Re: Should mailing list bans be published?
Russ Allbery wrote:
> Camaleón <noelamac+gmane@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > The mailing list managers/admins have the right to ban whoever they
> > decide, but in the aim of "fair play", the user should also have the
> > right to defend him/herself from the accusations, expose his/her
> > reasoning and be able to restore him/her reputation or recognize the
> > error, say sorry and come back to the list again.
>
> I don't agree with this part of your message. Debian is under no
> obligation to play fair. We are not a legal system and have no obligation
> to give people any sort of due process. Debian's mailing lists are
> instruments of the project, and the project can decide how they are used.
>
> This sort of quasi-judicial process eats up *vast* quantities of time and
> effort, and if we go down this path, the listmasters will end up spending
> It's not like we're depriving people of life and limb, or even property.
> They just can't send mail to one of our mailing lists for a while. If
I think these arguments work much worse in the context of _publishing_
bans as examples or even as a punishment. You can ban anyone whose
face/opinions/attitude you don't like, and there is no particular
obligation of "fairness". However, it's another thing to make public
claims (especially as an official project stance) that someone's posts
are examples of particularly unacceptable behavior or contain false
claims, and give no opportunity to respond to such accusations. I think
there *are* obligations of fairness in this case.
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