Making mailing list discussions more viable (Re: Making -devel discussions more viable)

2012-05-16 Thread Filipus Klutiero 

Hi Stefano, Russ and everyone,
thanks for your interest in this topic. I entirely agree that we should 
do better in this area. Since the discussion problem is not specific to 
debian-devel, I'm moving this to debian-project.


Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 10:11:23AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>  Given recent experiences, I'm also coming around to Ian's position that
>  aggressive and confrontational contributions from people who don't
>  otherwise seem to be contributing to Debian are part of the problem and
>  are not useful, and possibly should be banned.  I think that's been a
>  significant factor in the deterioration of the init system threads.

I agree that's a problem too and I share your feeling that it has been
particularly bad in recent discussions like the init system ones. To
look on the bright side, the problem seems concentrated in a few
specific topics rather than widespread to all discussions. But it is
still probably enough to keep some people from participating
constructively on -devel, which is a pretty serious problem.

>  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.


Agreed also on your reasoning about the psychological effects of non
constructive participation by non contributors.  Unfortunately, there
aren't many viable solutions to this kind of issues and all have
drawbacks.

1) our current solution: "don't feed the troll"

(even though the list participations we're talking about are not,
strictly speaking, trolling", that's basically our strategy)

It just doesn't work at this scale.

Sure, those who do respect the principle do reduce the noise (as
Bernhard pointed out), but you'll always have someone who will reply ---
maybe because they're new and accustomed to the list culture --- and it
is enough to have a few who do the feeding to make a discussion explode
and drive away people from it and, ultimately, decisions.

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

I think we basically agree on the principle of this and IIRC we've even
discussed this about ~1 year ago without finding much opposition. But
either we're not doing this or it is not working.

Some of problems with this have been highlighted by Raphael. The
proposed fix, specifically for the "I don't know if I'm alone doing this
or not" part, sounds interesting.  But even with that fix, you still
have the social awkwardness problem: the feeling is that of "censoring"
someone and it's a hard to ignore feeling, because the act of doing that
is much more concrete than the perception of the long term benefits of
doing so. I've the impression that the bar for silencing someone will
always remain high, higher than what would be needed to avoid the
behavior we're discussing.

Another problem you'll have with this "solution" is that it consumes a
lot of community energy (the people reporting bad behavior, who will do
that only after reaching some high frustration level; and the
listmasters who'll need to put time and emotions in judging the
behavior, implementing and probably explaining the "sanction").

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.

--

Each solution have advantages and disadvantages, but all in all I don't
think there aren't many other options. The question is blunt then: what
are we willing to give up of the current model in order to improve over
its defects?


There are many more approaches possible, and they can be combined.


 Improving what we write (educating)

The idea here is to help people avoid posting problematic content and/or 
to help people avoid posting content which tends to trigger problematic 
replies.



   General advice

This consists in writing guidelines which should be read by participants 
(for example "don't feed the troll").



   Specific advice

This is about offering customized advice to specific participants in need.


 Improving what we end up reading (filtering)

Here, we assume that problematic content will come and improve the 
discussion system to deal with it.


Approaches can be coercive or advisory. For example, excluding 
unapproved people from participating is coercive. Featuring messages 
from approved peop

Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-09 Thread Tollef Fog Heen 
]] Arto Jantunen 

> I think the only technical decision that needs to be made at this point
> is removing the Essential mark from sysvinit. The consensus for that
> should be somewhat more reachable, even if the technical implementation
> may have some open questions.

I don't think anybody is opposed to removing the flag, the question is
how we should go about doing it.  Roger Leigh has done some work on it
already, but I don't think it's complete yet, so somebody needs to put
in some more effort for it to be considered done.

> In addition to that it would be nice if everyone could agree to not work
> against a certain init implementation (for example by refusing to
> include the startup file for that init when someone else has written one
> and submited it as a wishlist bug).

I don't think it's reasonable to ask maintainers to support init systems
they don't know about and don't have any interest in.  Maintainers
should be free to include startup scripts for non-sysvinit inits, but it
should not mandated they accept patches they can't meaningfully
support.

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are


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Work on init systems (was: Making -devel discussions more viable)

2012-05-09 Thread Roger Leigh 
On Wed, May 09, 2012 at 12:29:21PM +0300, Arto Jantunen wrote:
> Thomas Goirand  writes:
> 
> > But that's not the problem. The issue is that there's no
> > outcome, and that it's demotivating. If I read others that
> > what we want to work on isn't a good idea, I will simply
> > not work on that, and external contributors will run away.
> 
> I agree with this. The init system discussion has gone on long after it
> was useful, and instead of discussing the matter we should be working on
> implementing what we want to implement. As an example, if you want to
> see OpenRC in Debian, make it work and upload it. If someone else wants
> to see systemd in Debian they can make it work and upload it (as has
> been done).

This is exactly what is happening.  I'm still involved with talking
about this with the OpenRC upstream folks on their IRC channel, and
while I've not yet had a chance to begin packaging it, there's a
repo on collab-maint in preparation for that.  In order to make
OpenRC usable in Debian, we need it to be able to work with LSB
scripts, but it's not yet clear on how to do that.  An upstream
developer was initially keen to look into doing this, but it looks
like they are now short on time, so we might need to do that part
ourselves in collaboration with them.

I'm short on time myself, so if anyone wanted to join in with
doing this, I'm sure we could set up a proper mailing list and
start moving things a bit faster.

> I think the only technical decision that needs to be made at this point
> is removing the Essential mark from sysvinit. The consensus for that
> should be somewhat more reachable, even if the technical implementation
> may have some open questions.

This is already in the works.  It can be removed right now.  The only
thing stopping it is just investigating the impact on removing the
Essential flag on the installer etc.  If there are no deleterious
consequences of this change, it can be made in the next upload.  Any
advice on doing this would be appreciated, e.g. in case this would
make it more liable to cause breakage if apt could remove sysvinit
and result in a broken system.

> In addition to that it would be nice if everyone could agree to not work
> against a certain init implementation (for example by refusing to
> include the startup file for that init when someone else has written one
> and submited it as a wishlist bug). We should however not demand that
> people work on writing startup files for init systems they don't care
> about.

AFAIK this is exactly what's happening.  While I've been working on
sysvinit I've made numerous changes to better accommodate systemd and
upstart, and with the latest experimental uploads it includes some
changes to better work with upstart.  There's no blocking involved--
I've been happy to make changes that improve things for alternative
init systems, and make migration easier, while also making things
better for everyone.  So long as it doesn't have a negative impact
on existing sysvinit users, no changes have so far been refused.

While I have personal reservations about making systemd or upstart
the default at this time or in the near future, I am nevertheless
keen to make their support in Debian top-notch, and I will continue
to work on reorganising sysvinit to make this even better.

WRT supporting multiple init systems, I certainly don't think it's a
wise move for packages to support multiple init systems.  If we
change the default, we should e.g. provide a means for sysvinit to
run systemd service units to allow for a smooth migration, and
amend policy so that all packages provide files in the same format--
we don't really want to have fragmented support for different
systems within Debian, though supporting different init systems as
the present is needed and desirable.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
 : :' :  Debian GNU/Linuxhttp://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
 `. `'   schroot and sbuild  http://alioth.debian.org/projects/buildd-tools
   `-GPG Public Key  F33D 281D 470A B443 6756 147C 07B3 C8BC 4083 E800


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-09 Thread Marco d'Itri 
On May 09, Arto Jantunen  wrote:

> In addition to that it would be nice if everyone could agree to not work
> against a certain init implementation (for example by refusing to
> include the startup file for that init when someone else has written one
> and submited it as a wishlist bug).
I definitely refuse to start including random startup files in my 
packages, because this conflicts with the goal of supporting only one 
init system.

> We can return to the "which init is default" discussion when we have
Except for an handful of people, who are mostly motivated by their love 
for the toy ports, the discussion actually was "which init system should 
be supported".

-- 
ciao,
Marco


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-09 Thread Jon Dowland 
Russ, I flagged your message as one to respond to, but not to debate any
particular point you raise, but rather to thank you for raising it at all,
despite it being potentially controversial.  I'd also like to thank you for
tirelessly participating on the list, especially in recent times: I find your
messages invariably polite, respectful and uplifting to read.


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-09 Thread Jon Dowland 
On Wed, May 09, 2012 at 04:58:53PM +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> We should have had some enthusiastic replies and constructive
> comments on how we could make this happen, how we could improve
> OpenRC to fit our needs. Instead, I have read posts criticizing
> without knowing. If I was Patrick, I'd be pissed-off and I would
> go back to my Gentoo work, and forget any collaboration with
> Debian.

Whilst I would agree that some messages in that thread were heated,
and perhaps rude, and the effect of this would indeed be demotivating,
it was (is) a *huge* thread, and I don't think every message was
negative. I recall reading many positive ones too.  To some extent,
when you have an enormous thread, you will have quite a spectrum of
responses varying in politeness etc.


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-09 Thread Arto Jantunen 
Thomas Goirand  writes:

> But that's not the problem. The issue is that there's no
> outcome, and that it's demotivating. If I read others that
> what we want to work on isn't a good idea, I will simply
> not work on that, and external contributors will run away.

I agree with this. The init system discussion has gone on long after it
was useful, and instead of discussing the matter we should be working on
implementing what we want to implement. As an example, if you want to
see OpenRC in Debian, make it work and upload it. If someone else wants
to see systemd in Debian they can make it work and upload it (as has
been done).

I think the only technical decision that needs to be made at this point
is removing the Essential mark from sysvinit. The consensus for that
should be somewhat more reachable, even if the technical implementation
may have some open questions.

In addition to that it would be nice if everyone could agree to not work
against a certain init implementation (for example by refusing to
include the startup file for that init when someone else has written one
and submited it as a wishlist bug). We should however not demand that
people work on writing startup files for init systems they don't care
about.

We can return to the "which init is default" discussion when we have
multiple init systems fully supported, and when we are not close to
freezing.

-- 
Arto Jantunen


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (init system)

2012-05-09 Thread Svante Signell 
On Wed, 2012-05-09 at 16:58 +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote:
> On 05/03/2012 07:23 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> > I agree that's a problem too and I share your feeling that it has been
> > particularly bad in recent discussions like the init system ones.
> To keep on the topic of the init systems, we had Patrick Lauer,
> a Gentoo developer who I believe knows quite a lot on the topic,
> coming to propose some contributions with OpenRC, and propose
> that Gentoo and Debian work together on a nice init system,

Yes, he did.

> which potentially could help us to go our way, not being bound
> to components which we don't really control

Good for Debian as a free software supplier.

> We should have had some enthusiastic replies and constructive
> comments on how we could make this happen, how we could improve
> OpenRC to fit our needs. Instead, I have read posts criticizing
> without knowing. If I was Patrick, I'd be pissed-off and I would
> go back to my Gentoo work, and forget any collaboration with
> Debian.

He probably was.

> I would have happily worked with Patrick on porting OpenRC to
> Debian, and have it to understand the LSB headers, etc. 

Me too!

> But if
> some want to fight this idea, I'm not motivated anymore either.

It is not good to loose motivation by this kind of heated discussion, we
could do better in being constructive, not the opposite.

> But that's not the problem. The issue is that there's no
> outcome, and that it's demotivating. If I read others that
> what we want to work on isn't a good idea, I will simply
> not work on that, and external contributors will run away.

Too sad.


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-09 Thread Thomas Goirand 
On 05/03/2012 07:23 PM, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> I agree that's a problem too and I share your feeling that it has been
> particularly bad in recent discussions like the init system ones.
To keep on the topic of the init systems, we had Patrick Lauer,
a Gentoo developer who I believe knows quite a lot on the topic,
coming to propose some contributions with OpenRC, and propose
that Gentoo and Debian work together on a nice init system,
which potentially could help us to go our way, not being bound
to components which we don't really control (my readings of this
list makes me believe that both systemd and udev are both going
the way RedHat/Fedora wants, without much consideration for what
we want or our needs, like it or not).

We should have had some enthusiastic replies and constructive
comments on how we could make this happen, how we could improve
OpenRC to fit our needs. Instead, I have read posts criticizing
without knowing. If I was Patrick, I'd be pissed-off and I would
go back to my Gentoo work, and forget any collaboration with
Debian.

I would have happily worked with Patrick on porting OpenRC to
Debian, and have it to understand the LSB headers, etc. But if
some want to fight this idea, I'm not motivated anymore either.

I don't think that the main issue isn't the wording. I'm myself
the author of bad wordings, because I'm not an English native.
For example, instead of replying to Gergely "what point are
you tryint to make", I should have write "it's unclear to me
what technical issue you are referring to". My style was not
willingly aggressive. This happens, and may happen again,
especially when the topic is highly controversial, and
participants are passionate.

But that's not the problem. The issue is that there's no
outcome, and that it's demotivating. If I read others that
what we want to work on isn't a good idea, I will simply
not work on that, and external contributors will run away.

Cheers,

Thomas




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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-08 Thread Russ Allbery 
Well, obviously that wasn't a good idea at all, and I apologize for
bringing it up.  Not only are most people rather opposed to having
different social expectations for people contributing to Debian or not,
they're so strongly opposed that the nuance of my original message was
lost.  (And, seriously, that's largely my fault, since I knew the line
that I was drawing was probably too fine to be visible when I tried to
drew it and posted anyway.)

So we won't do that.

I do feel like I should make at least one comment in self-defense, because
a couple of people who are valuable contributors to debian-devel seem to
have felt personally attacked by the idea, or at least by the follow-up
discussion of how Ubuntu handled a similar situation, and that wasn't my
intention at all.

"Milan P. Stanic"  writes:
> On Tue, 2012-05-08 at 15:19, Miles Bader wrote:

>> ... and as a non-DD who's been using Debian for 15 years (and reading
>> this list for many of them), and understands at least some of the
>> technical issues, I find the suggestion that I be automatically
>> considered a negative influence and excluded kind of annoying.

> I'm in the same bandwagon.
> Sometimes I even package some packages which are not in Debian for some
> users. Few years ago I backported selinux to Sarge to Woody (IIRC) and
> some people from over the world downloaded it and used or played with
> it. These days I maintain Kannel development release (packages are on
> the Kannel site) for Debian Testing and people use it.

> Do I help Debian? I really don't know but I'm sure that I did help some
> Debian users.

> This (and some other) Debian list are helpful for me and I sometimes
> post some comment, question or even opinion about some subjects which
> are interesting me.

> If I have to pass some kind of meritocracy to post to this list I'll have
> feeling of the 'second class' participant and probably will not post
> anything.
> That wouldn't be big loss for Debian anyway ;-)

To be quite clear, I don't want to exclude people or even assume that
people are not valuable contributors to the mailing list just because they
aren't doing other things for Debian.  (And both of your names are
familiar to me as valuable contributors to the list in the past.)

The phrasing I used in the original message was that I wished that people
who were in some sense house guests would behave as such; in other words,
it's more about social dynamics than a default assumption that people
*won't* behave as guests and need to be kept in a locked room until they
prove themselves.  :)

But from the reaction this seems to be pretty clearly the entirely wrong
direction to go at this problem from, since the idea is just way too much
of a mismatch with expectations about how Debian mailing lists work.
Which, honestly, I should have realized in the first place.

What I'm getting from the rest of the thread is that there's no elegant
way to dodge around the core problem: some people (contributors or not)
sometimes start behaving in toxic ways on mailing lists, and someone with
authority to kick them off the list probably has to intervene when that
happens, and reporting that privately to the mailing list administrators
is the best method we have available to deal with that.  (And probably the
best one that we're going to get, at least for the forseeable future.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-08 Thread Jon Dowland 
On Sun, May 06, 2012 at 09:41:30PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> FWIW there's a [debian-private] mailing list:
>debian-private: Private discussions among developers 
> 
> and this list is not archived.

Actually it is: 
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/resources.html#mailing-lists-special


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-08 Thread Milan P. Stanic 
On Tue, 2012-05-08 at 15:19, Miles Bader wrote:
> Alexander Wirt  writes:
> > I am just speaking for myself as listmaster. But I don't think any
> > DD has more "right" to talk on a mailinglist than anybody else. I
> > won't support such a proposal nor want I participate in it. If you
> > have a problem with someone on a mailinglist, report it and
> > listmasters decide if we should step in.
> 
> ... and as a non-DD who's been using Debian for 15 years (and reading
> this list for many of them), and understands at least some of the
> technical issues, I find the suggestion that I be automatically
> considered a negative influence and excluded kind of annoying.

I'm in the same bandwagon.
Sometimes I even package some packages which are not in Debian for some
users. Few years ago I backported selinux to Sarge to Woody (IIRC) and
some people from over the world downloaded it and used or played with
it. These days I maintain Kannel development release (packages are on
the Kannel site) for Debian Testing and people use it.

Do I help Debian? I really don't know but I'm sure that I did help some
Debian users.

This (and some other) Debian list are helpful for me and I sometimes
post some comment, question or even opinion about some subjects which
are interesting me.

If I have to pass some kind of meritocracy to post to this list I'll have
feeling of the 'second class' participant and probably will not post
anything.
That wouldn't be big loss for Debian anyway ;-)

> The issues discussed here often do affect me, because I use Debian.  I
> don't actively participate most of the time but I do read, and every
> once in a while, feel I have something to add.
 
> The problem is not non-DDs, it's jerks and/or the clueless.  Maybe on

Well said.

> this list there's _some_ correlation between "non-DDness" and those
> things -- but it's far from perfect... (and not, IMHO, enough to
> justify censorship).
> 
> -miles

-- 
Kind regards,  Milan


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-07 Thread Miles Bader 
Alexander Wirt  writes:
> I am just speaking for myself as listmaster. But I don't think any
> DD has more "right" to talk on a mailinglist than anybody else. I
> won't support such a proposal nor want I participate in it. If you
> have a problem with someone on a mailinglist, report it and
> listmasters decide if we should step in.

... and as a non-DD who's been using Debian for 15 years (and reading
this list for many of them), and understands at least some of the
technical issues, I find the suggestion that I be automatically
considered a negative influence and excluded kind of annoying.

The issues discussed here often do affect me, because I use Debian.  I
don't actively participate most of the time but I do read, and every
once in a while, feel I have something to add.

The problem is not non-DDs, it's jerks and/or the clueless.  Maybe on
this list there's _some_ correlation between "non-DDness" and those
things -- but it's far from perfect... (and not, IMHO, enough to
justify censorship).

-miles

-- 
Un-American, adj. Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-07 Thread Alexander Wirt 
On Mon, 07 May 2012, Raphael Hertzog wrote:

> On Sun, 06 May 2012, Chris Knadle wrote:
> > On Thursday, May 03, 2012 02:50:41, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > > 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.
> > 
> > FWIW there's a [debian-private] mailing list:
> >debian-private: Private discussions among developers 
> > 
> > and this list is not archived.
> 
> Heh, thank you for the notice. But I knew about this list (and any DD knows
> about it since most of us are subscribed and it's one of the first things
> that you do when you get the DD status) and it's really not its purpose.
> 
> I believe that such mails should not be imposed to debian-private readers
> but only to people who specifically opted to help "moderate" our mailing
> lists through "social influence".
I am just speaking for myself as listmaster. But I don't think any DD has
more "right" to talk on a mailinglist than anybody else. I won't support such
a proposal nor want I participate in it. If you have a problem with someone
on a mailinglist, report it and listmasters decide if we should step in.

Alex - with his - personal - listmaster hat on


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-06 Thread Raphael Hertzog 
On Sun, 06 May 2012, Chris Knadle wrote:
> On Thursday, May 03, 2012 02:50:41, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> FWIW there's a [debian-private] mailing list:
>debian-private: Private discussions among developers 
> 
> and this list is not archived.

Heh, thank you for the notice. But I knew about this list (and any DD knows
about it since most of us are subscribed and it's one of the first things
that you do when you get the DD status) and it's really not its purpose.

I believe that such mails should not be imposed to debian-private readers
but only to people who specifically opted to help "moderate" our mailing
lists through "social influence".

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Pre-order a copy of the Debian Administrator's Handbook and help
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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-06 Thread Chris Knadle 
On Thursday, May 03, 2012 02:50:41, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
...
> 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.

FWIW there's a [debian-private] mailing list:
   debian-private: Private discussions among developers 

and this list is not archived.

  -- Chris

--
Chris Knadle
chris.kna...@coredump.us
GPG Key: 4096R/0x1E759A726A9FDD74


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-06 Thread Chris Knadle 
On Thursday, May 03, 2012 10:49:22, Gergely Nagy wrote:
> Stefano Zacchiroli  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

--
Chris Knadle
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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-04 Thread Steve Langasek 
On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 10:44:17PM -0400, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> It was implemented because at the time ubuntu-devel had a very low signal to 
> noise ratio and developers were getting frustrated (sound familiar).  My 
> opinion is that it worked pretty well.

> Most of the noise immediately shifted to ubuntu-devel-discuss and a lot of 
> developers never subscribed to it, so they were immediately helped.

> After some period of high noise, low value existence, the number of Ubuntu 
> developers that subscribed to ubuntu-devel-discuss declined further.  It was 
> pointed out to some of the more problematic contributors that if they didn't 
> knock it off and be less abusive and more productive in their list messages, 
> they were going to have no developers left to talk to.

> Eventually, the situation normalized and ubuntu-devel-discuss is a fairly low 
> volume list and most of the posts, if not particularly consistently well 
> informed, are from people that are trying to be constructive (not, of course, 
> right after controversial decisions get announced).  The two lists separated 
> are, in my opinion much higher signal to noise than the old combined ones.

I would also note that, in practice, ubuntu-devel is not so much moderated
as it is rate limited.  The non-developer posts to the list are AFAICT
universally approved so long as they aren't spam; but the moderation delays
are substantial enough that non-contributors have a chance to say their
piece while having no opportunity to be disruptive.

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/
slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-04 Thread Scott Kitterman 
On Friday, May 04, 2012 11:17:24 PM Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer wrote:
> Not enough information to check signature validity.   Show Details
> On Jue 03 May 2012 08:23:29 Stefano Zacchiroli escribió:
> [snip] 
> 
> > 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.
> 
> If you happen to ask, it would also be nice to know how it worked for them.

It was implemented because at the time ubuntu-devel had a very low signal to 
noise ratio and developers were getting frustrated (sound familiar).  My 
opinion is that it worked pretty well.

Most of the noise immediately shifted to ubuntu-devel-discuss and a lot of 
developers never subscribed to it, so they were immediately helped.

After some period of high noise, low value existence, the number of Ubuntu 
developers that subscribed to ubuntu-devel-discuss declined further.  It was 
pointed out to some of the more problematic contributors that if they didn't 
knock it off and be less abusive and more productive in their list messages, 
they were going to have no developers left to talk to.

Eventually, the situation normalized and ubuntu-devel-discuss is a fairly low 
volume list and most of the posts, if not particularly consistently well 
informed, are from people that are trying to be constructive (not, of course, 
right after controversial decisions get announced).  The two lists separated 
are, in my opinion much higher signal to noise than the old combined ones.

Scott K


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-04 Thread Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer 
On Jue 03 May 2012 08:23:29 Stefano Zacchiroli escribió:
[snip] 
> 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.

If you happen to ask, it would also be nice to know how it worked for them.
 
> The obvious drawback of this "solution" is that non-contributors will
> need someone to vouch for them to be whitelisted.

Well, I think if someone contributes something in the -discuss list with good 
arguments/attitude/etc it will be much easier for him/her to get someone 
whitelist her/him than to get a sponsor for a package ;-) 

Kinds regards, Lisandro.

-- 
Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer
http://perezmeyer.com.ar/
http://perezmeyer.blogspot.com/


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-03 Thread Gergely Nagy 
Stefano Zacchiroli  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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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-03 Thread Gergely Nagy 
Riku Voipio  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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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-03 Thread Riku Voipio 
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.

You include a url to that in the footer of the mail, and the mailing
list checks that it was really your change and it was done recently.
The check does not need to be perfect, if someone tries to cheat the
check we just ban the user for a while.

Non-contributors out of blue can still engage in the discussion, they
just need to contribute something first :) We enough "easy" jobs from
manpage writing to translations that the rule would not prevent
anyone who wants help debian to voicing their opinion. One just needs
to get out of their email client and actually do something useful for
a change.

It could also lessen the instant-flame-reply culture, as you would have
to do something else before replying - probably causing you to cool
down and articulate a better answer. 

Before you scream "that's a technical solution to social problem", I
find it rather an economical solution to a social problem. Debian has
something people want (to voice the opinion) and Debian needs something
they can do (fix bugs). The solution brings them together.

Riku

For example, this mail would have been bought to you by the courtesy of:
  http://incoming.debian.org/mtd-utils_1.4.9-1.dsc


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-05-03 Thread Stefano Zacchiroli 
On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 10:11:23AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Given recent experiences, I'm also coming around to Ian's position that
> aggressive and confrontational contributions from people who don't
> otherwise seem to be contributing to Debian are part of the problem and
> are not useful, and possibly should be banned.  I think that's been a
> significant factor in the deterioration of the init system threads.

I agree that's a problem too and I share your feeling that it has been
particularly bad in recent discussions like the init system ones. To
look on the bright side, the problem seems concentrated in a few
specific topics rather than widespread to all discussions. But it is
still probably enough to keep some people from participating
constructively on -devel, which is a pretty serious problem.

> 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.


Agreed also on your reasoning about the psychological effects of non
constructive participation by non contributors.  Unfortunately, there
aren't many viable solutions to this kind of issues and all have
drawbacks.

1) our current solution: "don't feed the troll"

   (even though the list participations we're talking about are not,
   strictly speaking, trolling", that's basically our strategy)

It just doesn't work at this scale.

Sure, those who do respect the principle do reduce the noise (as
Bernhard pointed out), but you'll always have someone who will reply ---
maybe because they're new and accustomed to the list culture --- and it
is enough to have a few who do the feeding to make a discussion explode
and drive away people from it and, ultimately, decisions.

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

I think we basically agree on the principle of this and IIRC we've even
discussed this about ~1 year ago without finding much opposition. But
either we're not doing this or it is not working.

Some of problems with this have been highlighted by Raphael. The
proposed fix, specifically for the "I don't know if I'm alone doing this
or not" part, sounds interesting.  But even with that fix, you still
have the social awkwardness problem: the feeling is that of "censoring"
someone and it's a hard to ignore feeling, because the act of doing that
is much more concrete than the perception of the long term benefits of
doing so. I've the impression that the bar for silencing someone will
always remain high, higher than what would be needed to avoid the
behavior we're discussing.

Another problem you'll have with this "solution" is that it consumes a
lot of community energy (the people reporting bad behavior, who will do
that only after reaching some high frustration level; and the
listmasters who'll need to put time and emotions in judging the
behavior, implementing and probably explaining the "sanction").

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.

--

Each solution have advantages and disadvantages, but all in all I don't
think there aren't many other options. The question is blunt then: what
are we willing to give up of the current model in order to improve over
its defects?


Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences   ..   http://upsilon.cc/zack   ..   . . o
Debian Project Leader...   @zack on identi.ca   ...o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-02 Thread Raphael Hertzog 
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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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-02 Thread Bernhard R. Link 
* Russ Allbery  [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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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-02 Thread Russ Allbery 
"Bernhard R. Link"  writes:
> * Russ Allbery  [120501 18:18]:
>> David Bremner  writes:
>>> "Bernhard R. Link"  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 (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-02 Thread Bernhard R. Link 
* Russ Allbery  [120501 18:18]:
> David Bremner  writes:
> > "Bernhard R. Link"  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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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-01 Thread Russ Allbery 
David Bremner  writes:
> "Bernhard R. Link"  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 (r...@debian.org)   


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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-01 Thread David Bremner 
"Bernhard R. Link"  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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Re: Making -devel discussions more viable

2012-05-01 Thread Bernhard R. Link 
* Russ Allbery  [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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Making -devel discussions more viable (was: switching from exim to postfix)

2012-04-30 Thread Russ Allbery 
Stefano Zacchiroli  writes:
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 07:18:54PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:

>> Unrelated: you have just shown what poisons Debian and has been keeping
>> us behind innovation for the last years.  Not the flamewars themselves,
>> most of us are grown ups and can handle them, but the fear that
>> proposing a change will cause endless discussions and no results.

> Still unrelated, but let me AOL the above. Russ was just joking, but I
> completely agree with Marco's point here. We're often scared of
> "starting a thread on -devel" to propose changes that are far reaching
> enough not to be directly implementable. Every now and then I got asked
> advice on whether proposing some change on -devel is a good idea or not.
> I'm always happy to give advice, but the fact we sometime worry to
> propose changes is worrisome in itself. And it can induce project-wide
> inertia as much as worrying too much about performing NMUs to fix bugs.

Yes, I was just joking and I'm inclined to agree.  (Although with respect
to Marco's specific proposal, there *is* a cost to debate and a request
for everyone's attention, and unless the gains are particularly clear, I'm
not sure it's worth incurring that cost.)

> But we also need to convince ourselves that -devel discussions are
> useful and lead to progress. For that to happen, we need more people
> that look back at past discussions, summarize their conclusions (if
> there have been) or relaunch them (if not), and take concrete actions as
> the natural next step of discussing. There are people doing that, but
> not nearly enough.

Given recent experiences, I'm also coming around to Ian's position that
aggressive and confrontational contributions from people who don't
otherwise seem to be contributing to Debian are part of the problem and
are not useful, and possibly should be banned.  I think that's been a
significant factor in the deterioration of the init system threads.

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.

If I'm being attacked by a colleague, it's a lot easier for me to go
"well, that made me mad, but they've done a great job of maintaining this
package I use and I've seen them do lots of other work for Debian, so they
must just be having a bad day" and let it go.  There's some built-up good
will because they're part of the community.

When that sort of attack comes from someone who I've never heard of
before, and when I then go to the PTS and db.debian.org and find no track
record of that person ever contributing to Debian other than via mailing
list discussions, it's a lot harder to give them that benefit of the
doubt.  And it gets really frustrating to have to keep discussing and
defending decisions with people who don't appear to be doing anything for
Debian other than feeding discussions that are a net drain of energy.

I'm leery of this whole line of argument, since it's inherently a double
standard.  That's why I've not raised it before.  But, well, humans are
social animals and social dynamics involve some degree of double standard,
and it would be nice if people who were effectively guests in our
technical discussions would behave like house guests rather than diving in
with the degree of robust engagement that (while never exactly ideal) our
long-time contributors have to some degree made up for in advance.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   


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