Dear community, DISCLAIMER - I am not on of the Mods on Reddit, just a community member. On 2023-07-06 13:01, Günter Dachs wrote:
Dear community,
I would like to inform myself about the decision making in the openSUSE community. And probably start a discussion about it as well.
A couple of days ago I posted a reminder on reddit that pride month is over and that the mods shouldn't forget to update the logo to the regular one. When you hover the mouse over the logo it changes to the one with the pride flag. Which is great for pride month. But I don't see any reason to have this permanently.
I would vote to keep the flag forever. Actually we should put it everywhere. The question is - why not?
To my knowledge the logo was always a temporary thing that is changed at special occasions and holidays. To my knowledge each time this occasion is over we switch back to the default logo.
Shortly after my post got removed. With no explanation and no reason.
Upon asking one of the mods in private he told me I should generally message the mods and not make a post and that this particular person didn't remove it and I need to contact the mods in general.
I have to say that I actually wasn't aware that I can message all mods of a subreddit. And I agree that this would have been the proper way. The next time I will definitely do it. But I don't see this as a justification to remove my post.
I continued to message the mods in general and then a longer discussion with one of them started. Where they explained that the community had several posts that were about the pride flag in the past and that they just removed my post because of negative experiences with posts regarding the flag in the past. I don't think it's fair to remove posts from individuals just because another person did a post that touched the topic before but was using rules breaking content. I feel like openSUSE is a community and we should listen and respect each other. Not censor people quietly.
After several messages back and forth I was pointing out again that I just wanted to hilight that pride month is over and remind the mods to switch back, since they said that last time they forgot this for one year.. I was curious why they are not doing it now and I was told they don't tolerate the intolerante. In the whole situation nobody was intolerant :-) I have nothing against the usage of the pride flag during pride month!
In the whole conversation I felt like stuff is put into my mouth that I didn't say at all. Just because you had certain experiences with some people you don't need to judge who starts a certain topic by the same book.
I was pretty disappointed with the whole situation and it made me think: If they have so many people in the community who speak about the logo change. Why do they resist it in pretense of defending something/someone? Nobody is attacking LGBTIQ+ people.
Me and I are used a lot in this part of your mail. Maybe think about it.
OpenSUSE is a community distribution and it seems the community isn't heard? Their posts removed if they don't fit the opinion of some mods?
Shouldn't the mods follow concrete rules and guidelines and not act arbitrary?
Now, suddenly, after you had a personal problem - you are "the community" that "isn't heard"...
OpenSUSE is the makers distribution. I offered in the conversation several times to volunteer as a mod and change the logo myself. I got no response to that.
I would like to know who is deciding what the official community representation on reddit for our project should look like. In my opinion it should be the openSUSE community. I didn't find any poll, discussion or anything like that regarding using certain logos. But now I got the impression that several people asked for a logo change and were silenced.
Is the what you understand as open community work?
Yes. Including people of all colors is part of the community work.
I propose to create a poll on each social media platform and use on each platform the result of the poll. Or to ask the openSUSE contributors, members or general community of their opinion. I dislike that a handful of people make the decision and ignore, and even harrass other members.
The slogan is that openSUSE is the makers distribution. But it looks like that right you are not allowed to make a change that you would like to see.
I guess we still accept PullRequests and build.opensuse.org is up and running?
openSUSE is an open welcoming community for everybody. And to reflect this we need to respect everybody. And use our netural logos and artwork. To increase our respect to everybody, we can set signs during certain evens/periods. Using pride flags during pride month. Using the cross during christmas. This artwork is extra work. And needs to be contributed by the community. So if someone makes it we should take it, if it is not part of a damaging or forbidden group/ideology (like Nazism).
This is your personal definition of including everybody and being welcome. Where is a guideline that says we need to use neutral logos and artwork?
Mods need to be neutral and defend the code of conduct and rules of the specific social media platform. Not decide what they like and don't like and remove accordingly. Everything else is just pretense. Power in the hands of a view. Who don't want to listen and respect the opinion of others who have different ideas about the project.
The problem is, that you got a problem with a pride logo on a Reddit page. And this is where the problem starts. Work on the problem, don't work around the problem. Best regards, Thorsten