Re: feeling intimidated for endorsing the GNU social contract

[Mike Gerwitz]

Mark:

On Sun, Feb 23, 2020 at 11:36:16 -0700, Mark Galassi wrote:
> I wrote to endorse the GNU social contract and received an email which
> made me feel insulted and intimidated (this one said "F*** you", so not
> much risk of misinterpreting the language).  I also got a sequence of
> replied from people telling me I was wrong to do so.  These seem to be
> canned replies that are sent to other people who endorse it.  They did
> not make me feel as intimidated, but it still seems like a strange
> campaign.

Firstly: I'm sorry that you are receiving those messages.  People should
not feel harassed in that way when communicating on GNU lists.

Unfortunately, though, as Alfred has mentioned, there's nothing we can
do to prevent people from contacting you privately.  But if you do
receive a message privately which has also been CC'd to this list, and
find that it does not appear in the list archives, then you at least
know that the moderators have attempted to mitigate some of the damage
by preventing it from reaching the list.

We've had a few people in particular that have been especially
problematic, and one person in particular that has many different
aliases and has even gone so far as to create a separate list that the
person has forcefully subscribed people to.  I condemn this
behavior.  But there's little we can do to stop it.

> I wrote the following to the list last week but it got rejected by
> moderation for being "off topic".  Since this list seems to have a lot
> of traffic which is a soul-search on how we should interact, I think it
> must have been rejected by mistake by an overworked moderator, which is
> understandable.

I appreciate your perspective.  Considering that I see no problem with
this message, I'll assume that your interpretation is correct. 

> I don't see clear information about moderation, and don't know right now
> how to write to the moderators directly (the page
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss doesn't give
> moderator addresses).

I'm the publicly listed owner of the list.  While I don't frequently
moderate, please feel free to get in touch with me directly.  I've been
more active the past few days, but even when I'm not, I'll see direct
messages to me.

> I would suggest that the moderators of this list set something up to
> avoid the trolling.  Even if they block such a response to the whole
> list, it still goes directly to the person posting.  Some weird other
> addresses were also added.

We're doing the best we can, but only so much is within our
means.  Certain people have caused us a substantial moderation burden.

> I won't post the person's name here, but moderators: if you want I can
> share the details with you directly.  Email me directly if you would
> like to work on this and need my help.

Feel free to forward me any details and we can see if it's anything
we're not already aware of.

Happy hacking.

-- 
Mike Gerwitz

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