Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Hi, john palmieri wrote: I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship? I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen. Let me be as clear as possible: There are people in our community who are losing faith in the community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and provocative and offensive blog posts. I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is well placed to assume that role now. When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it draconian censorship? Given that you and a colleague have had a run-in with the kind of anti-social behaviour I'm targeting here, I would have thought that you'd have more sympathy for the victims of the worst kinds of behaviour. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 13:43 +, Benjamin Otte wrote: I have a problem here. I am not sure I have a clear idea of what type of interaction is causing these issues. I don't know what triggered the discussion this time either, so this might be totally irrelevant: We do have a real problem with being offensive to women on irc. People don't respond to it because most people there don't care much about it. And the men there simply don't expect any women to be within hearing distance. Of course this is self-perpetuating. On the other hand, I don't think there's any conceivable way to manage behaviour in irc. It's a wild corner of the Internet. The people there are not even particularly representative of GNOME. I think the best we can do with irc is warn people whenever we suggest its use. Smaller, well-defined forums such as mailing lists and bugzilla are much easier to manage. -- murr...@murrayc.com www.murrayc.com www.openismus.com ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 07:59:47AM +0200, Dave Neary wrote:
reasons why they might happen.
Ignoring the rest, I'll just share my thoughts on ability to discuss
things on mailing lists.
Let me be as clear as possible:
There are people in our community who are losing faith in the
community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design
discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated
by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on
IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for
our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and
provocative and offensive blog posts.
I am not a developer, so my view is a bit different, anyway:
- just doing something (infrastructure) is *way* better than trying to
discuss it on d-d-l. No idea why, maybe because I explain it badly,
but I view discussing things on d-d-l as a waste of time. Especially
so if you start a topic and afterwards you're busy for a few days.
Suddenly a huge thread about something that was just misinterpreted.
- having doap files (mandatory due to a hook) is somewhat ironic to me
Please don't reply on this specific point though.
- people complaining about the speed of Bugzilla is again 'interesting'
Again, don't reply on this specific item.
- having a CodeOfConduct is nice to avoid some back and forth
'warnings'. Meaning: discussion should be focussed around the
behaviour, not whether the behaviour should've been acceptable or not,
the CoC defines what is acceptable. Further, the CoC is vague enough
that if someone doesn't abide by this, it should be easy to tell.
- I like how the CoC is stated on mail.gnome.org ('expected to know and
follow').
- feels sometimes that discussion on d-d-l is about winning arguments
and focussing on minor things instead of finding the best solution /
outcome
- I respond way too often in bike shed topics...
- being on release-team is nice, you read back a thread and make a
decision about something preferably you didn't participate in, then
just try to see the real consensus (means ignoring some parts)
- end of thread calls sometimes help
I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to,
argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I
believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is
well placed to assume that role now.
For someone to be listened to, they have to be respected IMO. I find it
interesting there is no effort in trying to make something productive
(within the thread). IMO you do(should) not need the board as a start to
change things.
When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to
the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to
publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the
Antisocial seems really strong to me. Further, it doesn't feel like
people are not behaving according to the CoC (every message seems ok,
maybe just the amount of messages). Eventhough I do agree that
discussing things on d-d-l is useless.
Maybe CoC needs to have a 'keep a discussion productive and focussed on
an outcome' or something.
complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now
if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project
in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it
draconian censorship?
What is meant with GNOME forums? Things like IRC and mailing lists?
PS: Perhaps I overstated things a bit, etc.
--
Regards,
Olav
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Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 12:30 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote: On Mon, 2009-06-01 at 11:04 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: [snip] Just look at the replies from people: there's an almost unanimous agreement that our community is doing just fine. Why are you trying to fix anything? There is no problem. Is that so hard to accept? You keep saying that, yet the whole reason Dave started this particular thread is that people have complained to him that our community is NOT doing fine, and Stormy has replied in this thread to say she also has received complaints, as now I'm saying that I have too. I don't think any of us are saying the sky is falling and people are leaving in droves, but when several people (whom I respect) in our community say that they dread discussions on mailing lists and IRC because of the inevitable bike-shedding and pointless obscure argumentation, or even in some cases outright bullying, I would say that's a valid concern that needs to be addressed. Similarly when people from outside our direct community (eg. kernel hackers, non-core app developers) ask me if we've solved our 'dysfunctional community problem' I worry even more. However you seem to flat out deny that there is a problem so I'm not sure what I, or anyone else, can do to convince you that this is a real issue. Paul -- Intel Open Source Technology Centre http://oss.intel.com/ ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Dave Neary a écrit : I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. Doing something about it, doesn't necessarily mean going the police route. Things are not that simple. Funnily, this is a trend we see in our society as a whole. Whenever something is perceived to malfunction, some people want to hit other people with big sticks. Straight. You don't even know if the punishment you are asking for won't fragment the community even more or will cause more damage in general. Things are not that simple. I am not saying everything is OK, or that we shouldn't try to come up with a better way to interact etc. There are some people who get on my nerves in the community, you know, like everyone else :) I don't go to #gnome-hackers anymore because it's too noisy, etc. But I don't think the brutal and primitive police route is better either. We are not mere dogs. We can think better. I hope. The solution ? honestly I don't know. There are some problem domains that are complicated to grasp. We ought to sit down a little bit and think thoroughly instead of taking premature shortcuts that will cost us more than actually doing nothing. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. This is IMO brutal, primitive, and I am not even sure it would solve the issue. How do you know if it won't backfire ? I mean, you can indirectly kill someone because you made him look bad publicly. Do you have studies proving that on the long run, taking such actions won't actually cost more to our community than doing nothing ? I (as an organization) would not take the risk to publicly shame people if I am not *sure* about the long term outcome of it. As a physical person though, it might be another business :) It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. Well, I disagree. You can talk/write about it, for instance. That is an advantage we have, compared to real life where you are voiceless if you don't have access to big newspapers or TV channels. See, that's an area we can think about improving/empowering for instance. Proposing to hit people in the head each time a complainer has a problem is not necessarily what is going to save him. It'll maybe give him a serotonin shoot, but well, he can as well use some chemical substances for that. There are certainly cases where we do need the police. But please, let's not artificially make those cases too frequent. - -- Dodji Seketeli http://www.seketeli.org/dodji -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Remi - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkolFqYACgkQPejI7lrem2FC3QCfT1tVBEJi8AJvFjgEsv3aKSU7 R6IAnAzWmfgmv2Q2FVL0T7gmpQnHS66d =Gu0m -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
Hi Dave, 2009/6/2 Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org: Hi, john palmieri wrote: I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship? I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen. Let me be as clear as possible: There are people in our community who are losing faith in the community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and provocative and offensive blog posts. I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is well placed to assume that role now. When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it draconian censorship? IMO, there's a big difference between counterproductive behavior and disrespectful behavior. People can be very counterproductive without being disrespectful (moving focus of discussion to irrelevant technical details, being against a proposal for personal reasons, etc). For example, I agree with Olav that d-d-l became too noisy and counterproductive too many times lately. And I guess some highly relevant contributors didn't participate on certain discussions simply because the discussion was too noisy (dozens of messages from people just giving random opinions) and lacking focus (someone picking on something irrelevant, etc). In general, people are not being disrespectful IMO. This kind of problem can be solved with stronger moderation and well-defined guidelines on mailing lists (which I guess depends on the type of discussion, dunno) which is just not happening on d-d-l for instance. IMO, disrespectful behavior includes being sarcastic or ironic, making personal accusations in public, making pejorative comments about a proposal instead of disagreeing with counter-arguments, etc. I see this kind of behavior sometimes on our mailing lists but they are exceptions, not the common behavior. Maybe what I'm trying to say is: I think we're being counterproductive too often, not necessarily disrespectful. And yes, this is a problem that needs a solution. My opinion is that we just need stronger and consistent moderation depending on the context. Some examples (a bit stretched for clarity) Example 1: - Person A proposes a new module for GNOME 3.2 on d-d-l - Person B replies with This module is crap, ridiculous - Release team members (who are responsible for organizing the module propositions) reply (in private?) to Person B with Please, try to keep discussion productive with actual arguments for/against the module. Example 2: - Person A proposes a new i18n guideline on gnome-i18n mailing list - Person B replies with You proposal is total shit - GNOME i18n coordinators (who are responsible for the team coordination) reply (in private?) to Person B with Please, try to keep discussion productive with actual arguments for/against the i18n proposal. Cheers! --lucasr ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
So what do people *except* me want from the foundation?
Hi, Now that we have clearly identified everyone who disagrees with what *I* hope for from the foundation and its board, I'm still interested in the question I asked previously: What do you expect from the foundation? What are the things that the foundation is doing that it shouldn't be, the things it isn't that it should, the things the membership could be doing that it isn't, etc.? What is your vision of the foundation? Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 1:59 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: Hi, john palmieri wrote: I'm of the same mind here. There are a number of people who I don't like to read on blogs and whatnot but I would rather us as a community figure out productive ways of dealing with it as opposed to lording our own views over those who don't have as much pull in the community. Red tape and draconian censorship measures is not the way to handle the issue. If our blogs and mailing lists are no longer exciting and informative then there is something more fundamentally wrong than who we give a voice to. Who talked about red tape and draconian censorship? Setting up a commission for evaluating speech is red tape and will lead to censorship. I would accept a self style group who goes out to evaluate the situation and recommend productive actions to take but if the group came back with your evaluation of the situation I would reject that as over compensation for the issue at hand. I commend Philip for succeeding in framing this debate around the punishments rather than around the reasons why they might happen. Again we come back to crime and punishment. If you read over my past posts on pgo when I felt people were out of line, I let them know but I didn't bring to bare some sort of higher power to do so. Proscribing anything more than the most basic code of conduct goes against our nature as a free flowing community. It may be trial by fire but the strong rise to the top and the bikeshedders eventually get bored and go away (anyone remember our two worst bikeshedders?) That is not to say that individuals should ignore others getting bullied, just that we don't need a commission to do so. I encourage prouctive, not destructive ideas for dealing with the issue. What thoes are, I'm not sure but I know it isn't a group of people policing our communication channels. I would think it would have something to do with rewarding those who work to move GNOME forward instead of concentrating on chastising those who hold it back. I can remember a few names who came off grating to me when they were new and inexperienced with the community (I was probubly one of them) but who's body of work in community had become invaluble over time. Let me be as clear as possible: There are people in our community who are losing faith in the community's ability to have reasoned technical debate and design discussions because of vacuous 100 mail threads, and IRC being dominated by half a dozen people whose principal contribution to GNOME is to be on IRC all the time. Others are being driven away from the community for our tolerance of he who shouts loudest politics, flame wars and provocative and offensive blog posts. And there are those who rise to the top because they can navigate such noise, and those who settle down and recognise being productive is better than being destructive. Again, I agree there is a problem, I just think your solution is a dangerous road. I believe that these people should have a group that they can turn to, argue their points, and ask for that group to do something about it. I believe that the task is the role of the foundation, and the board is well placed to assume that role now. The board should not mire itself in conflict resolution like this, just like it does not make technical decitions. The boards role is to obtain and distribute resources and make sure those resources are used in efficent ways. That is enormous power as it is. Giving it a policing/judicial role would be a mistake. I could imagine some extremist contingent getting a majority and then anyone who got fed up with their retoric and let slip a fuck you to them on the list would suddenly find their account disabled. The door swings both ways there which is the problem with trying to control speach. When I say do something about it, that may be simply to point out to the people involved that they're not being productive. It may be to publicly shame people for antisocial behaviour. It may be to tell the complainer that they're making a big deal about nothing. But right now if you are being driven away from GNOME forums or from the GNOME project in general, you have no-where to turn. How is that red tape? How is it draconian censorship? Red tape is the implementation of ridged formal processes to enforce some standard. When you talk about it in the terms of speach, censorship becomes the elephant in the room because you open the door to someone eventually having that power. How does the Kernel thrive when they probubly face the same issues we do? I think you are looking at the symptoms and not the root causes. Given that you and a colleague have had a run-in with the kind of anti-social behaviour I'm targeting here, I would have thought that you'd have more sympathy for the victims of the worst kinds of behaviour. To assume I don't have sympathy because of my stance points to
Re: So what do people *except* me want from the foundation?
On Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 7:25 AM, Dave Neary dne...@gnome.org wrote: What do you expect from the foundation? Leadership. I want there to never be another DVCS mutli-year long flame war. The only reason it ended is that Red Hat has the people, servers and bandwidth to JFDI for something of that magnitude. That worked that time. But Red Hat shouldn't be forced in to taking three-four employees off their other responsibilities to prevent GNOME from tearing itself apart. We need a way to make authoritative decisions in a healthy way and then to share the responsibility of making it happen without giving the appearance of back-room dealings or rule by fiat. Consensus building and making travel happen (to affordable locations) are the only two things I want to see the Foundation doing. ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: So what do people *except* me want from the foundation?
On 06/02/2009 12:57 PM, Ruben Vermeersch wrote: On di, 2009-06-02 at 14:25 +0200, Dave Neary wrote: What do you expect from the foundation? Last year at GUADEC during the Foundation BOF, the question was raised as to why the GNOME Foundation keeps its entire finances in a US bank account (and thus in US Dollars). This also means that quite a lot of money gets lost due to currency conversions (especially now that the Euro is growing stronger again). Especially because some of the sponsors are based in Europe, as well as GUADEC, this amount can be quite substantial. The proposal was to have a second bank account in Euros, to avoid this. Has any action being taken on looking into this and if not, could this become a task for the next board? If the economy is as bad as the news wants us to believe, squeezing out every penny will help, so it might be worthwhile to investigate if this is worth doing. I remember bringing this up in a board meeting after GUADEC with Rosanna to see if our current bank allows opening a Euros account. I don't remember the exact situation. I have a vague memory that we were in the process of changing banks then. This is something we should still consider, but it doesn't affect this year's GUADEC since GUADEC funds are not going through Foundation account right now. behdad Ruben ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
Re: What do you think of the foundation?
On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 05:13:44PM -0400, Behdad Esfahbod wrote: On 06/02/2009 05:56 AM, Olav Vitters wrote: - just doing something (infrastructure) is*way* better than trying to discuss it on d-d-l. No idea why, maybe because I explain it badly, but I view discussing things on d-d-l as a waste of time. Which is not quite surprising. You wouldn't get a better response if you Not surprising as d-d-l is useless, but not because of the topic. IMO things should be discussed beforehand to get consensus. go the main town market on a weekend and ask people what color you should paint your house. The trick to asking questions in any forum is to filter informative, insightful, and relevant responses from the noise and act accordingly. You *don't* need to make everyone happy or answer to everyone. If you mean that d-d-l is basically a town hall where everyone is shouting, yes I agree. However, the signal to noise ratio I see is loads of noise, almost no signal. Really, I am never going to try and discuss things anymore. It is pointless and makes me sad. Yes, perhaps in the avalanche of messages there are a few useful ones. Not worth the effort. Plus, there is no consensus (or not that I see). Better to just skip the whole consensus part and force things through. -- Regards, Olav ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
