Board Meeting Minutes for 2021-04-12
Present: Everyone + 4 Guitars and 2 Basses * Please note some tickets on code.opensuse.org mentioned in these minutes may only be accesable by members of the board. To More Serious business: Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed * This doesn't seem to have been happening * AI: Gertjan to raise. * As a board we want to look at look at the rules around mailing list usage, to put them more in line with other communications platforms (Forums, Discord etc) * AI: add to next meeting agenda - Maybe special topic meeting next week. * AI: Gertjan - talk to Sasi who sets policies for many other places about joining the meeting * Further work on two ongoing conflicts raised with the board, and closing a third. Defer Foundation + Emeritus Membership until a future meeting - Don't have time today. Public Board meetings * Start meetings in public channel and move to private to discuss private issues.. * Trial for 2 months * If members wish to discuss a topic or ask questions add it to the agenda atleast by the Thurs before the meeting to help with planning. * Possibly use ticketing system to create agenda. * If we do this trial it in private for a few meetings to get it right first. * Due to urgency in some cases we may need to prioritize private topics over public. * AI: Neal to announce - https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/2 * Next two meetings will trial the ticketing system in private meetings * May 24th Trial first public meetings. * https://meet.opensuse.org/OSBoardPublic FSF Topic: * Add explicit note about when it went out * Add note that we will not be sponsoring the FSF (Vinz needs to leave) * Vote on whether we still post to news.o.o 4-1 in favor. * AI: Gerald to talk to Doug with regards to sending this out AI: Axel Update bot reminder (Done) AI: Neal to Eat breakfast (Yes I expect this gets a ticket along with all AI's in the ticketing system) https://code.opensuse.org/board/tickets/issue/1 -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Simon Lees wrote:
Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed
Moderation is something that happens so rarely, there is no automated function.
* As a board we want to look at look at the rules around mailing list usage, to put them more in line with other communications platforms (Forums, Discord etc)
I have to ask - why not the other way around ? Mailing lists have been around for much longer, users have way more experience and better rules. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (11.9°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 5/12/21 2:54 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed
Moderation is something that happens so rarely, there is no automated function.
Maybe automated was the wrong word here, as a board we assumed that this was being tracked by the Heroes and they would remove people from moderation after there time period had expired, this wasn't always happening.
* As a board we want to look at look at the rules around mailing list usage, to put them more in line with other communications platforms (Forums, Discord etc)
I have to ask - why not the other way around ? Mailing lists have been around for much longer, users have way more experience and better rules.
The Forums have also been around for a very long time and have had a very successful moderation process. But the main reason here is that the mailing lists are the only place where the board is responsible for 100% of dealing with issues due to there being no one else. Due to the nature of how the board deals with issues ie we wait until we have all discussed the issue and try to form a consensus. We also generally wait until someone raises a complaint so this isn't always a fast process. On the other hand if there is a team of moderators with a defined process and set of rules then just one of the moderators can quickly and simply place one or more people under moderation which is often enough to help de escalate a situation before it gets really bad. As with the current process if someone is unhappy with the moderation process then they can still escalate it to the board. We would hope it doesn't need to be used often but we would like to see a better process then the one we have now, hence looking at the processes we have everywhere else because it would be nice to have a consistent set of rules. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/12/21 2:54 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed
Moderation is something that happens so rarely, there is no automated function.
Maybe automated was the wrong word here, as a board we assumed that this was being tracked by the Heroes and they would remove people from moderation after there time period had expired, this wasn't always happening.
Simon, like I said - 1) it happens so rarely (less than once in five years), plus - 2) in this case, a moderation was introduced at the same time or closely followed by the introduction of the jolly gang of secret moderators, that I for one assumed it was the job of that moderator gang. [1] 3) that one person in the Heroes group activates moderation (duely authorisedby the Board) on some individual on some lists does not mean the group as a whole is aware. [2] [1a] did the Board consult with the "moderators", to find out why they did not correctly end the moderation in question? [1b] I noticed no report on the progress of recruiting "moderators". Is it secret or has there not been any progress? [2] here I speak only for myself - the openSUSE Heroes is a group of volunteer sysadmins, primarily there to "scratch that itch". Dealing with the once-in-a-blue-moon moderation does not itch a lot.
* As a board we want to look at look at the rules around mailing list usage, to put them more in line with other communications platforms (Forums, Discord etc)
I have to ask - why not the other way around ? Mailing lists have been around for much longer, users have way more experience and better rules.
The Forums have also been around for a very long time and have had a very successful moderation process.
One can only assume they had a need to develop one. I do not believe we have such a need on our mailing lists. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (11.1°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 5/13/21 4:41 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/12/21 2:54 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed
Moderation is something that happens so rarely, there is no automated function.
Maybe automated was the wrong word here, as a board we assumed that this was being tracked by the Heroes and they would remove people from moderation after there time period had expired, this wasn't always happening.
Simon, like I said -
1) it happens so rarely (less than once in five years), plus -
I have been on the board for just over 3 years now and while as a board we haven't often placed people under moderation (partly because we probably didn't know if we could). Over the last 3 years we have dealt with atleast several complaints a year most of which we have probably only chosen to give warnings for. A number of cases have involved complaints about the behavior of multiple people in one thread. In a number of these cases and some others we believe we would have had better outcomes for the community if moderators could step in and help de escalate the situation quickly, in some cases even being able to quickly place several people under temporary moderation for several days (IE can still post but must be approved by a moderator) would have lead to drastically better results.
2) in this case, a moderation was introduced at the same time or closely followed by the introduction of the jolly gang of secret moderators, that I for one assumed it was the job of that moderator gang. [1]
Yeah the reason we are discussing this is because there is obviously some confusion around the roles of all involved here and we would like to clear that up.
3) that one person in the Heroes group activates moderation (duely authorisedby the Board) on some individual on some lists does not mean the group as a whole is aware. [2]
[1a] did the Board consult with the "moderators", to find out why they did not correctly end the moderation in question?
Yes we started those discussions and looking into it as soon as we were aware, it seems like moderators only have rights to moderate incoming messages and can't add or remove people. When the group was set up that was obviously the most important part.
[1b] I noticed no report on the progress of recruiting "moderators". Is it secret or has there not been any progress?
There has been progress, however in certain timezones there is probably room for more progress.
[2] here I speak only for myself - the openSUSE Heroes is a group of volunteer sysadmins, primarily there to "scratch that itch". Dealing with the once-in-a-blue-moon moderation does not itch a lot.
Yes this is precisely why it makes sense to hand these functions of to a dedicated group.
* As a board we want to look at look at the rules around mailing list usage, to put them more in line with other communications platforms (Forums, Discord etc)
I have to ask - why not the other way around ? Mailing lists have been around for much longer, users have way more experience and better rules.
The Forums have also been around for a very long time and have had a very successful moderation process.
One can only assume they had a need to develop one. I do not believe we have such a need on our mailing lists.
This is where you disagree with atleast enough of the board that we feel it is worth discussing the topic in detail. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/13/21 4:41 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/12/21 2:54 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed
Moderation is something that happens so rarely, there is no automated function.
Maybe automated was the wrong word here, as a board we assumed that this was being tracked by the Heroes and they would remove people from moderation after there time period had expired, this wasn't always happening.
Simon, like I said -
1) it happens so rarely (less than once in five years), plus -
I have been on the board for just over 3 years now and while as a board we haven't often placed people under moderation
Perhaps you could elaborate and let us know exactly _how_ often ? I count only 1 (one) such occurrence) and I have been the mailing list manager since 2016 IIRC. In the ten-fifteen years prior to that, I see two life-time bans.
(partly because we probably didn't know if we could). Over the last 3 years we have dealt with atleast several complaints a year most of which we have probably only chosen to give warnings for. A number of cases have involved complaints about the behavior of multiple people in one thread. In a number of these cases and some others we believe we would have had better outcomes for the community if moderators could step in and help de escalate the situation quickly,
Overall, that is difficult to argue with. It is also highly hypothetical though.
[1a] did the Board consult with the "moderators", to find out why they did not correctly end the moderation in question?
Yes we started those discussions and looking into it as soon as we were aware, it seems like moderators only have rights to moderate incoming messages and can't add or remove people. When the group was set up that was obviously the most important part.
I guess there is a reason why our secret gang of jolly moderators saw fit to _not_ bring this up right away, the very minute they determined they were unable to lift the moderation ? They could have asked Sasi or myself for assistance, right away.
[1b] I noticed no report on the progress of recruiting "moderators". [Is it secret or has there not been any progress?
There has been progress, however in certain timezones there is probably room for more progress.
Might we perhaps have a report on that progress? (or is it also secret?)
[2] here I speak only for myself - the openSUSE Heroes is a group of volunteer sysadmins, primarily there to "scratch that itch". Dealing with the once-in-a-blue-moon moderation does not itch a lot.
Yes this is precisely why it makes sense to hand these functions of to a dedicated group.
Except there are so remotely few of these functions.
One can only assume they had a need to develop one. I do not believe we have such a need on our mailing lists.
This is where you disagree with at least enough of the board that we feel it is worth discussing the topic in detail.
I certainly think the board should discuss it, but the board has already gone beyond that. The board has implemented secret measures, signed on incompetent so-called "moderators" without informing the community. Me thinks the idea has already failed miserably, and why on earth try perpetuate failure? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (9.3°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 5/14/21 5:12 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/13/21 4:41 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/12/21 2:54 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
Moving people off moderation: * The Boards impression was that Heroes will automatically do this after the time has elapsed
Moderation is something that happens so rarely, there is no automated function.
Maybe automated was the wrong word here, as a board we assumed that this was being tracked by the Heroes and they would remove people from moderation after there time period had expired, this wasn't always happening.
Simon, like I said -
1) it happens so rarely (less than once in five years), plus -
I have been on the board for just over 3 years now and while as a board we haven't often placed people under moderation
Perhaps you could elaborate and let us know exactly _how_ often ? I count only 1 (one) such occurrence) and I have been the mailing list manager since 2016 IIRC. In the ten-fifteen years prior to that, I see two life-time bans.
As I said in my previous email, probably on average several a year some years more some years less. Beyond mentioning something like "conflict resolution" in our minutes the board keep all the specifics of such matters confidential. The old mailing list software gave us very few options other then issuing warnings or bans so we had very few options in the past and have tended toward just giving out warnings, its also probable that we have banned people for 3 months and told them such but haven't enforced it programatically on the server. The new software gives us a range of extra features in this area including choosing to place certain people under moderation as a consequence of there actions gives the community alot more flexibility.
[1a] did the Board consult with the "moderators", to find out why they did not correctly end the moderation in question?
Yes we started those discussions and looking into it as soon as we were aware, it seems like moderators only have rights to moderate incoming messages and can't add or remove people. When the group was set up that was obviously the most important part.
I guess there is a reason why our secret gang of jolly moderators saw fit to _not_ bring this up right away, the very minute they determined they were unable to lift the moderation ? They could have asked Sasi or myself for assistance, right away.
As a board we didn't do a great job of formally outlining who was responsible for what here and whether the moderators are meant to be doing any more then approving posts from non list members and members under moderation at this point. As you can see from these minutes we still plan to discuss this further in an upcoming meeting.
[1b] I noticed no report on the progress of recruiting "moderators". [Is it secret or has there not been any progress?
There has been progress, however in certain timezones there is probably room for more progress.
Might we perhaps have a report on that progress? (or is it also secret?)
There has been some progress, when the board has finished discussing this issue we will be in a position to give even further progress.
[2] here I speak only for myself - the openSUSE Heroes is a group of volunteer sysadmins, primarily there to "scratch that itch". Dealing with the once-in-a-blue-moon moderation does not itch a lot.
Yes this is precisely why it makes sense to hand these functions of to a dedicated group.
Except there are so remotely few of these functions.
There are still a number of cases that take up significant amounts of board time and while some of these cases may still need to end up involving the board there are a significant number that could be dealt with quickly and simply by a moderation team.
One can only assume they had a need to develop one. I do not believe we have such a need on our mailing lists.
This is where you disagree with at least enough of the board that we feel it is worth discussing the topic in detail.
I certainly think the board should discuss it, but the board has already gone beyond that. The board has implemented secret measures, signed on incompetent so-called "moderators" without informing the community. Me thinks the idea has already failed miserably, and why on earth try perpetuate failure?
The board decided to trial some things and yes now we have seen what can work and where we still have the potential for improvements. But so far to me there has been nothing that has indiciated this has been a catastrophic failure that is worse then what we had before. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Simon Lees wrote:
On 5/14/21 5:12 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
I have been on the board for just over 3 years now and while as a board we haven't often placed people under moderation
Perhaps you could elaborate and let us know exactly _how_ often ? I count only 1 (one) such occurrence) and I have been the mailing list manager since 2016 IIRC. In the ten-fifteen years prior to that, I see two life-time bans.
As I said in my previous email, probably on average several a year some years more some years less. Beyond mentioning something like "conflict resolution" in our minutes the board keep all the specifics of such matters confidential.
Okay, so the Board deals with conflict resolution a few times a year. ("few" being roughly as many as "several"). I just thought you would have the actual number ready, given that you (the Board) has been actively discussing this topic.
I certainly think the board should discuss it, but the board has already gone beyond that. The board has implemented secret measures, signed on incompetent so-called "moderators" without informing the community. Me thinks the idea has already failed miserably, and why on earth try perpetuate failure?
The board decided to trial some things and yes now we have seen what can work and where we still have the potential for improvements. But so far to me there has been nothing that has indiciated this has been a catastrophic failure that is worse then what we had before.
In my opinion, the non-democratic appointment of a secret gang of jolly moderators without informing the community was a catastrophic failure. It goes totally against the grain of everything openSUSE stands for. I do however see your point about off-loading those few annual cases of conflict resolution, and handing them to a team of moderators. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (10.4°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 2021-05-12 15:38, Simon Lees wrote:
* As a board we want to look at look at the rules around mailing list usage, to put them more in line with other communications platforms (Forums, Discord etc)
I have to ask - why not the other way around ? Mailing lists have been around for much longer, users have way more experience and better rules.
The Forums have also been around for a very long time and have had a very successful moderation process. But the main reason here is that the mailing lists are the only place where the board is responsible for 100% of dealing with issues due to there being no one else. Due to the nature of how the board deals with issues ie we wait until we have all discussed the issue and try to form a consensus. We also generally wait until someone raises a complaint so this isn't always a fast process. On the other hand if there is a team of moderators with a defined process and set of rules then just one of the moderators can quickly and simply place one or more people under moderation which is often enough to help de escalate a situation before it gets really bad.
I think it's also worth considering the popularity of the various platforms. Our top 3 popular mailinglists have 125, 66 and 53 participants in the last 30 days, and no other list breaking 40 people. Our forums have 1228 active users in the same period Our discord has over 453 people logged in right now, out of 1625 registered The largest openSUSE room on telegram has 695 members People vote with their feet, and the least popular openSUSE communication method (mailinglists) is the least moderated. I fully support the Boards effort to address this discrepancy and bring the mailinglists in line with the acceptable standards defined by the vast majority of activity in the openSUSE community.
On 13/05/2021 13.29, Richard Brown wrote:
Our top 3 popular mailinglists have 125, 66 and 53 participants in the last 30 days, and no other list breaking 40 people.
If you count only people writing, you are not counting the same thing as "people logged in". Plus I know of several people that follow the MLs via the archives (I know, because they were confused when we switched to mailman3 and the old archives got no updates anymore), so even number of subscribers gives an incomplete picture. When we take a step back to look at the general case, when a discussion between N people happens, everyone only talks/writes 1/Nth of the time and listens N-1/Nth of the time. The more readers you have on a channel, the more it becomes a broadcast medium. So having a low number of writers/messages on a ML is a reason to not require moderation there. There can still be good reasons _for_ moderation such as frequent off-topic or inflamatory/unproductive debates. Manual moderation has its problems. Does not scale well. And mods can have different ways to interpret policy (as also happens with reviews in OBS). Reddit has different automoderator bots on different subs that try to enforce certain standards and I think we have some basic rules on the MLs as well (e.g. no HTML and IIRC no "Re: New Tumbleweed snapshot") At least these are consistent and without bias. Ciao Bernhard M.
On Thu, May 13 2021 at 21:32:57 +0200, Bernhard M. Wiedemann
If you count only people writing, you are not counting the same thing as "people logged in".
I have data for that for Discord, which is wrong by 50%, due to that many people having disabled metrics on Discord, and can't be exactly tracked, I can calculate this as a ratio of people in the server compared to people in the server reported in insights dashboard. I also regularly prune members, so the inactive accounts don't actually stay around on the server either. On a monthly basis we have about 400 viewers of the channels, and around 30% of that are people that end up writing.
Plus I know of several people that follow the MLs via the archives (I know, because they were confused when we switched to mailman3 and the old archives got no updates anymore), so even number of subscribers gives an incomplete picture.
Subscribers weren't even mentioned though LCP [Sasi] https://lcp.world
On 13/05/2021 21.49, Sasi Olin wrote:
so even number of subscribers gives an incomplete picture.
Subscribers weren't even mentioned though
yes, but IMHO it could be a better comparision to "people logged in" numbers that were given. If you wanted to compare number of writers on MLs to something, you could compare it to writers on forums. Lars said, forums is one of our busiest services (measured by how long it takes for people to complain about breakage?).
Bernhard M. Wiedemann wrote:
On 13/05/2021 13.29, Richard Brown wrote:
Our top 3 popular mailinglists have 125, 66 and 53 participants in the last 30 days, and no other list breaking 40 people.
If you count only people writing, you are not counting the same thing as "people logged in".
Exactly. I was just about to gather some numbers on that, but Richard is comparing apples and oranges, so I doubt if it is worth continuing this discussion. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (7.9°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
participants (5)
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Bernhard M. Wiedemann
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Per Jessen
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Richard Brown
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Sasi Olin
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Simon Lees