Re: List posting rules

[Jean Louis]

Dear Carlos,

* Carlos O'Donell <carlos@systemhalted.org> [2019-11-02 20:07]:
> On Sat, Nov 2, 2019 at 2:01 PM Dora Scilipoti <dora@gnu.org> wrote:
> > You, Carlos O'Donell, and your fellow censor Mark Wielaard, should NOT
> > be the moderators of this list.  You are both signers of a public
> > document that calls for the removal of Richard Stallman as the leader of
> > GNU, namely the "Joint Statement." Therefore, your natural bias is to
> > accept messages that work towards your goal while rejecting those that
> > oppose it.
> 
> I agree that I likely exhibit bias, to that end we have invited others
> to moderate.
> 
> Brandon Invergo and Mike Gerwitz are also moderators, specifically to
> help avoid this kind of bias.
> 
> I don't see why I should not be a moderator. Everyone has some kind of
> bias. Moderation is a difficult task.
> 
> The goal is to keep the list discussions on-topic, governance should
> be about governance not people, and existing list rules should be
> followed.

In my opinion, on this list there are no people who are really nuts or
crazy.

Your censorship was for so many times by the principle to deny a
message with arguments that opposes message without arguments and
without facts. Did you ever think of that?

Your censorship is not moderation.

Please censor personal attacks and profanities.

Things that are not on topic, you should censor in the manner that
ams@gnu.org is doing, so that you tell that it is not on topic, and
tell why, and you tell that in public. I have seen people being
reasonable from both sides and recognizing what is better to be done.

Do not censor facts and arguments which are on topic.

Do not censor facts and arguments which are not on topic, but are
answer to other off-topic message which you have passed through. That
shows biased or non-impartial side.

Finally, those "rules" are ridiculous, as if the rules would be so
good, then subject of this conversation would not become censorship
and mailing list rules.

"Flaming is out of place." -- I propose that you remove that rule, as
it makes the mailing list and all participants hypocrites, because we
are flaming here per definition.

Small group of Guix leadership have published flame statement and
there was discussion about that. So if flaming is out of place, this
list cannot exist. RMS resigned and there are people wishing to kick
him out completely, and they express it so on his own GNU project and
mailing list -- so that is flaming. If you are having a rule that is
impossible to enforce, and which would be counter productive to
enforce it, remove the rule.

1 definition found

>From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (18 March 2015) [foldoc]:

  flame
  flamage
  flaming
  
     <messaging> To rant, to speak or write incessantly and/or
     rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a
     patently ridiculous attitude or with hostility toward a
     particular person or group of people.  "Flame" is used as a
     verb ("Don't flame me for this, but..."), a flame is a single
     flaming message, and "flamage" /flay'm*j/ the content.

"Tit-for-tat" is not welcome. As this rule is very much subject to
interpretation of not publicly identified moderators (you identified
some of them in the email), this rule shall be removed.

Censor personal attacks. Do not censor facts and arguments.

Your interpretation of "tit-for-tat" could be wrong. Indication for me
to say so is that you censored already facts which were response to
emotional outbursts. Do not censor facts. Neither I say you should
censor emotional reactions.

"Repetition should not occur." -- this is nonsense, as people
participate in a mailing list, they are not archivers who are looking
over the archive of the mailing list to see what was repeated and what
not. Finally, multiple times it was shown that those who are flamers,
they have been allowed to repeat messages, but those who were sending
facts and arguments, they were censored. Thus this rule you better
take out. It is not functional.

"Before posting, wait a while, cool off, and think." -- this is total
nonsense and degradation of participants. You imply that you deal with
idiots.

As a so called moderator, it should not be yours to decide by what
speed somebody is thinking. Or shall we now moderate speed of thought
as well? Hahahahhaha.

That somebody is "cooled" or "not cooled" is also not subject of the
mailing list. If you remove profanities and personal attacks, you will
remove enough of that what was not cool. But don't imply you know what
other people think or feel or by which speed their thoughts or
writings shall be.

Don't imply that people do not think. That is negative rule. It should
be removed from:
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss

"Restricting yourself to just one message a day to the list is not a
bad thing. " -- that is nonsense and shall be removed. By imposing
speed of thinking and speed of writing you are hindering speed of
communication and thus any solutions and friendship balances to take
place here.

Who made out those rules? How about thinking before writing such
rules?

How about putting a signature when you write a rule? There should be
also a date. We shall know who made the rules. It makes sense.

"And for GNU Project governance discussion threads, they should stay
on topic and be strictly about governance and not about specific
people and their respective abilities." -- this I do not find well, if
one wishes to speak of governance one has to think of abilities of the
person.

Remove the words "We have higher standards! " -- as it is obviously
not so, and multiple people complained about your
standards. Re-instate it only when you actually achieve those higher
standards.

> I don't see why I should not be a moderator. Everyone has some kind of
> bias. Moderation is a difficult task.

You have said that. Then please remove "We have higher standards!"
from the rule. Be objective to yourself just as you are now doing.

I am appreciating so much that you say it in open that you have bias
and that you still can be moderator.

I do not share that opinion. A moderator shall stick to facts, and if
any message is rejected, moderator shall quote certain wordings to the
author to tell author why is such wordings maybe profanity, or not on
topic, or what else, and moderator shall be totally impartial.

If I would be not impartial to discussion, and if I am myself
participating in that discussion while being one-sided, I would
immediately give that position to somebody else.

Thus please remove "We have higher standards!" or say "We wish to
achieve higher standards!" but don't imply you have such.

> > For example, given that the declared purpose of this is list is to talk
> > about governance, Sandra Loosemore's messages were in violation of the
> > following rule, and yet they were approved:
> 
> The purpose of this list is spelled out in the list description.
> Sandra didn't post a discussion about governance, she didn't talk
> about restructuring the GNU Project. She spoke only about existing
> leadership.

I would avoid using "leadership" when you wish to say "Dr. Richard
Stallman", as that makes future vague interpretations of what you
mean.

And I do not share your opinion, I find it biased.

> Governance discussions, those talking about governance models, and how
> to restructure GNU, should stay on topic, and should *not* talk about
> people and their capabilities.

Alright, so you should maybe better express in the rules that
governance shall be talked about only as a model and not about people.

But then why did you allow including all those repetitive statements
of defamation of Dr. Richard Stallman?

What I wish to see is less hypocrisy in that activity that you call
moderation, and I call it biased censorship.

I wish to see more moderation in the manner of ams@gnu.org, he makes
it specific and public, and people do tend to agree and go back to the
true discussion.

Your way of moderation is not well developed moderation. Take critics
and recognize that when people speak about your moderation that
something must be wrong there. Try to improve.

Thanks,
Jean Louis