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Re: Is negative publicity always harmful?


From: Jean Louis
Subject: Re: Is negative publicity always harmful?
Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2019 17:01:50 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)

* Thompson <Thompson> [2019-11-06 15:37]:
> Hello again, moderators,
> 
> I am asking you to place Jean Louis on moderation.  I will give you
> some context in case you are unaware of their behavior:
> 
> Jean Louis has been a consistently bad actor since the publishing of
> the statement on the Guix blog.

In my defense, I was surprised with the public shamings, and have
asked you to provide facts to support that defamatory statement.

You have not answered with any facts. Ludovic stated 3-4 facts, and
those were debunked.

Nobody from FSF or GNU raised voice or protested and I have done what
was best to be done to inform the public of true accounts on what
happened and pointed out that there are different ways to improve
conditions but those negative.

If that is bad, then it is bad. 

> They have engaged in behavior that ranges from annoying at best to
> hateful at worst on many GNU lists.

For me, I have entered IRC of Guix on 2019-10-07 for reason to install
Guix on my system, as I have made few mistakes upgrading Hyperbola
GNU/Linux-libre and I did not know any better solution. And I was
faced with Ludovic's promotion of public shaming on the Guix mailing
list.

That was very surprising and disturbing. I could not believe it, as
that was not the GNU I knew, neither was it Guix that I knew.

> They spammed multiple Guix lists, cross-posting to many at the same
> time typically, to the point that they were put on moderation there.

What else do you expect if public shaming is published on the Guix
website? 

Did you expect that people start answering and commenting to Trisquel
or maybe Ubuntu?

> Everyone is entitled to their point of view, but no one is entitled
> to repeat this point ad nauseum to every mailing list they can think
> of.

You are right that way, and that is why I said, it was difficult for
me to keep the guidance and know who is who and where to post and
where to complain.

Your public shamings page does not indicate who is responsible for
that page, which is also necessary by laws of Germany and many other
countries. If you wish to master Public Relations as a subject your
statement would have to have higher journalistic value, and it should
be legal in the first place.

And I always repeated that you are entitled to your viewpoints, but
that you should keep it off the GNU websites, including GNU Guix
website. 

> The issue goes beyond poor mailing list etiquette, however.  While
> they have kept most of the worst of their statements off of GNU
> lists, they host a web page on the domain gnu.support that contains
> hateful comments about a GNU maintainer as well as cherry picked
> sexist, homophobic, and transphobic comments from other places.  I
> have also received rude off-list, direct emails from them, and
> others have as well.  I think it is beyond time that they are placed
> on moderation here.

Dave, it is not "they" but if you consider me plural, that is a
compliment for me.

Purpose of the gnu.support website is not to initiate any hate, but to
respond with facts and to publish the comments as your public shamings
page explicitly disallowed comments.

When asked to abide by the Guix code of conduct, to avoid harassment
of anybody, Guix leadership did not make a finger movement on the
mailing list.

Here is the statement by Guix decision maker from 2019-10-09:
=============================================================
Reference: http://logs.guix.gnu.org/guix/2019-10-09.log

<jlouisgnusupport> you seem to be willing to allow comments, so can you allow 
comments and make sure they are published?
<rekado> no, I will not do that.
<jlouisgnusupport> that I value now more, as finally you speak out of your 
heart, and stopped pretending that you would allow comments when you do not 
allow comments. THANK YOU FOR TRUTHFUL ANSWER!
<rekado> yes, I’m not interested in publishing comments on the blog.

Dave, it was not my intention to keep gnu.support for "cherry picked
sexist, homophobic, and transphobic comments from other places" -- but
that type of reaction is what you get when you start with public
shamings. Deal with it. I did not "cherry picked it", neither I
approve of profanities or any kinds of discrimination.

My page is not the only one, there are many pages on Internet, and
many people inside and outside of GNU who disapproved your public
shamings page.

Guix leader rekado could allow comments on the blog and could have the
page properly discussed.

As true purpose of GNU is to contribute to GNU, and to spread free
software philosophy and help the human rights in computing, I can
really see that such page that debunks the statement as published by
Ludovic Courtès and others does not make the situation better.

I am of opinion that you made the statement on the public shamings
page for reasons to include more people to contribution, and I do not
share it as opinion that by pointing to negative rumors and fictional
victims you are achieving the purpose.

It is evident that I have not incited those few contributors to give
up on Guix, they decided it themselves.

In the mean time I have made a first step and retracted my statements
that those signers of the public shamings page should resign, but I
did not retract my opinion that it is discouraging contributors to
GNU. 

For the sake of getting more contributors to GNU, I would be glad to
remove all and everything from gnu.support domain, if you would remove
that public shamings page, and convert it to a positive project that
is to attract more women to computing and more women to contribute to
GNU.

I could promise to provide you with at least 3 female members that
would be translating Guix manual and Guix website into Swahili
language, which has at least 90 million speakers.

Proposal:
=========

1. Remove public shamings page.

2. Instead redirect the page to a new Guix based project to attract
   more women in coding and more women to contribute to Guix or GNU
   projects. Sample reference:
   https://www.meetup.com/Women-Who-Code-Tokyo/events/253653211/

3. I will personally make sure that Guix gets at least 3 female
   translators to translate Guix website into Swahili and Guix manual
   into Swahili language which opens the door to 90 millions of
   people.

4. I will remove the page that you complain about.

Is that a fair proposal?

Jean



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