Some recent conversations in NixOS spaces have involved the topic of whether the moderation team needs some sort of additional oversight or correction. The place and manner of these conversations has been disruptive for many of the people present, but we didn’t have a clear policy in place to address these disruptions. We recognize that the community has a right to discuss whether the moderation team is doing an acceptable job, but our responsibility to moderate is not suspended simply because we are the topic of conversation.
In light of this, the moderation team has decided on the following policy. All public discussion of moderation decisions and potential changes to the framework under which the moderation team operates should take place in the Moderation category on Discourse (or in an appropriate RFC on GitHub). We’ll be keeping topics in this category on one-post-per-user-per-day slow mode, in order to prevent individuals with the most free time from dominating these discussions and to promote thoughtful responses. Any public conversation on the subject of how the moderation team does what it does is off topic in any other NixOS space, including all Matrix rooms, and will be moderated accordingly. A link to this post will be added to Matrix room descriptions where this sort of mistake is likely.
The Moderation category here, to be clear, is still moderated by us, and participants will still be expected to maintain a welcoming environment for all of their fellow participants.
The moderation team remains open to private, thoughtful feedback and questions about our decisions and processes that are respectful of our time and our responsibility to make decisions in the moment to the best of our ability. The NixOS Moderation room on Matrix can still be used to ask questions of and report incidents to the moderation team. This policy is intended to apply only to discussions for which the target audience is the community, and the moderation team is merely the subject.
Feedback on this policy is welcome, and we are open to revising it if it doesn’t work out.