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([2620:10d:c091:480::1:a65d]) by smtp.googlemail.com with ESMTPSA id 97sm5326564qte.20.2021.04.14.07.08.57 (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128); Wed, 14 Apr 2021 07:08:57 -0700 (PDT) Sender: Nathan Sidwell Subject: Re: removing toxic emailers To: esr@thyrsus.com Cc: "gcc@gcc.gnu.org" References: <20210414131843.GA4138043@thyrsus.com> From: Nathan Sidwell Message-ID: <093dbfde-a7b5-a55c-8a03-3e82460bce67@acm.org> Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 10:08:56 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.8.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20210414131843.GA4138043@thyrsus.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3031.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, DKIM_SIGNED, DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_EF, FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN, FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, NICE_REPLY_A, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE, SPF_HELO_NONE, SPF_PASS, TXREP autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on server2.sourceware.org X-BeenThere: gcc@gcc.gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: Gcc mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2021 14:09:00 -0000 On 4/14/21 9:18 AM, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > Nathan Sidwell : >> Do we have a policy about removing list subscribers that send abusive or >> other toxic emails? do we have a code of conduct? Searching the wiki or >> website finds nothing. The mission statement mentions nothing. > > I'm not a GCC insider, but I know a few things about the social > dynamics of voluntarist subcultures. You might recall I wrote a book > about that once. > > The choice to have a policy for ejecting jerks has serious costs. > One of those costs is the kind of rancorous dispute that has been > burning like a brushfire on this list the last few weeks. Another, > particularly serious for hackers - is that such a policy is hostile to > autists and others who have poor interaction skills but can ship good > code. This is a significant percentage of your current and future > potential contributors, enough that excluding them is a real problem. > > Most seriously: the rules, whatever they are, will be gamed by people > whose objectives are not "ship useful software". You will be fortunate > if the gamers' objectives are as relatively innocuous as "gain points > in monkey status competition by beating up funny-colored monkeys"; > there are much worse cases that have been known to crash even projects > with nearly as much history and social inertia as this one. > > Compared to these costs, the overhead of tolerating a few jerks and > assholes is pretty much trivial. That's hard to see right now because > the jerks are visible and the costs of formal policing are > hypothetical, but I strongly advise you against going down the Code of > Conduct route regardless of how fashionable that looks right now. I > have forty years of observer-participant anthropology in intentional > online communities, beginning with the disintegration of the USENET > cabal back in the 1980s, telling me that will not end well. > > You're better off with an informal system of moderator fiat and > *without* rules that beg to become a subject of dispute and > manipulation. A strong norm about off-list behavior and politics being > out of bounds here is also helpful. > > You face a choice between being a community that is about shipping code > and one that is embroiled in perpetual controversy over who gets to > play here and on what terms. Choose wisely. > I'd just like to eject the jerks, because they make the place unwelcoming. I wouldn't associate with them in physical space, I don't want to associate with them here. And yes, I fully realize there are other ways I can choose to not associate with them here. nathan -- Nathan Sidwell