List posting rules

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Dora,

On Thu, Oct 31, 2019 at 11:32:20PM -0400, Dora Scilipoti wrote:
> On 10/31/2019 09:01 AM, Carlos O'Donell wrote:
> > Please follow the rules of this list. Repetition should not happen.
> > You have made your case.
> 
> It's no repetition. Ruben is responding specifically to a statement.

Ruben is a prolific poster who has already made his case that all this
is just falsehoods and defamation. We are just going to have to agree
to disagree on that. Simply repeating your opinion over and over
again, while personally attacking the people you don't agree with,
does not make for a very pleasant discussion.

This list has slightly different posting rules than most other GNU
lists. Which are often completely open to anyone, or private with
restricted membership. We believed neither is ideal for a discussion
on GNU governance issues. So we are experimenting with a lightly
moderated list to have that discussion.

After various GNU maintainers and developers expressed a desire to
discuss GNU governance issues:
https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/
We discussed with various people and the FSF what a good space would
be for that. Since this mailinglist already is about "serious
discussion of freed software, the GNU Project, the GNU Manifesto, and
their implications" it seemed a good place to do that, especially
since it already had posting rules that seemed compatible "Flaming is
out of place. Tit-for-tat is not welcome. Repetition should not
occur. Good READING and writing are expected. Before posting, wait a
while, cool off, and think.".

Carlos and I discussed with the FSF and Karl, who normally moderates
this mailinglist, whether we could use the list for this discussion
and moderate it.

I see we somehow failed to post the announcement about that to this
list itself, it somehow only got out to various other lists where
people had expressed an interest in an open GNU governance. That was
obviously a mistake, apologies.

https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2019-10/msg00147.html

That message also explains the rules for GNU governance related theads
that you had a question about better than how I summarized it earlies.

These are the current posting guidelines, now also on the
gnu-misc-discuss info page:

  Flaming is out of place. Tit-for-tat is not welcome. Repetition
  should not occur.

  Good READING and writing are expected. Before posting, wait a while,
  cool off, and think.

  So take your time to reply and think whether you actually have a new
  point to make, or if you are just restating your opinion again. If
  possible bundle your replies to several messages. Restricting yourself
  to just one message a day to the list is not a bad thing.

  Don't just reply to every message repeating your opinion or have a tit-
  for-tat discussion with just one member of the list. Also consider
  addressing the list directly and remove individuals from the CC to
  prevent a rapid fire back-and-forth between two people simply
  disagreeing without the messages even having made it to the list yet.

  Make sure you have read the kind communication guide:
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html

  Some important points from that: Assume other participants are posting
  in good faith, even if you disagree with what they say. Please do not
  criticize people for wrongs that you only speculate they may have done;
  stick to what they actually say and actually do. Please respond to what
  people actually said, not to exaggerations of their views. Your
  criticism will not be constructive if it is aimed at a target other
  than their real views. If in a discussion someone brings up a tangent
  to the topic at hand, please keep the discussion on track by focusing
  on the current topic rather than the tangent. If you think the tangent
  is an important and pertinent issue, please bring it up as a separate
  discussion, with a Subject field to fit, and consider waiting for the
  end of the current discussion.

  And for GNU Project governance discussion threads, they should stay
  on topic and be strictly about governance and not about specific
  people and their respective abilities.

In general we don't have to enforce this very strictly. There have
only been a few people who posted similar messages multiple times a
day that we have rejected and asked to tone it down. There has been
one thread which we believed spiraled out of control pretty quickly
and that we have killed. In that case I posted a message to the list
explaining why (and Carlos then repeated that in the message you
replied to). In general anybody who just sents one or two messages a
day gets their mails approved pretty quickly.

The moderation is mainly to make sure that the discussion doesn't
become heated by people excessively posting and drowning out all other
participants. If you feel the need to post to this list multiple times
a day, or to a thread that already seen multiple replies, then simply
think if you (or someone else) already made your point and if it can
wait till tomorrow.

All posts to this list are seen by all moderators and when we do
reject posts from a specific individual or on a specific thread, then
we do sent that to the other moderators. So we can correct each other
if we happen to make a mistake.

We have now also asked Brandon and Mike to help us with that, because
we know they have different opinions on how GNU governance works. And
it would keep us all honest.

I hope these rules will help keep the discussion pleasant and on-topic
without flames, tit-for-tats and excessive repeats of points already
made. And I hope you trust us enough to participate.

Cheers,

Mark