What I think has people talking past one another here is that the "final straw" that led to the ban wasn't a per se ban-worthy offense, *and* there is no clear standard or process for determining when past patterns of behavior can be taken into account in determining whether a given action crosses the line. In legal contexts we account for past behavior with things like repeat-offender rules/"three-strikes" rules, point systems (as with driver's licenses), and so on. Without such rules or processes in place, banning someone for conduct that is permitted of others risks at least the appearance of arbitrariness.
On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 4:04 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks Amir for clarifying this. This is the first I remember hearing this was the reason for the sactions against mcbride, and differs significantly from what I assumed was the reason.
However, MZMcbride has also claimed his comment was in exasperation after facing the same breach of the CoC you have cited, from varnent. Given that there is a narrative going around that the CoC is unfairly biased in favour of staff, would you mind sharing what deliberations took place that resulted in sactions against only one of the participants in a dispute where both participants are alleged to have committed the same fault. To be clear, im not neccesarily sugesting (nor am i neccesarily suggesting the converse) that the CoC is wrong in this - only that it seems full disclosure of the rationale seems like the only method to heal this rift that has opened up.
Thank you
Bawolff
On Tuesday, August 14, 2018, Amir Ladsgroup ladsgroup@gmail.com wrote:
Hey Petr, We have discussed this before in the thread and I and several other
people
said it's a straw man.
The problem is not the WTF or "What the fuck" and as I said before the
mere
use of profanity is not forbidden by the CoC. What's forbidden is
"Harming
the discussion or community with methods such as sustained disruption, interruption, or blocking of community collaboration (i.e. trolling).". [1] When someone does something in phabricator and you *just* comment "WTF", you're not moving the discussion forward, you're not adding any value, you're not saying what exactly is wrong or try to reach a
consensus.
Compare this with later comments made, for example: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T200742#4502463
I hope all of this helps for understanding what's wrong here.
Best
On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 9:29 PM Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com wrote:
I am OK if people who are attacking others are somehow informed that this is not acceptable and taught how to properly behave, and if they continue that, maybe some "preventive" actions could be taken, but is that what really happened?
The comment by MZMcBride was censored, so almost nobody can really see what it was and from almost all mails mentioning the content here it appears he said "what the fuck" or WTF. I can't really think of any language construct where this is so offensive it merits instant ban + removal of content.
I don't think we need /any/ language policy in a bug tracker. If someone says "this bug sucks old donkey's ****" it may sounds a bit silly, but there isn't really any harm done. If you say "Jimbo, you are a f**** retard, and all your code stinks" then that's a problem, but I have serious doubts that's what happened. And the problem is not a language, but personal attack itself.
If someone is causing problems LET THEM KNOW and talk to them. Banning someone instantly is worst possible thing you can do. You may think our community is large enough already so that we can set up this kind of strict and annoying policies and rules, but I guarantee you, it's not. We have so many open bugs in phabricator that every user could take hundreds of them... We don't need to drive active developers away by giving them bans that are hardly justified.
P.S. if someone saying "WTF" is really giving you creeps, I seriously recommend you to try to develop a bit thicker skin, even if we build an "Utopia" as someone mentioned here, it's gonna be practical for interactions in real world, which is not always friendly and nice. And randomly banning people just for saying WTF, with some cryptic explanation, seems more 1984 style Dystopia to me...
On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 4:08 PM, David Barratt dbarratt@wikimedia.org wrote:
Again, this isn't enwiki, but there would be a large mob gathering at
the
administrators' doorstep on enwiki for a block without that context
and
backstory.
That seems like really toxic behavior.
On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 6:27 AM George Herbert <
george.herbert@gmail.com
wrote:
I keep seeing "abusers" and I still haven't seen the evidence of the alleged long term abuse pattern.
Again, this isn't enwiki, but there would be a large mob gathering at
the
administrators' doorstep on enwiki for a block without that context
and
backstory. That's not exactly the standard here, but ... would
someone
just answer the question? What happened leading up to this to
justify
the
block? If it's that well known, you can document it.
On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 12:18 AM, Adam Wight awight@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hi Petr,
Nobody is language policing, this is about preventing abusive
behavior
and
creating an inviting environment where volunteers and staff don't
have to
waste time with emotional processing of traumatic interactions.
I think we're after the same thing, that we want to keep our
community
friendly and productive, so it's just a matter of agreeing on the
means
to
accomplish this. I see the Code of Conduct Committee standing up
to
the
nonsense and you see them as being hostile, so our perspectives
diverge
at
that point. I also see lots of people on this list standing up for
what
they think is right, and I'd love if that energy could be organized
better
so that we're not sniping at each other, but instead refining our
shared
statements of social values and finding a way to encourage the good
while
more effectively addressing the worst in us.
This isn't coherent enough to share yet, but I'll try anyway—I've
been
thinking about how our high proportion of anarchic- and libertarian-oriented individuals helped shape a culture which
doesn't
handle "negative laws" [1] well. For example, the Code of Conduct
is
mostly focused on "unacceptable behaviors", but perhaps we could
rewrite
it
in the positive sense, as a set of shared responsibilities to
support
each
other and the less powerful person in any conflict. We have a duty
to
speak up, a duty to keep abusers from their target, we own this
social
space and have to maintain it together. If you see where I'm
headed?
Rewriting the CoC in a positive rights framework is a daunting
project,
but
it might be fun.
Regards, Adam
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 9:36 AM Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com
wrote:
> I am a bit late to the party, but do we seriously spend days > discussing someone being banned from a bug tracker just for
saying
> "WTF", having their original comment completely censored, so that
the
> community can't even make a decision how bad it really was? Is
that
> what we turned into? From highly skilled developers and some of
best
> experts in the field to a bunch of language nazis? > > We have tens of thousands of open tasks to work on and instead of > doing something useful we are wasting our time here. Really? Oh,
come
> on... > > We are open source developers. If you make Phabricator too
hostile
to
> use it by setting up some absolutely useless and annoying rules, > people will just move to some other bug tracker, or decide to
spend
> their free time on a different open source project. Most of us
are
> volunteers, we don't get money for this. > > P.S. if all the effort we put into this gigantic thread was put
into
> solving the original bug instead (yes it's a bug, not a feature)
it
> would be already resolved. Instead we are mocking someone who was
so
> desperate with the situation to use some swear words. > > On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 12:06 AM, Yaron Koren <yaron57@gmail.com
wrote:
> > Nuria Ruiz nuria@wikimedia.org wrote: > >> The CoC will prioritize the safety of the minority over the
comfort
of
> the > >> majority. > > > > This is an odd thing to say, in this context. I don't believe
anyone's
> > safety is endangered by hearing the phrase in question, so it
seems
like > > just an issue of comfort on both sides. And who are the
minority
and
> > majority here? > > > >> The way the bug was closed might be incorrect (I personally as
an
> engineer > >> agree that closing it shows little understanding of how
technical
teams > do > >> track bugs in phab, some improvements are in order here for
sure)
but
> the > >> harsh interaction is just one out of many that have been out
of
line
for > >> while. > > > > This seems like the current argument - that it's not really
about
the
use > > of a phrase, it's about an alleged pattern of behavior by
MZMcBride.
What > > this pattern is I don't know - the one example that was brought
up
was
a > > blog post he wrote six years ago, which caused someone else to
say
> > something mean in the comments. (!) As others have pointed out, there's a > > lack of transparency here. > > > > -Yaron > > _______________________________________________ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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