On 08/16/2010 08:30 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
In particular, developing a code of conduct/community guideline that encourages use of a facilitator to resolve conflicts, with a goal to avoid needing to escalate to anything beyond that. One of the issues that came up at DebConf, and is discussed in your link above, is about "list moderators" and preventing individuals from posting. In the end, I'm afraid that may be necessary, but feel it should be a last resort.
This is an excellent idea which I fully support. Revoking mailing list posting ability is, of course, not the goal of the facilitators. It was stated by many at Debconf10 that listmasters have the technical ability to block people but do not wish to have the responsibility to make the decisions on who, when, and how to block people for non-technical reasons.
I think that, even if the facilitators rarely exercise the authority, it is important for them to have it. Hopefully the DFs can defuse most problems without having to use, or even mention, that authority. However, there will be some cases where this just plain doesn't work, and we as Debian, without a useful mechanism for dealing with poisonous people on mailing lists, have had a long-term problem with it.
Moreover, if everyone understands that the DF can ban people from the list, it can lend their attempts to defuse the situation some additional measure of credibility and authority.
-- John