[opensuse] Moving the opensuse tech support mailing list so they can not ban Carlos

On 12/26/2015 05:08 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

On 25 December 2015 at 23:24, Ruben Safir wrote:

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On 12/25/2015 06:17 PM, Michal Hrusecky wrote:

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What about not attacking people, behaving like an adult and not lying and if you really want, than pickup the right mail? Constant spreading of FUD across various mailing lists was one of the reasons for Carlos ban.

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-11/msg00439.html

in your sick mind you think that was worthy of a ban.

Your nuts.

Honestly.

Honestly, conducting yourself in accordance with our guiding principles ( https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Guiding_principles ) would be a lot productive. Please calm down, review the link, and lets discuss anything which needs to be discussed in a respectful, adult, way, please?

As both I and now Michal have explained, there was not one post or incident that triggered Carlos' ban

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-11/msg00439.html was the final straw after a long string of issues on the -project, -factory, and -translation mailinglists

I'll try to tackle this chronologically, but as this was a long drawn out affair I apologise in advance with anything I get muddled

I think the first incident of relevance to this topic is the fact that Carlos was banned from forums.opensuse.org for repeatedly instigating & participating in unproductive discussions and arguments, including arguments with the admin staff of the forums. I do not have links to share on that as I was not personally a witness, but one of our admins posted about it here (in a thread which I will refer to more later): http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00806.html

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One major incident (that included a number of examples which contributed to the ban) was the situation with translations

This story is long and complicated, so for the sake of clarity and in the hope of putting this topic to bed I will do my best to summarise it here

With the increased focused on Tumbleweed, and the fundamental changes to how Leap was being put together, it was clear that the previous tools, processes, and methods of our translation teams were no longer up to the job

Or, to put it another way, Tumbleweed and Leap wasn't being translated at all. Carlos actually did a very good job of raising this concern some weeks before - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-09/msg00777.html

Some years ago, there was an effort by a number of contributors to implement 'Weblate' as a translation tool for openSUSE. It had some support from some translators, and significant support from developers across the project (as it was better aligned with the tooling and processes they were using, eg. git - therefore making it easier for them to contribute also). However there was vocal objection to it from some of our existing translators, including Carlos

With both Tumbleweed and Leap translations paralysed by a lack of translations, a number of contributors took it upon themselves to implement Weblate and, as a proof of concept, went ahead and relocated some of the files requiring translation to Weblate

This was spotted by Carlos, who objected on the openSUSE -project list

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2015-10/msg00052.html

and the -translation lists

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-translation/2015-10/msg00016.html

Now there are a LOT of those posts in those threads, and if people have an interest in their topic I encourage them to read them. But in a nutshell the situation boiled down to we had a contributor (Carlos) who was very vocally objecting to contributions from others (those doing Weblate).. and yet, the issues the Weblate team were trying to fix (translation of Tumbleweed and Leap) were two things which Carlos himself admitted were not being done using the old method. The fact that Carlos and other seasoned translators had already rejected Weblate is somewhat immaterial, we had new contributors working to fix the issues the Project is actually facing now.

openSUSE is a Project that exists only because of its volunteer contributions. Having individuals criticising and attempting to block contributions needlessly is a toxic behaviour which dramatically impedes the productivity of our project. So in this case, I still feel Carlos was greatly in the wrong. I was also dreadfully concerned by his prevalent 'us vs them' attitude, which I posted about http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-translation/2015-10/msg00131.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-translation/2015-10/msg00082.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-translation/2015-10/msg00051.html

The whole sordid mess somewhat died down when people actually started using Weblate to translate parts of Leap, but Carlos' mindset and behaviour with that topic is important to keep in mind if you want to understand the Board's collective decision making process.

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A separate long, ongoing issue with Carlos on the factory mailinglist was what is now being described as the production of 'noise'. opensuse-factory is by definition and design a 'working' mailinglist, intended to productive discussions relevant to the development of the openSUSE distributions. Noise (off topic posts or posts with little or no content) ends up being junk which every developer has to sift through in order to conduct their regular contributions to openSUSE. Carlos has a well deserved reputation for being a huge source of such noise. He would regularly post short responses like "Yup" "I agree" and such - the kind of thing which might have a place in an opensuse-chat mailinglist or perhaps even this opensuse@ support list, but in a list where we're meant to be discussing the development of our distributions, it was quite an annoyance. Also, even the more substantial posts he did provide, often conveyed a very strong 'I'm not a developer but you should do what I say' attitude..the kind of 'us vs them' attitude which raised it's ugly head during the translation issue.

In small doses, none of these issues would be worth mentioning, but you have to consider that Carlos's prolific posting rate (one of the reasons he clearly is so popular here) meant that he was single handedly responsible for a huge percentage of the -factory mailinglist traffic. An avowed non-developer, producing 10%+ of all the traffic on the 800+ subscriber openSUSE development mailinglist is, no matter how well meaning, a nuisance, especially when most of those posts are easily classified as 'noise' and not helpful to the development of the openSUSE distributions.

For example, Carlos regularly would post off topic, bug-report like posts, such as http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00019.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00028.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00045.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00047.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00049.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00062.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00063.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00454.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00679.html

And I'm sure there are more examples, I just don't want to spend hours writing this mail.

On multiple occasions Carlos was informed to file bugs in bugzilla, where bugs are meant to be reported. http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00019.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00045.html but the bug-like reports continued.

In the end, the patience of other contributors started to fray, as clearly visible in this post from Martin - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00688.html

Carlos responded in what, sadly, a typically argumentative way, incorrectly declaring the purpose of the factory mailinglist (it is, and will likely always be, the projects main development list) - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00693.html

At this point, Andrew Wafaa from the openSUSE Board provided Carlos with a final warning, summarising the concerns we had regarding his behaviour - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00709.html

He responded in an argumentative manner.. http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00723.html

The thread bounced around a bit while people less aware of Carlos' behaviour asked questions. This led to Jim's explanation from the Forum admins team - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00806.html and Andrew from the Board - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00745.html

It also included posts much like this one from me (just a lot shorter) citing more examples of behaviour which the Board considered - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00776.html http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00781.html

ANTONY Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest-- For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men- Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

I also tried again to reason with Carlos and better explain the scope and scale of the Boards concerns - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-10/msg00877.html

And despite a bit of back and forth discussion even after that point, the end result was that everyone moved on, and Carlos continued posting, and for a while everything actually seemed to be going well. For the time immediately after the Boards final warning, I would personally categorise Carlos' posts, manner, attitude, all being dramatically improved, as if he had taken on board the feedback from the Board. There was one or two posts which I felt might have walked 'upto the line' of what is acceptable, but the line wasn't crossed, and so I was quite pleased and hopeful.

And then Carlos posted http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-11/msg00439.html which contained a personal attack against a contributor (me), undermining the contributions of others (the Weblate, Tumbleweed, and Leap contributors), and clearly carrying the 'us vs them' attitude which had been cited in the Boards final warning to Carlos. This was considered so egregious that even aged veterans of the project like Andreas Jaegar spoke up against it - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2015-11/msg00451.html

Carlos explained the outburst was fueled by Vodka, but given both the long history of Carlos' behaviour and the more recent history and of course the final warning, the Board felt it had no choice but to take action, recommending to the Mailinglist and Forums admin that Carlos be banned until 14th February

And here we are today.. I understand how the patrons of the opensuse@opensuse.org mailinglist can have a very different perspective on Carlos, and I understand how the ban has prevented him from contributing here. It is unfortunate, but the Board's responsibility is to the whole Project, and Carlos' behaviour was having an impact across many aspects of the project.

I have not written this post as an attempt to vilify Carlos. I have done my best to reflect the facts, quote the actual posts involved, and from my perspective when his ban is lifted he will have every chance to come back and contribute in the productive, constructive, way we all want.

But hopefully with this post people can understand how things came to this point so tempers can calm and we can all move on.

- Rich

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