On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 02:51:30AM -0400, Toshio Kuratomi wrote: > Forgive me if this goes out twice, I didn't see it show up in the archives > so I assume I missent it or something the first time. > > Greetings Board, > > The Fedora Hall Monitoring Policy doesn't currently encompass all the > actions taken by the Hall Monitors. I think that the policy needs to be > clarified/added onto in order to encompass their current criteria or the > hall monitors need to be instructed that hteir current criteria is off base. > > The thread that brought this to my attention has had three mentioned > reasons for being hall monitored: > > 1) Redundancy of information in the thread > 2) Increasing number of posts from a single party > 3) Multiple complaints that people don't want to read the thread anymore > > None of these are mentioned specifically in the Hall Monitor policy > currently. There are two general pieces of the policy that I could see > being the basis of additional Hall Monitoring activity: > > From the Background section which lays out the spirit of the policy: > > The Fedora Board has adopted a simple motto for general behavior as > a member of the Fedora Project. It is simply "Be excellent to each other". > > There doesn't seem to be any lack of courtesy present in the thread yet or > in the reasons given for hall monitoring the thread so this doesn't seem to > be the root justification. > > In the Overall Procedures section, there's an entry that says this: > > Hall monitors are allowed to send 'thread closure' posts to aggressive or > problematic mailing list threads to curtail issues before they become > serious enough to warrant an official warning. > > The definition of "aggressive and problematic" seems to be that the thread > seems to be leading to need to issue an official warning to an individual. > That's outlined here: > > They [hall monitors] will be subscribed to and monitor the selected > mailing lists for instances of posts that are out of line with the "be > excellent to each other" motto. This includes, but is not limited to: > personal attacks, profanity directed at people or groups, serious threats > of violence, or other things seen by the monitor as to be purposefully > disrespectful. > > Which brings us back to the "Be excellent to each other" motto. > > So here's some ideas on how to resolve this: > > 1) Decide that these justifications fall outside of the Board's intention. > In addition to letting the current hall monitors know, it might be good to > add a clarification to the policy like: > > Although we hope the signal to noise ratio of the lists will increase due > to this policy, the intent is primarily to keep discussions from veering > off into personal attacks and negative comments to one another. Remember > "be excellent to each other" is what it's all about. > > 2) Add increasing signal to noise as an explicit goal of Hall Monitors along > with some sample criteria. This should probably be added to both the > Background and the Overall Procedures sections: > > Insert between second and third paragraphs to the Background section: > > In addition to needing to have a communication channel that is a positive > and supportive environment for people to express themselves we also strive > to make our communications efficient so that people can more effectively > process the communication that they do receive. > > Insert between first and second bullets in the Overall Procedures page: > > * Hall monitors will also look for cases where posts are not adding > any new information to a discussion. This includes but is not limited > to: Restating facts already stated in the current thread, trying to > have the last word with another contributor, presenting old arguments as > if they were new arguments, presenting old arguments as the basis for > refuting a new argument or new idea, debating old issues because new > people are in positions to make changes to rectify those issues. > > 3) Add some policy to allow hall monitoring of threads that have too many > complaints. I don't see how a sane policy about this really works as it's > something that just moves who can shout the loudest from the public mailing > lists to messages to the hall monitors (if done objectively) or introduces > a lot of bias based on what the hall monitors believe if done subjectively. > > > For the record, I would strongly favor option #1 as the others are taking us > too far into the realm of giving a few people the power to decide what is > and is not useful communication. This was a thoughtful post, Toshio, thank you. I can't speak for the other Board members but I do think there are senses in which we can be non-excellent to each other without using insults. If our mailing lists stay cordial, but their content becomes increasingly redundant or repetitive, that also can contribute to a negative environment that pushes people away from communicating with each other. -- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ Where open source multiplies: http://opensource.com _______________________________________________ advisory-board mailing list advisory-board@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/advisory-board
