Re: Censorship in Debian
I concur with Russ in the strongest of terms.
I, too have no idea why a blog was removed, but I think we absolutely
can and should if the post crosses lines.
We, as a group of individuals working on a project together with
shared resources working to maintain a constructive atmosphere must
never be conflated with a Government censoring speech.
We are not a Government. Please don't conflate Debian ensuring we have
a healthy community with Government censorship, and conflating a blog
being removed from project resources with the killing of a journalist.
It cheapens the death of those who are killed by repressive regimes
fighting for their freedoms.
Paul
On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 6:46 PM Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
>
> 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/>
>
--
:wq
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