gender-based attention, attacking people over disabilities, or whatever), whether the victims of such activities have been dragged through the mud publicly or not. -- Rich
