| 4 Nov 2021 |
 jonringer | In reply to @joepie91:pixie.town
I'm not really a fan of timed bans, personally, for a few different reasons:
- they perceptually devalue bans from a "last resort" to an "obvious tool", because "it's temporary anyway"
- problematic behaviour does not magically become unproblematic after 48 hours; if the same person still has the same views and same (lack of) adherence to social norms, they will reoffend afterwards, and so the practical result of this is that you're just giving problematic people more 'free airtime'
- it also fails in the other direction; in the rare event that a ban is the event that makes someone go "... fuck. I really was in the wrong" (it does happen!), if the times are set in policy, one cannot be unbanned earlier without at the very least invoking the ire of the community who feel betrayed, and this in turn might make the banned person frustrated and turn their opportunity for reflection into an opportunity for their anger to build further
I only gave a small blip of the idea I had. the timed banned was just to allow time for the other moderation member to agree in a more permanent solution. One of which, could be a permanent ban if they feel like that is the correct course of action. And there would be more transparency around permanent actions | 16:19:26 |
 @joepie91:pixie.town | Jonas Chevalier: I feel like most of the complexity of RFC98 is honestly not in the rules, but rather in the mechanisms - it is essentially an attempt to establish a non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical moderation approach in the context of a world which does the exact opposite | 16:20:22 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | this is complexity that a project with a BDFL would not need to deal with at all | 16:20:38 |
| jonringer | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
it reflects really well how nice Andreas Kling is as a person (if you watched any of his videos) I think that's fine if there's some way to ensure an alignment of values. But I don't think that's the case for nixpkgs. It's been demonstrated that we are polarized on the issue of moderation | 16:20:47 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | as it can operate on 'standard' social assumptions about hierarchies | 16:20:49 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @jonringer:matrix.org
I only gave a small blip of the idea I had. the timed banned was just to allow time for the other moderation member to agree in a more permanent solution. One of which, could be a permanent ban if they feel like that is the correct course of action. And there would be more transparency around permanent actions I think this is (better) achievable without timed bans; my own moderation policy is generally that every ban is a permanent one until there is reason to believe that either the ban was in error (in which case the unban obviously comes with apologies and justification), or that the banned user will not reoffend or at least do their best not to reoffend | 16:22:51 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | this also puts less pressure on the moderator team as a whole to cast a final decision; if more time is needed, that is possible | 16:23:23 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | (which is important especially if the 'permanent solution' is meant to be mediation/deescalation, which is really difficult to do under time constraints) | 16:24:19 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | of course, implicit in this is that the moderation team does their best to handle this in a timely manner | 16:25:03 |
| jonringer | The timed ban was more or less meant to allow a "grace period" in which not everything is an emergency for the moderation team | 16:27:03 |
| jonringer | people can be aware for periods at a time. And I don't think it's a sustainable model for permanent solutions to always be the one avenue | 16:27:37 |
| jonringer | * people can be away for periods at a time. And I don't think it's a sustainable model for permanent solutions to always be the one avenue | 16:27:42 |
| jonringer | I would also like to get away from instances like blaggacao's ban here it's like, "we made a long term ban, but don't provide any details." | 16:28:45 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | I mean, I call it 'permanent', but it's not really 'permanent', more 'untimed' | 16:29:21 |
| jonringer | A long term ban should have enough "supporting evidence" that the community will also agree with actions taken by the moderation team. | 16:29:23 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | I have unbanned people in the past after everything from 5 minutes to 5 years | 16:29:38 |
| jonringer | untimed and permanent are the same thing with less letters | 16:29:45 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | not quite; untimed bans have a terminal condition | 16:30:03 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | permanent bans do not | 16:30:08 |
 @zimbatm:numtide.com | In reply to @joepie91:pixie.town
Jonas Chevalier: I feel like most of the complexity of RFC98 is honestly not in the rules, but rather in the mechanisms - it is essentially an attempt to establish a non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical moderation approach in the context of a world which does the exact opposite Half of the issue is the undertone of the document, and the defensive attitude of the document. I think it's important to start on a positive footing like the SerenityOS rules. Of course we would need to tackle on an enforcement mechanism on top of it. | 16:30:15 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | (I probably shouldn't have said 'permanent', that was my mistake :p) | 16:30:24 |
| jonringer | Jonas Chevalier: Again, I think SerenityOS has the benefit of someone being the deciding authority on what values are important. And his presence allows for them to be adhered. We don't really have that in nix | 16:31:18 |
| jonringer | eelco is very "lassez faire" when it comes to community interaction, and we are largely just a collection of nerds making nixpkgs work | 16:31:44 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | eelco mostly cares about technology | 16:32:05 |
| @joepie91:pixie.town | In reply to @jonringer:matrix.org
A long term ban should have enough "supporting evidence" that the community will also agree with actions taken by the moderation team. I would phrase it differently: a long-term ban should be justifiable to the community - sometimes that means showing receipts for behaviour that everybody agrees is bad, sometimes that means explaining in detail why a seemingly-okay behaviour is actually problematic and they refused to work on it.
but this is true whether or not you enshrine it in policy, really; if you cannot justify your moderation decisions, then you will have an uprising on your hands. I do think there's some value in formalizing this to avoid the "rules don't say we need to justify bans" argument in the worst case, but I don't think it's a crucial pillar of formal moderation policy
| 16:32:17 |
| jonringer | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
eelco mostly cares about technology And I would say the same for the vast majority of the community | 16:32:20 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | maybe we should ask him what he wants :p | 16:32:58 |
| jonringer | In reply to @joepie91:pixie.town
I would phrase it differently: a long-term ban should be justifiable to the community - sometimes that means showing receipts for behaviour that everybody agrees is bad, sometimes that means explaining in detail why a seemingly-okay behaviour is actually problematic and they refused to work on it.
but this is true whether or not you enshrine it in policy, really; if you cannot justify your moderation decisions, then you will have an uprising on your hands. I do think there's some value in formalizing this to avoid the "rules don't say we need to justify bans" argument in the worst case, but I don't think it's a crucial pillar of formal moderation policy
sure, 100 small infractions can be as disruptive as a few large infractions. | 16:33:01 |
| jonringer | In reply to @zimbatm:numtide.com
maybe we should ask him what he wants :p I think it will be along the lines, "for nix to be successful" | 16:33:18 |
 abathur | It's a bit oblique to this conversation, but I've wondered as this spools out if the RFC process doesn't help ensure part of this trouble in contentious areas by expecting a large up-front investment in staking out (and thus having to defend) a vision for something | 16:34:07 |
