| 2 May 2024 |
 @zimbatm:numtide.com | In reply to @danielle:fairydust.space
fwiw i think in this case it would hurt more than help (infinisil and raito would be included in this) my concern is the perception of impartiality of the mod team, which is an issue we had on the main forum as well. if this gets tainted, it can affect the quality of the outcome as well.
but let's sleep on it. maybe we're all a bit anxious of the outcome of this process and this leads us to overthink this. it's possible that modding could be fairly minimal.
| 21:22:24 |
 edef | i can see the case for a "separation of powers", but it seems hard to do practically. we have a finite amount of people with the right experience | 21:22:32 |
 joepie91 🏳️🌈 | Jonas Chevalier: to put it bluntly: no amount of measures will assauge concerns of "mod partiality" | 21:22:52 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | there are specific concerns and issues that can be addressed, but a wholesale elimination of the concern will never happen, simply because a nonzero amount of participants in the process have a strong incentive to never let it be assauged | 21:23:31 |
| edef | i think the moderation team are capable of taking community feedback into account, and others can serve as ad-hoc facilitators and mediators if need be (in a pragmatic, and not strongly formalised sense) | 21:23:52 |
 danielle | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
my concern is the perception of impartiality of the mod team, which is an issue we had on the main forum as well. if this gets tainted, it can affect the quality of the outcome as well.
but let's sleep on it. maybe we're all a bit anxious of the outcome of this process and this leads us to overthink this. it's possible that modding could be fairly minimal.
fwiw i am probably going to propose that we basically adopt https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/committee-code-of-conduct/incident-process.md | 21:23:53 |
| danielle | which requires recusal | 21:24:10 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | if we exclude mods from the process, then the next claim will be "oh but the mods are secretly conspiring with such-and-such person because they clearly use the same talking points" | 21:24:17 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | and then you will be throwing out people until there is nobody left except those arguing against moderation wholesale | 21:24:38 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | so let's address specific concerns if there are any, in a targeted manner, rather than trying to aim for some mythical "no concerns about mod partiality" | 21:24:57 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | * so let's address specific concerns if there are any, in a targeted manner, rather than trying to aim for some mythical and ill-defined "no concerns about mod partiality" | 21:25:15 |
| edef | ie if someone is particularly concerned that mods are being too partial, someone who isn't under moderation threat can convey their concerns | 21:25:15 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | I think "mods should avoid moderating replies to their own messages where possible" is a reasonable approximation of a policy that avoids conflicts of interest, for example | 21:26:29 |
| edef | if nobody is willing to advocate for them, then i think that says enough on its own | 21:26:40 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | what I have in mind are multiple instances that happened during the Anduril wars of NixOS 2024. But let me think about it. | 21:31:05 |
| danielle | it is a mostly different set of people | 21:31:27 |
 @hexa:lossy.network | except for me 👋 | 21:31:35 |
| @hexa:lossy.network | and I'm honestly too tired to fight this | 21:32:08 |
 shlevy | I think Jonas Chevalier is right to be concerned about perceived trust in this process, but IMO the way to achieve that is to be very deliberate and cautious about any moderation action and even appearance of impropriety | 21:32:44 |
| shlevy | Removing people from participation in the shaping of the entire future of the project because they’re enabling the process is unjust. | 21:33:16 |
| danielle | That's a big part of why I (mod hat off, wasn't a mod or going to be one earlier) wanted to define the rules of participation ahead of time - so it's clear what style of participation folks are agreeing to - and so it's somewhat easier to resolve things through deescalation rather than moderation. | 21:34:50 |
| danielle | I don't think anyone wants to actually ever use a ban hammer, when it can be avoided by clear communication up front. | 21:37:20 |
| shlevy | In reply to @danielle:fairydust.space
I don't think anyone wants to actually ever use a ban hammer, when it can be avoided by clear communication up front. Without commenting on whether they’re justified or not, the problem is precisely that a number of project contributors think that some people want to use the ban hammer way too often | 21:38:22 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | this problem is understood but fundamentally not really solvable as a whole | 21:38:48 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | specific misunderstandings can be corrected, but a nonzero (however small) amount of people are deliberately creating this impression, and are not shying away from misinformation to do so | 21:39:14 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | that is just the reality that we have to deal with now, basically | 21:39:28 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | lots of people are getting caught up in this purely because they have not followed things closely | 21:39:43 |
 samrose | Some people will definitely just not hear the communication no matter how clear. | 21:39:57 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | so the best we can do under those circumstances is to communicate as clearly as possible, explain where needed, correct misunderstandings where they come up | 21:40:17 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | and even then some subset of people will simply not believe it because of various perception biases, even without any malicious intentions | 21:40:55 |
