Re: Censorship in Debian
Daniel Pocock <daniel@pocock.pro> writes:
> and I reply with the strongest possible evidence, personal experience
> and scientific research.
You decided to distort a political issue that many of us feel strongly
about to attack a policy around what to republish in project-owned forums,
which is only on a continuum with that issue if you look for it with a
telescope. You did this in a way designed to provoke strong feelings and
create moral absolutes rather than start a conversation, and you did this
knowing full well that you were attacking a specific team inside Debian
composed, like all Debian teams, of overworked volunteer members. You did
this without the slightest attempt to extend an assumption of good will or
allow for the possibility there are further things going on that you don't
know about, and you did so with such pathetically sloppy and incomplete
research that even *I* know you are leaving out substantial background,
and I haven't been trying to follow this saga.
In other words, you immediately turned the temperature up as high as you
could go and called on other people to attack your fellow Debian
developers on the grounds that their work is a violation of UN-recognized
human rights (!!).
That you cannot understand how completely absurd this is means that it is
futile to try to argue this point with you on the merits.
There *is* an underlying project debate here that is a real debate, namely
the rules for participation and republication in project forums. I think
it's a debate we've had to the point of absurdity, but I'm not horribly
surprised that people want to still have it, and if that had been all your
message had been, I would have sit on my hands and not added to the noise.
But you saw an opportunity to artificially strengthen your debate stance
by comparing the Debian anti-harassment team to assassins (!!) and you
seem completely oblivious to why this is utterly unacceptable in
collective discussion within a project of colleagues, peers, and friends.
I have no idea personally what set off Norbert's removal from Planet
Debian. When I said irrespective of the merits of your argument, I really
meant that. But *this* bothers me far more: this kind of brutal approach
to Debian politics is hostile, nasty, and deeply hurtful to the project.
If you want to have a debate about the decision of a team in Debian, you
have an obligation to the project to conduct that debate with a certain
basic level of mutual respect. Asking you to not compare your fellow
project members to assassins does not seem like a high bar! If you aren't
going to do that, I for one am quite happy to make this argument about
*your* behavior, which was appalling and utterly toxic to supporting the
community of a volunteer collective project.
> Having been rear ended by a utility van, thrown off a motorbike half way
> across a roundabout and having also received abusive and threatening
> messages from people within the Debian community, I feel that the
> physical pain caused by the latter was more than the former. Those
> people should be ashamed of themselves.
Yeah, no shit. Your lack of awareness that *you* are that person who
should be ashamed of yourself because that's what *you* just did is
honestly mind-blowing.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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