Nix Project / Community Health?

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21

This was not my intention! I sincerely apologize if this is how you understood what I said. I don’t know you and all I saw was your Name being replied to and referenced in a reply to the hidden post. I assumed you being a moderator.

Are you slandering me if my perception of a persecution is a “complex” in your perception?

The problem are not moderation features provided by a forum. The problem - if there is any - is how they are used and to what end.

My claim is not that they are abused, my claim is that the question whether they are is not being properly evaluated.

Now we are talking about hidden posts. The actual conflict is about people being banned from the project entirely. My problem is not the instrument of “bans” as such but it’s application and whether it’s used or abused. Another incarnation of the conflict is the fight between the board and the moderation team. Looking at all this, there seems to be more than just a technicality and some weird personal sensibilities at stake here.

I don’t think I’m dramatizing stuff here. This looks dramatic by its own merit, and I don’t see anything like consensus or common ground between the parties at odds with each other, instead it looks like one side is winning. It may be the good guys, I can’t tell.

Speaking for myself: I saw this play out in other contexts, or something that looks like an established pattern matching what I see here. As I see it, silencing has the burden of proof and that seems to be in conflict with the act of silencing itself.

That is the very question I raised, has this been “litigated” before? In the simplistic example of a hidden message, the flagging is not a litigation. I don’t know the algorithm doing the flagging, but it’s by it’s nature a statistical thing and then the discrete decision of moderators to keep a message hidden.

If old conflict parties are banned, only newcomers can litigate, right? That’s the nature of the process we talk about here, isn’t it?

I really don’t want to stir up trouble or get into a fight, but your arguments have some shortcomings here. Other than that I am really sorry if I misjudged your role here. I can’t take it back, but please accept my apology.

22

I wholeheartedly agree with (almost) everything you said in this post.

I also love this project and the forum. But that is the reason why I started this thread, because I value this project so much.

That is where I disagree with you. These are not (always) the only choices. There are conflicts where this is so, but these are conflicts in zero sum games. Not every conflict ends up with one party dead (metaphorically).

There is a difference between endless bickering, constructive debates and methods to win against an opponent.

Did we reach the point where we conclude that it’s not worth fighting for what you believe is right because what is right has not enough value? This is certainly the broader trend of this era, but should we give in to that, even in a context such as this project, where it doesn’t actually hurt to produce a bit of noise?

If nothing else, developing the skill to resolve conflicts, searching and sometimes finding compromises is one of the most valuable skills to have.

23

Going to the forums, re-litigating old issues, expecting people to engage with you and provide you context that you are missing in the face of the talking points that you’ve already made - seems quite arrogant, don’t you think? What makes you think that the points you’re making are unique and new, and that no one of the countless many who have engaged with the topic over the many years previously have brought any of that up? That seems plainly disrespectful towards all of the participants - no matter their allegiance.

To illustrate with an example - ban of Jon Ringer is not controversial. His temporary suspension sure was - there were many who argued that he does not deserve a suspension at all, and there were many who argued for full ban. Moderation team has taken all of that into consideration (not to mention that it also had those discussions), so it decided on a temporary suspension as a compromise. But then, when this suspension has timed out, Jon Ringer came out guns blazing, trying to stir all of the shit, putting out one accusation after another and writing everyone who has had disagreements with his attitude into a giant conspiracy. This has, understandably, soured the mood of most of the people who have supported him before, because they didn’t support him for him to double down on everything and cause an even bigger scene - and so he got permanently banned without much of a resistance, this time.

Also, why Russia backsliding into military fascism, OSS companies becoming corporate husks, and Google becoming an evil gigacorp are all such a surprise to you is genuinely beyond me. There have been many people even back in 2000s who have warned of this happening, and this has been becoming ever more obvious throughout the 2010s. Furthermore, both right and left have had countless plausible explanations for why all of that has happened. And like, sure, there are countless people who have been living under a rock and ignoring all of the warning signs - yet they got a clue, eventually. Why you still treat it as some kind of grand mystery that is only yet to be unveiled, while also having so many opinions on what’s wrong with Nix community - is beyond me. Perhaps reflect on why so many things in the world have gone to shit first, and then form an opinion on how to prevent that?

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24

Meh, eye for an eye. Apology accepted, and sorry.

I’ll try to avoid the rest of the discussion. I’m just tired of the exact same argument over and over again. It boils down to a very narrow interpretation of free speech. Your opinion is not universal; Other people even see moderation as being too light-handed, resulting in larger conflict down the line. Both opinions have merit, we can argue about this forever. Not that I disagree with your interpretation - the concept of free speech is valuable, there’s a reason I don’t flag things.

Philosophy around free speech is messy and implementing it in practice is complicated. We’re not a philosophy forum, and we’re not equipped to handle implementation any better than upstream discourse. I really don’t see the point in sifting through every historic moderation decision with a fine comb, especially as moderators change and context is lost.

I’d suggest just sitting back and experiencing stuff for yourself before you try to weigh in. Most of the time we do actually just help people with their NixOS configurations, and talk a bit about project development.

Except they are not banned; with the exception of jringer and srid (which I shall not relitigate for the second time in this thread), hidden posts are the usual moderation action that is relitigated. People whose posts have been hidden can talk to moderators, or create public posts about it (as happens regularly enough).

If anything posts like yours are excellent evidence that free speech isn’t actually notably suppressed; people are actively engaging with you and attempting to give you what you want, mostly civilly (again, sorry, but I did consider that quite a harsh accusation). Your posts haven’t been hidden, even though you seem to hold an “opposing” viewpoint. The only hidden post here is one filled with insults (though I appreciate you can’t see it).

As long as you’re generally reasonable and, importantly, civil, things are mostly fine. Which, I’d like to add, you are - you’re just being mildly annoying because you’re forcing people to go through an argument they consider over and dealt with. A lot of the people here have been working together for over a decade, and some consider jringer a friend or close colleague. The decisions weren’t taken lightly.

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25

Are you aware how you are arguing? You start by rating me as a disrespectful outsider and delegitimizing everything I say from the get go. I am participating in this forum as a community member, just like you. No matter how old my account or what my role in this project is, even if none, this does not change a thing.

This is a public forum. I don’t force anything on anybody. The title should clearly label this thread as what it is and if you are not interested in such a thread, just don’t read it. My expectations are my own. I don’t demand anybody do anything, I publish my opinions and how people react to that is their own business. I cannot see anything disrespectful or arrogant about that.

You on the other hand call me arrogant, disrespectful, unreflected and say that I’m living under a stone. All of that is rather personal and I perceive that as an unnecessary escalation.

As for the historical part of your comment: I lived through all the things you described myself. I would not describe them the same way. Russia did not backslide to military fascism, but I clearly remember how many military experts disagreed vehemently with the US warning of an immanent attack on Ukraine. Often the same experts and former generals that today comment on the progress of that war. I used open source software long before there were OSS companies creating it and I remember how it felt when people discovered that companies can make profit without proprietary code. This was a surprise, just like it was a surprise when the same companies turned their coats. There are always people who warn about stuff. Most of them are viewed as conspiracy theorists, most are. That does not prevent some of them predicting the future, but almost all of the success is statistical noise, not a confirmation of tin foil as basis for prophecy.

I did not predict the end of the cold war, the rise of China, the EU as peace maker, the USA as banana republic, the war in Ukraine and so many other events. But that’s not due to a lack of reflection. I always tried to understand what’s going on and why and then I fail. Just like almost everybody else. The very few oracles who can predict the madness we experience are not participating in discussions like this one. If your reflections make all these events a predictable natural flow of events, then what are you doing here? Why are you not in some talk show and predict the outcome of future elections?

If I follow your argument, the world did not go to shit, it’s just naturally evolving and that has nothing to do with us.

My view is, that if there is anything we can do about it, it requires at the very least that we learn to isolate rational arguments from whatever emotional ballast we all seem to carry around with us and to preserve what little objectivity is left to us.

Back on topic (parts of it): You admit that there was a controversy about whether a temporary ban was justified at all. There is one core question that needs answering. Who is to decide what is and isn’t justified? The concept of a burden of proof is not a new thing. This concept has been celebrated as a fundamental accomplishment of civilization. It’s almost universally used all over the world. Even show trials make up evidence to preserve appearances. Here it is not used. Why? Here it is enough that there is a controversy about a ban justifying the ban (somebody believes it’s justified, and that somebody has a button to press).

People were upset at Jon “came out/back guns blazing”. If he genuinely believed the temporary ban to be unjustified and unfair, how is this a surprise? He could have hung low and meekly thank people for being invited back in. It takes a very specific kind of personality to do that. It’s not one depicted in movies as heroes. It’s not what you want to see in the mirror every morning.

If there is a consensus that this attitude is what is required to be part of the Nixos community, that’s not good advertising.

26

Thanks for accepting the apology and dito.

You are mistaking me for a free speech warrior. I actually disagree with the concept of free speech (the American version of it).

My point is about justice. If one party of a conflict has all the power and the other has none, this is when I get triggered. That is not to say that the side in power is always wrong. They might be the good guys.

I actually did not mean to slander you, I consciously put what I said into an if/then block. I know that this is easy to overlook, especially if you are part of the then block. Then I sincerely apologized, because I agree that if/then is not enough of a firewall to protect your integrity from unwarranted critique.

You sound like my posts are a prime example that questionable contributions are not being censored (“as they should/could be?”). I don’t see that anything I said should be subject to censoring for any legitimate reason.

What made me post here was the conflict between the steering comity and the moderation team to what can be seen as rage quitting, the ban of popular contributors and the usual noise accompanying such events.

My perception of the community in this forum is actually very positive, based on my personal experience.

It’s the discrepancy between my personal experience and the events (and then also the accounts I read about it), that motivate me to talk about it.

Sorry, I really don’t want to be annoying, but that seems to be who I am. But I am not forcing anybody. I’m not sitting in the cubicle next to you, we’re not queuing in front of the coffee machine. I tagged you in one of the posts because I believe that’s fair when making such statements and here the tag was correct, my mistake was sloppy language.

But they were not made sufficiently transparent. You cannot let one side write “fuck off” and then ban the other for no apparent reason. The wording is important: no apparent reason. I read Jon’s account of the conflict and tried to find out what really happened in the forum. I feel like I invested more time than most who are not involved in the conflict, just to make up my mind what to think about these events. And yet, I could not find a good reason for the ban.

If the moderation team (or whomever the “other” side is), is a trusted body, then sure, that’s good enough. But then there is the SC having a conflict with apparently the same body, and it’s about trust and legitimacy.

So, the product is great (Nix/Nixos), the community is great (personal forum experience), I love it, I am about to commit my work and hobby to Nix-world. For me, this conflict seems to be real and rather threatening to the project. Redhat and Ubuntu provide some 60-80% of Linux infrastructure. I try hard to avoid them, not because the software is bad, but because I really don’t want to depend on whatever their agenda might become next week. They are not community projects. Funny enough, Jon is seen as corporate influence. I have a hard time to understand an agenda that is not based on justice. Justice makes things (more) predictable. I don’t perceive this wider conflict as driven by this principle - maybe because I don’t understand it, maybe because it isn’t. That’s what this post is really about - from my side.

I don’t care for freedom of speech in an OSS project. I can easily annoy people queuing in front of coffee machines. I care for fairness and long term sustainability and predictability.

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27

Maybe this is the outcome of good moderation?

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What we (currently) have (theoretically) in the forum is crowd moderation-by-flags, and while I don’t love it having the community self-moderate via flagging mostly seems to work.

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The moderation team at odds with SC, accusations of abuse of power vs. lack of legitimacy and/or transparency, bans, flame wars, all that is the outcome of good moderation?

When I enjoy a nice atmosphere, enthusiasts, awesome software, this is the result of individuals having fun and enjoying to work on something they are passionate about, it’s NOT the result of good moderation. Good moderation can at best not destroy enthusiasm and passion.

This feels like a president claiming responsibility for some statistics and blaming the previous office for others, while the numbers are the results of working hours spent by millions every day and hour. While a majority of the millions elected that president and might not mind them claim responsibility for THEIR achievements, it doesn’t change the fact the it’s the community doing the actual work, not the leadership. And anyway, moderation is an administrative function, not a creative or even a leadership function that typically gets credit for the whole org.

I thought a lot about a mechanism to organize social interaction in a less abrasive way. It’s a mechanism that adds meta data to items (ratings, qualifications, etc.). Everybody has (earns over time) credentials of different types (project contributions, social credibility, …) and these credentials add weight to their meta data. Such social ratings do not lead to items or people being hidden or banned but can be used as filters, such that people who do not want to see insults or certain elements of communication can simply apply filters. The project could define default filters (resulting in a default view that people sharing values with the project would recognize as the current result of moderation). That would accomplish the same result as current moderation but let people who see things differently coexist.

This is complex, very complex. But it’s a technical problem. If it works, it would solve the problem. There would be no need for moderation at all. It’s the responsibility of the subscribers of information to determine what they want to see or censor and their choices would then not bleed into other people’s freedoms. There would be an incentive to behave in order to increase your credibility, just like in the real world, where you don’t curse in polite company and as much as you want among friends. This is the kind of solution I would expect to see in a community working with complex and sophisticated tech. Something innovative, not this kind of politics that seems to be prevalent in OSS projects under stress.

Example for how that could work:

The current or previous moderation team could provide a filter and people could subscribe to it. That filter bans all communication from people not complying to their rules. This would implement everything the moderation team could ask for, give them ultimate power and independence for their work. No SC interference, no discussions, no problem. And it would work perfectly for everybody who agrees with the moderation team, the subscribers of their filter.

No need for elections for moderators either. No need for claims to trust or authority. Both would be objectively observable by looking at the filter subscriptions and there would be no ambiguity what these numbers mean.

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I don’t know how this actually works. What I understood so far is that a post gets temporarily hidden if it gets a certain number of flags. That in itself would be prone to partisan flagging. Then there seems to be the forum moderators who can unhide a post. How often does that happen? If it happens, what is done about the partisan hack if that was the cause of an invalid hide? What if the moderator and partisan agree?

That could account for “mostly” and the mechanism could be good enough instead of hunting perfection (implementing a complex mechanism that never sees the light of day). The question is: Is it good enough. I guess for the forum, the answer is probably yes. But my post was not exclusively about the forum. I am concerned about power struggles and politics harming the project (and eventually my interests as a user and/or community member).

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I think you got me wrong. I quoted the wrong paragraph, sorry. I meant this one:

I mean even in the heated, quite political threads mainly comments don’t get out of control. You rarely even see flagged comment in general. So I do think that moderation is working.

So in the rare occasions where people do get banned it is for the reason to keep this place healthy and it seems to work as well.

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That filter exists. It’s called ‘official community spaces’. You can consume content only from official community spaces or from both official and unofficial spaces, per your preference. Technical problem solved.

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33

And this is why the current Discourse flagging system works (to the extent that we believe it does work). Instead of some select set of moderators, who have special powers and privileges and authority, we have a blind mechanism that lets people flag things modulo trust level, and then impartially doles out whatever it’s supposed to.

Previous moderation teams rather publicly were not impartial (whether their bias was correct or not, who is to say)–a blind robot implementing a policy indiscriminately is at least knowable and consistent. Additionally, the blind robot scales in a way that moderators (frequently complaining about the workload they themselves insisted on by the nature of how they decided to pursue their mandate) do not.

The thing about open-source technical spaces is that, by and large, they’re by nature positive-sum: every time we make something, everybody gets benefit (which is at the root of at least two ongoing bits of community drama, but that’s a different kettle of fish).

Moderation is about authority though, and authority is an inherently zero-sum game (it must be, by construction). The more mechanisms you add for the exercise of authority to a technical space, the more you decrease the positive-sum nature of the game.

The current flagging system is not good, but it is good enough: it avoids the governance orgy and political drama that is inherently zero-sum and which often turns negative-sum.