Proposal for ML conduct

Mark McLoughlin markmc at redhat.com
Mon May 18 08:24:09 UTC 2009


On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 09:10 -0400, Seth Vidal wrote:

> > How can we allow the poster to defend themselves publicly?
> 
> They have no right to a public defense - this isn't a court of law, we are 
> not a gov't. There are no rights here.

I never said anything about rights. I'm suggesting openness for
pragmatic reasons.

Suppose Irritable Ivan is complaining about the shade of blue used in
the F11 desktop background and (jokingly, he thinks) suggests the artist
in question takes a colour-blindness test.

A moderator, Dutiful Don, privately emails Irritable Ivan and politely
explains that Ivan is out of line and has been placed on moderation for
24 hours.

Ivan, now verging on a apoplexy, replies to Don that the comment was
merely a joke and that Don should get a life. An exchange of email
ensues ending with Ivan accusing Don of having borne a grudge against
him since he rejected one of Don's patches three years ago. Dutiful Don
realises things are getting out of hand and stops the exchange.

Still raging, Irritable Ivan posts to planet.fedoraproject.org how he
has had enough of Dutiful Don, how Fedora is ruined by cliquey cabals
and how it's all a conspiracy against members of his religion.

Don quickly consults with other moderators and removes Ivan from
planet.fedoraproject.org. Sympathetic Sarah sees how the post has been
removed and emails fedora-devel-list about how Ivan has been treated
unfairly. The whole thing escalates and escalates.

...

My suggestion is that if Don's email to Ivan cc-ed a public list, then
Ivan would at least feel he has an opportunity to reply and gain support
from others. If Ivan was truly out of line, other moderators can back
Don up. If Don got it wrong, the whole thing can be defused quickly.

Also, since it's all public and archived, accusations of conspiracy
wouldn't hold much weight.

Cc-ing fedora-devel-list would be a complete nightmare, so perhaps
fedora-moderators does make some sense.

Cheers,
Mark.




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