I wish we had spaces to collaborate on technical work where being a jerk was just not allowed. Like, actual proper fearless moderation.
Your reply starts with "No." on its own line? Two weeks ban. Learn to behave.
You go on a tear about another participant? One year ban. No warning.
I'm a privileged white dude with 20k followers and even I hesitate to contribute to some spaces because of the mailing list hand-to-hand combat.
Imagine how many contributions by talented folks we are wasting!
@glyph @filippo i've thought about this quite a bit. and while i'm partial to the idea (i think this kind of space would get pretty popular!), i explicitly chose to not go this way when writing the Glasgow CoC.
this is because this type of moderation is tone policing, and while it's probably fine to do tone policing when the only thing at a stake is minutae of technical detail, this is less true when your technical work affects the wellbeing of real people, who may be upset about it
@whitequark @glyph I see the risk in theory, but I can't remember from my experience a jerk in IETF-like spaces who was a legitimately upset stakeholder rather than a dude with opinions.
FWIW I think gish gallops should also get moderated brutally. I am not asking for politeness, I am asking for subjective moderation action that matches what everyone is saying in the parallel emotional support group chats.
@filippo @glyph an example of where this risk has played out in practice is the Nix project governance, where quite a few people were unhappy about close ties to defense among other things, some of whom were then banned (temporarily or permanently) for expressing that on procedural grounds
I would not want even the slightest suggestion of the idea that this would repeat in any place I moderate
@whitequark @glyph I don't know enough about the specifics of the Nix issue, but that sounds like a values mismatch with leadership, and I acknowledge that strict moderation enforces the leaders' values. If they are different from yours or mine, we won't be a good fit! There are settings where you can't just say "find better leaders and make another community" but there are settings in which you can! I wish we explored the latter more.
@filippo @glyph I think excluding people for a values mismatch is fine (I explicitly do this, and really, everyone does this explicitly or implicitly), but I think it's important to not be a coward about it. the way moderators approached it in the Nix issue was to say that people get banned for being disruptive (making unspecified others feel unsafe, etc). all that does is destroys trust in the moderation process, not just in that community but in general too
@whitequark @glyph agreed, that's exactly what I am looking for: moderation that calls it like it sees it. "Banned because you are wrong and you keep being wrong." Ok!
value mismatch != wrong; if you equate the two you will lose the people who care about the distinction (either due to their approach to communication, or because e.g. they believe communities that claim that other values are wrong by fiat are likely to be/become hostile).
For banning for value mismatch not to seem arbitrary the values have to be clearly visible to everyone (incl. bystanders), too. whitequark's codes of conduct are IMO an example of being very clear on them.
