8 ms·

The email reprinted in that PDF makes me irrationally angry to read. I hope there's an ebuild for Betterbird soon, because after reading that I'm not sure I wan

The email reprinted in that PDF makes me irrationally angry to read. I hope there's an ebuild for Betterbird soon, because after reading that I'm not sure I want anything to do with Thunderbird anymore. Quote: > * No interaction with any of the people involved. This includes > o No interactions with Thunderbird community members, paid contributors, and Thunderbird Council members. > o No interactions in any official Thunderbird channels, as well as external or unofficial channels like social media (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram). You know what that is? That's fucking weaponized shunning. You know, like cults do. If this tells me one thing, it's that if I ever run an opensource project, I need to push back aggressively against any attempts to impose a code of conduct or found a council; such organizations seem to routinely attract terrible people.

rtpg 4y ago
What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course. But reasonable people don’t end up getting to this point! I am a bit partial to messaging when someone is banned like this, but there are definitely cases where people will just keep on arguing about something forever and ever unless they are explicitly told to stop. And this is what that looks like, and I think is present in more or less every official OSS community Maybe this should just look like “lose access to mailing list for a bit” stuff though
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. It's like they're trying to split the world into two halves, organization members and outsiders, draw a fence around the organization membership and assume control over who is allowed to cross that fence and how. To be clear: I don't think any organization should ever have that sort of power. If it was just "banned from the ML" or whatever, I'd still be put off by the way the rest is phrased, but I'd be like "alright, that's fair enough, it's their ML." It is not their Twitter, and it is not, to be frank, "their community". You can own architecture, you can't own people. What would be the optimal Code of Conduct? From looking at this and reading the FFmpeg mail thread, I'm currently leaning towards "Avoid talking about people." Just, try to avoid talking about people, period. If a technical forum comment contains no discussion of code, at least in theory, it's probably harmful to the project. As far as I can see, this also in the same stroke removes all potential for harassment.
  - deredede 4y ago
    I had the same initial reaction as you but actually think that in such situations asking people not to interact with the members of the organization is appropriate. Sometimes people do need to be put in timeout, and I read this as a formal way of requesting the problematic user stays away from the community for a bit. Private interactions with members of the community, as well as interactions in other contexts (eg working on a different project), I would assume to be fine. They don't want the problematic member to be harassing other members through unofficial channels, and the only consequence would be not being re-integrated in the community.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      I mean, harassment is already against the Twitter ToS. I'm not sure of any social media site where it isn't. At some point, you have to assume that if a member doesn't want to be contacted, they're their own person enough to communicate that. Anyway, I understand why Mozilla would want to make a declaration like this. I just think the fact that they believed that this was a declaration that they could make, and have be obeyed, reveals an uncomfortable sentiment of social ownership.
      - danielheath 4y ago
        I mean... it's not a question of "I declared it, so you will do it". It's a question of "You broke the rules once; you can stay in timeout for a week or we can ban you entirely". Would you be bothered if they'd skipped the first part and just banned them from their gruop for making trouble?
        FeepingCreature 4y ago
        I am fine with any judgment Mozilla make on infrastructure that they run and that belongs directly to the project, such as mailing lists, official chatrooms, etc. It's the addition of "unofficial" social platforms that irks me; it seems totalitarizing. Interaction of contributors outside the project ecosystem is none of their business. I prefer for society to be sliced "horizontally", rather than "vertically". I am not aware of good terms for that. I want the arrangement to be that people can spend some of their time contributing to some group effort, with no impact on other efforts; rather than that people belong to groups, totally: "I contribute to Thunderbird" vs. "I am a Thunderbird developer." The resigning of Brendan Eich violated that same rule as well. You work for Mozilla, then you go home and Mozilla drops out of your life. You are not a Mozilla employee unless you're on the clock. Only, what happened was that it turns out you can't be a Mozilla employee and a certain kind of Republican in the same person; the vertical isolation was violated. I think this is because people saw Brendan as "he is a Mozilla employee" rather than "he works at Mozilla." I am against that way of looking at people. I think it is important for the functioning of society that people can horizontally intermix rather than segregate. A core part of the horizontal arrangement of society is that when you leave the boundary of a project, you leave its mores behind you; you are allowed to codeswitch as you context switch. Any rule that penalizes you for behavior elsewhere that violates the local rules directly threatens this.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? ignore them on the client side. it's easy. there's a field called FROM. Someone else might be interested in reading what these people have to say. Who knows. > Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course Define reasonable in a global way. I think maybe you were looking for "people who do not engage in heated discussions" Right or wrong, it's unreasonable to think that everyone will always be in absolute control. It's simply words, there's nothing slightly alarming in what I've read. For example: where you have been called out for communicating disrespectfully, you counter by stating what you said is a fact. While in many cases it is truly a fact, the way in which you convey these facts has not been appropriate Maybe if you don't acknowledge facts and focus on wording, people will get upset. You can't actually know if you're talking to a Tourette Syndrome patient, but you can totally know if what they are saying makes some sense or not. Besides, are we kids in church that should be schooled? But the most alarming bits are No interactions in any official Thunderbird channels, as well as external or unofficial channels like social media (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram). No attendance at Thunderbird events during this period (virtual or physical) WHAT? Are they kidding?
  - p4bl0 4y ago
    > ignore them on the client side. it's easy. there's a field called FROM. Do you realize that your discourse politically implies a very individualistic views of how such problems should be dealt with? I don't know the situation here, but let's take it aside and consider another example: some one in an organization is constantly harassing other members (e.g., a guy being heavy with women). If the organization follows what you suggest, it means it doesn't deal with the problem has a collective, and rather let everyone deal with it on their own. You're telling the victims of the bully that they're all alone, you don't consider them. This is probably the best way to have them leave and be left with the bullies only in the end. I truly believe this cannot be the right approach to such behavioral issues. Rather, the collective approach at the organization level is the good one: it sends the right message to everyone, both the bully (now you stop), the potential bullies (we don't tolerate such behaviors here), the victims (we heard you, we're stand together, our organization culture is based on respect and you count as much as everyone else), and the potential victims (we do out best to make our organization a safe place). You have nothing to fear in this if you don't want to be on the bully side.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  There's also toxic organizations that have hostile retaliation as a response to criticism or improvements. I don't know thunderbird's internals but I've certainly been institutionally bullied and stood up for others that were. There's a lot of petty tyrants in all kinds of organizations who respond to their insecurities through administrative pedantry as a substitute for being an adult. It's best to choose to use your time elsewhere so you don't suffer through them scapegoating you in a futile attempt to ameliorate their personal problems.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  > people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks A mailing list ban. "no contact" in a general is a modification of freedom of expression and/or association, and way beyond the authority of a dev community.
- concinds 4y ago
  > Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course. > But reasonable people don’t end up getting to this point! Sigh. My face now has a permanent dent where my forehead was. Grievous bodily harm caused by facepalm.
- friendzis 4y ago
  > What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? As far as I am aware there are two models for community moderation: 1. The strict democratic process with councils, elections, laws and what not; 2. bdfl. Problems arise when attempts are made to reconcile both models. In the former case you make sure that the community itself self-governs. In the latter case you have bdfl who tells someone to just fuck off out of the community. What happens when certain people with actual power (like ability to disable accounts) try to impose their own view and speak for the community? You get a shit show. There are "laws" one has to abide with and then there are certain high-ranking members who can ban users on a bad day - laws and unwritten by-laws. This leads directly to echo chambers. So, you either strictly follow the process you yourslef instantiated, be dictatorship or become a hegemony. And don't forget we are talking about some random individual spamming mailing lists. As far as I understand this was already high-ranking, possibly valued member of the community.
chrisseaton 4y ago
What else do you do with someone who is relentlessly rude?
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  It's not that it's wrong (I wouldn't know, I haven't seen any evidence of rudeness, and the description of rudeness in the email seems really weak), it's that it assumes an unwarranted and overreaching position of authority.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > position of authority What authority? They can’t force him to not talk to anyone or not Tweet at anyone. He can do whatever he wants. They’re just saying he’s not welcome in their community if he does. It’s their club so their rules.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      Right, I wasn't asserting that they're literally getting Twitter to prevent him from making tweets. I just don't think they should even be attempting to set a rule like that. As you said, they're saying he's not welcome in "their community"; that's the part I think is toxic. A project is not a society. People don't live in Thunderbird. There's a widespread forum rule: "don't import drama." The idea behind it is when you enter a certain forum, you may know people from elsewhere but you leave that context at the door and enter a new context with different rules. I think that ability to codeswitch into and out of social contexts is an important part of common civility, and overbroad declarations like this undermine it.
      - MadcapJake 4y ago
        > There's a widespread forum rule: "don't import drama." The idea behind it is when you enter a certain forum, you may know people from elsewhere but you leave that context at the door and enter a new context with different rules. I think that ability to codeswitch into and out of social contexts is an important part of common civility, and overbroad declarations like this undermine it. That's literally what they are saying: don't import this drama to twitter.
esperent 4y ago
I was in the unfortunate position of having to ban someone from an online tech support forum of which I was the mod. This was after weeks of myself and other mods trying to resolve the issues with them. Issues like name calling, trying to stir up racial issues, making fun of new users for being noobs, trying to stir up other users against the mods, all that teenage BS (although the person was in their 20s or 30s). The result was that they followed me on to Twitter and other social medias and started calling me names like Nazi and so on. I blocked them there but it was frustrating - we were just trying to run a small help forum for an open source library and I spent way too much time in good faith trying to help this person and still got publicly name called from it. I ended up feeling totally burned out by this and stopped moderating the forum soon after. Because of following me and other mods onto Twitter we made the temp ban permanent. I have no idea if the person is still banned. If I had to deal with this kind of situation a lot I can totally see adding a rule that the banned person can't follow you onto social media and complain as a requirement for the ban remaining temporary. Contrary to this being weaponized shunning, I see it as "we need space from you for a while and if you don't give it to us and come back with a better attitude we're gonna permanently remove you from the community". That all said, it probably could be worded less severely.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that. I fully believe in people's right to cut off contact, even across platforms. It's more that in this case this power seems to have been centralized by the project, whereas I believe it should rest only with the individual - cutting off contact for another member, using community participation as a threat to enforce it, is what raises my hackles.
  - esperent 4y ago
    > whereas I believe it should rest only with the individual You are free to believe that. Just as an organization is free to believe differently, and to set their rules accordingly.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
throwoutway 4y ago
Maybe I missed something. it looks like this "ban" was only for three months (further down the PDF email thread).
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
This was the pushback against CoC's when they first started cropping up, but everyone pushing back was told they just want to abuse people. There were a lot of well-meaning people on the other side of that discussion, but lets be clear that this is what they WANTED.

rtpg 4y ago

What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course. But reasonable people don’t end up getting to this point! I am a bit partial to messaging when someone is banned like this, but there are definitely cases where people will just keep on arguing about something forever and ever unless they are explicitly told to stop. And this is what that looks like, and I think is present in more or less every official OSS community Maybe this should just look like “lose access to mailing list for a bit” stuff though

FeepingCreature 4y ago
It's more the idea of an organization claiming they have the authority to forbid you from tweeting at members. It's like they're trying to split the world into two halves, organization members and outsiders, draw a fence around the organization membership and assume control over who is allowed to cross that fence and how. To be clear: I don't think any organization should ever have that sort of power. If it was just "banned from the ML" or whatever, I'd still be put off by the way the rest is phrased, but I'd be like "alright, that's fair enough, it's their ML." It is not their Twitter, and it is not, to be frank, "their community". You can own architecture, you can't own people. What would be the optimal Code of Conduct? From looking at this and reading the FFmpeg mail thread, I'm currently leaning towards "Avoid talking about people." Just, try to avoid talking about people, period. If a technical forum comment contains no discussion of code, at least in theory, it's probably harmful to the project. As far as I can see, this also in the same stroke removes all potential for harassment.
- deredede 4y ago
  I had the same initial reaction as you but actually think that in such situations asking people not to interact with the members of the organization is appropriate. Sometimes people do need to be put in timeout, and I read this as a formal way of requesting the problematic user stays away from the community for a bit. Private interactions with members of the community, as well as interactions in other contexts (eg working on a different project), I would assume to be fine. They don't want the problematic member to be harassing other members through unofficial channels, and the only consequence would be not being re-integrated in the community.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    I mean, harassment is already against the Twitter ToS. I'm not sure of any social media site where it isn't. At some point, you have to assume that if a member doesn't want to be contacted, they're their own person enough to communicate that. Anyway, I understand why Mozilla would want to make a declaration like this. I just think the fact that they believed that this was a declaration that they could make, and have be obeyed, reveals an uncomfortable sentiment of social ownership.
    - danielheath 4y ago
      I mean... it's not a question of "I declared it, so you will do it". It's a question of "You broke the rules once; you can stay in timeout for a week or we can ban you entirely". Would you be bothered if they'd skipped the first part and just banned them from their gruop for making trouble?
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        I am fine with any judgment Mozilla make on infrastructure that they run and that belongs directly to the project, such as mailing lists, official chatrooms, etc. It's the addition of "unofficial" social platforms that irks me; it seems totalitarizing. Interaction of contributors outside the project ecosystem is none of their business. I prefer for society to be sliced "horizontally", rather than "vertically". I am not aware of good terms for that. I want the arrangement to be that people can spend some of their time contributing to some group effort, with no impact on other efforts; rather than that people belong to groups, totally: "I contribute to Thunderbird" vs. "I am a Thunderbird developer." The resigning of Brendan Eich violated that same rule as well. You work for Mozilla, then you go home and Mozilla drops out of your life. You are not a Mozilla employee unless you're on the clock. Only, what happened was that it turns out you can't be a Mozilla employee and a certain kind of Republican in the same person; the vertical isolation was violated. I think this is because people saw Brendan as "he is a Mozilla employee" rather than "he works at Mozilla." I am against that way of looking at people. I think it is important for the functioning of society that people can horizontally intermix rather than segregate. A core part of the horizontal arrangement of society is that when you leave the boundary of a project, you leave its mores behind you; you are allowed to codeswitch as you context switch. Any rule that penalizes you for behavior elsewhere that violates the local rules directly threatens this.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? ignore them on the client side. it's easy. there's a field called FROM. Someone else might be interested in reading what these people have to say. Who knows. > Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course Define reasonable in a global way. I think maybe you were looking for "people who do not engage in heated discussions" Right or wrong, it's unreasonable to think that everyone will always be in absolute control. It's simply words, there's nothing slightly alarming in what I've read. For example: where you have been called out for communicating disrespectfully, you counter by stating what you said is a fact. While in many cases it is truly a fact, the way in which you convey these facts has not been appropriate Maybe if you don't acknowledge facts and focus on wording, people will get upset. You can't actually know if you're talking to a Tourette Syndrome patient, but you can totally know if what they are saying makes some sense or not. Besides, are we kids in church that should be schooled? But the most alarming bits are No interactions in any official Thunderbird channels, as well as external or unofficial channels like social media (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram). No attendance at Thunderbird events during this period (virtual or physical) WHAT? Are they kidding?
- p4bl0 4y ago
  > ignore them on the client side. it's easy. there's a field called FROM. Do you realize that your discourse politically implies a very individualistic views of how such problems should be dealt with? I don't know the situation here, but let's take it aside and consider another example: some one in an organization is constantly harassing other members (e.g., a guy being heavy with women). If the organization follows what you suggest, it means it doesn't deal with the problem has a collective, and rather let everyone deal with it on their own. You're telling the victims of the bully that they're all alone, you don't consider them. This is probably the best way to have them leave and be left with the bullies only in the end. I truly believe this cannot be the right approach to such behavioral issues. Rather, the collective approach at the organization level is the good one: it sends the right message to everyone, both the bully (now you stop), the potential bullies (we don't tolerate such behaviors here), the victims (we heard you, we're stand together, our organization culture is based on respect and you count as much as everyone else), and the potential victims (we do out best to make our organization a safe place). You have nothing to fear in this if you don't want to be on the bully side.
kristopolous 4y ago
There's also toxic organizations that have hostile retaliation as a response to criticism or improvements. I don't know thunderbird's internals but I've certainly been institutionally bullied and stood up for others that were. There's a lot of petty tyrants in all kinds of organizations who respond to their insecurities through administrative pedantry as a substitute for being an adult. It's best to choose to use your time elsewhere so you don't suffer through them scapegoating you in a futile attempt to ameliorate their personal problems.
Chris2048 4y ago
> people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks A mailing list ban. "no contact" in a general is a modification of freedom of expression and/or association, and way beyond the authority of a dev community.
concinds 4y ago
> Reasonable people don’t need to have such harsh actions applied of course. > But reasonable people don’t end up getting to this point! Sigh. My face now has a permanent dent where my forehead was. Grievous bodily harm caused by facepalm.
friendzis 4y ago
> What would you propose as an alternative to people who just… constantly fill mailing lists with attacks on people or the like? As far as I am aware there are two models for community moderation: 1. The strict democratic process with councils, elections, laws and what not; 2. bdfl. Problems arise when attempts are made to reconcile both models. In the former case you make sure that the community itself self-governs. In the latter case you have bdfl who tells someone to just fuck off out of the community. What happens when certain people with actual power (like ability to disable accounts) try to impose their own view and speak for the community? You get a shit show. There are "laws" one has to abide with and then there are certain high-ranking members who can ban users on a bad day - laws and unwritten by-laws. This leads directly to echo chambers. So, you either strictly follow the process you yourslef instantiated, be dictatorship or become a hegemony. And don't forget we are talking about some random individual spamming mailing lists. As far as I understand this was already high-ranking, possibly valued member of the community.

chrisseaton 4y ago

What else do you do with someone who is relentlessly rude?

FeepingCreature 4y ago
It's not that it's wrong (I wouldn't know, I haven't seen any evidence of rudeness, and the description of rudeness in the email seems really weak), it's that it assumes an unwarranted and overreaching position of authority.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > position of authority What authority? They can’t force him to not talk to anyone or not Tweet at anyone. He can do whatever he wants. They’re just saying he’s not welcome in their community if he does. It’s their club so their rules.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Right, I wasn't asserting that they're literally getting Twitter to prevent him from making tweets. I just don't think they should even be attempting to set a rule like that. As you said, they're saying he's not welcome in "their community"; that's the part I think is toxic. A project is not a society. People don't live in Thunderbird. There's a widespread forum rule: "don't import drama." The idea behind it is when you enter a certain forum, you may know people from elsewhere but you leave that context at the door and enter a new context with different rules. I think that ability to codeswitch into and out of social contexts is an important part of common civility, and overbroad declarations like this undermine it.
    - MadcapJake 4y ago
      > There's a widespread forum rule: "don't import drama." The idea behind it is when you enter a certain forum, you may know people from elsewhere but you leave that context at the door and enter a new context with different rules. I think that ability to codeswitch into and out of social contexts is an important part of common civility, and overbroad declarations like this undermine it. That's literally what they are saying: don't import this drama to twitter.

esperent 4y ago

I was in the unfortunate position of having to ban someone from an online tech support forum of which I was the mod. This was after weeks of myself and other mods trying to resolve the issues with them. Issues like name calling, trying to stir up racial issues, making fun of new users for being noobs, trying to stir up other users against the mods, all that teenage BS (although the person was in their 20s or 30s). The result was that they followed me on to Twitter and other social medias and started calling me names like Nazi and so on. I blocked them there but it was frustrating - we were just trying to run a small help forum for an open source library and I spent way too much time in good faith trying to help this person and still got publicly name called from it. I ended up feeling totally burned out by this and stopped moderating the forum soon after. Because of following me and other mods onto Twitter we made the temp ban permanent. I have no idea if the person is still banned. If I had to deal with this kind of situation a lot I can totally see adding a rule that the banned person can't follow you onto social media and complain as a requirement for the ban remaining temporary. Contrary to this being weaponized shunning, I see it as "we need space from you for a while and if you don't give it to us and come back with a better attitude we're gonna permanently remove you from the community". That all said, it probably could be worded less severely.

FeepingCreature 4y ago
I'm sorry to hear that. I fully believe in people's right to cut off contact, even across platforms. It's more that in this case this power seems to have been centralized by the project, whereas I believe it should rest only with the individual - cutting off contact for another member, using community participation as a threat to enforce it, is what raises my hackles.
- esperent 4y ago
  > whereas I believe it should rest only with the individual You are free to believe that. Just as an organization is free to believe differently, and to set their rules accordingly.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago

throwoutway 4y ago

Maybe I missed something. it looks like this "ban" was only for three months (further down the PDF email thread).

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

This was the pushback against CoC's when they first started cropping up, but everyone pushing back was told they just want to abuse people. There were a lot of well-meaning people on the other side of that discussion, but lets be clear that this is what they WANTED.