Re: Re: On the efficacy of the openSUSE Board

Shawn W Dunn - 6:29 17.04.24 wrote:

On 4/17/24 00:03, Michal Hrusecky wrote:

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Attila Pinter - 1:18 17.04.24 wrote:

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On Tuesday, April 16th, 2024 at 3:03 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

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Dear Project, The latest incident on this list has me questioning the efficacy of the openSUSE Board

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It is difficult to read these words and not agree with it. Many of you interpreted Richard's message as a personal attack on Doug and Patrick, but I fail to see that. The Board supposed to "provide guidance" which in this last incident it failed at doing so miserably well. In the conversation that triggered all this I called on the Board to make a stand on multiple occasions which still not happened. I called Simon's view the Board's view which Neal, and Gerald disagreed with, yet there is still no official stand on the matter from the Board, other than an awkward, long message from Simon which supposed to be an apology? Couldn't tell really...

I don't see it as failure of the board, I think some moderation could take place to stop unjustified attacks and all the FUD going on in that thread, but I understand that given it was a response to the board mail, there is more leniency towards people attacking them as they opted in to be a public figure.

I've been staying out of this thread, as I'm one of the folks involved, and doing my best to not see individual responses from board members, as "The Boards Position" But I take issue with your (and others) assertion that this is nothing but unjustified attacks and FUD.

This is anything but.

As a moderator on a number of our "Communication Platforms" (Discord, Matrix, IRC, and tangentially the kbin.social magazine), I can tell you that if this were just a complaint about a single instance, or even the odd use of $expletive_of_choice now and then, I don't care, and wouldn't consider that to be something actionably under the CoC, and haven't in the past. And I have no intention of doing so in the future.

This issue has popped up because of a repeated pattern of behavior, language and/or conduct, on multiple of our communication platforms that obviously makes some of our community members uncomfortable. This isn't speculation on my part, or spreading FUD, and some of those members have spoken up in the threads over the last week or so. And to just discount this all as FUD is disingenuous at best.

And from the thread was obvious that board was investigating the issue, taking it very seriously and trying to collect the evidence before acting. And the whole thread hopefully helped to gather some more.

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If you ask for a board to take a unified stance, it has to take some time. There are several people and to coordinate takes time. Especially if you know that you have to be prepared for another troll attack.

Again, you call anybody that doesn't agree with your stance a troll. And I don't appreciate it.

Not really. I understand that there were some people concerned and that there was some factual discussion in the thread as well. But it was kinda blurred by people screaming in panic that Board wants to abolish the CoC while it was repeatedly written that the opposite is the truth.

I haven't been engaging with the threads, because I am in fact waiting for the board to meet, and decide what the official response is going to be, and I haven't wanted to pour more fuel onto this fire.

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While community fights over CoC where everybody says that they support it and nobody is against it and it's enforcement 🤷

This is actually patently untrue, as I know from personal experience, and can go back through the mail archive and find the evidence, if required, that there are project members, that do oppose the existence of a Code of Conduct, and pop up basically every time the CoC has to be enforced.

In general yes, in this case Simon was defending it, Richard was defending it and everybody was defending it but I haven't noticed CoC opposer joining the thread yet :-)

For the CoC to mean anything, it has to be something thats applied to the community equally, and it has to actually be applied, not just held as some sort of stick to threaten people with. And yes, not all of us are always going to agree with every facet of the Code of Conduct, or any other official stance of the Project. That's how communities work, and it's perfectly valid to have community discussions, about the Code, and to review it over time, to make sure it's still serving the community.

In communities, as in compromises, nobody is ever fully happy with things when they have to be written down and enforced, and that's kind of the point.

But if the lack of enforcement of the CoC and/or community standards is something that is making a not insignificant portion of the community uncomfortable in project spaces, or dissuading people from becoming members and/or contributors, then *I* have a problem with that.

Equally, if our lack of enforcement of that same CoC and/or community standards is something that makes the project *attractive* to some people, well, those are largely people that *I* don't personally want to "work" with.

But this is all academic at this point, until such time as I see a unified policy response on the matter from the board. I'm trying very hard to not read any of the individual responses from board members as any sort of indicator of which way the board is going to decide, and only as the board members individual opinions as project members.

-- Michal Hrusecky 📧 michal@hrusecky.net 🔗 https://michal.hrusecky.net 🐘 @michal@hrusecky.net