| 24 Nov 2021 |
 joepie91 🏳️🌈 | yeah | 10:50:54 |
 @zimbatm:numtide.com | typically what happens is that there is a lot of armchair commenting happening, and that one alone person gets discouraged | 10:51:22 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | right, because we don't really have constructive collaboration structures in place | 10:51:41 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | this is one of the biggest problems of the Nix community, in my view | 10:52:28 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | it's a part of why I think we should expect people to learn about communication and community management, despite that not being the dominant culture | 10:52:31 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | it leads to a lot of burn outs | 10:52:46 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | it's simply necessary to keep the project healthy | 10:52:47 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | but that feels almost separate to moderation | 10:53:15 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | well, that depends | 10:53:24 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | it is separate from punitive moderation, for sure, but that is not really the priority that we are going for here | 10:53:38 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | that's the thing I was wondering about | 10:53:52 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | what if mediation and moderation were separate teams | 10:54:04 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | but constructive moderation, in terms of de-escalation and mediation and constructive feedback and such, overlaps very strongly with project management concerns | 10:54:10 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | I'm not sure how people take the feedback from somebody that can ban them | 10:54:35 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | of course they might decide not to listen, which is why banning is requested as a tool | 10:55:19 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | that is a complicated dynamic, for sure. but the alternative also has its issues; if the two don't function as one, things will fail both ways... moderators will interfere with a mediator's process in some cases, and fail to ban people who refuse the mediation process in other cases | 10:55:35 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | the flipside is that people will not be open because of the ban threat | 10:55:44 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | so you'd need a degree of coordination between the two that makes them de facto one thing | 10:55:54 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | right, I would expect the moderation team to take inputs from the mediation team | 10:56:28 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | as in; "we tried everything we could" | 10:56:49 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | right, but then you ultimately haven't changed anything about the dynamic of "listen to the mediator or risk a ban", you've just added a layer of potential communication signal loss | 10:57:03 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | I understand the problem you're highlighting, but I don't think that just splitting up the two would solve it | 10:57:50 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | I'm not sure it is solvable, in a literal sense | 10:58:20 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | because that dynamic affects different people differently; it can make some people hesitant to engage, but it can be the trigger that's needed for other people to actually stop and listen (and quite often is, IME) | 10:58:56 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | you can probably massage the dynamic in how it's presented to people on a case-by-case basis | 10:59:55 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | mediation should probably stay optional | 10:59:56 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | "thinking of blocking somebody? contact us" :) | 11:00:26 |
| joepie91 🏳️🌈 | what does 'optional' mean here, though? because if there is a conflict that people can't sort out amongst themselves, that conflict needs to be addressed somehow. is mediation 'optional' in the sense that you get banned if you don't pick it? because that would not truly be optional. or would it be 'optional' in the sense that you can choose to not resolve the conflict? then we're back to square one, with effectively no moderation mechanisms for the worst case | 11:01:25 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | it depends on your views of the role of moderation | 11:03:17 |
| @zimbatm:numtide.com | should the moderators read every message, and enforce their own opinion? | 11:03:38 |
