MC Call Minutes, Mar 19th

[Richard A. Johnson]

On Friday 21 March 2008, Scott Kitterman wrote:
[...]
| So we are powerless.  All that can be done is say pretty please don't annoy
| us.

In a way, yes. I think one of the recommendations of community members is to be 
respectful and act like an adult. It is kind of impossible to really stop 
someone on the Internet (legally of course).

[...]

| As far as I know, he was asked to desist.  He didn't.  Nothing further was
| done (merging the LP accounts is status keeping).

There was actually quite a bit done. There was a lot of communication back and 
forth. You can blame me for not making this stuff public. The reason being, 
going out on a public mailing list and airing "dirty laundry" for one is 
embarrassing to the person(s) in question, and it isn't the right thing to do. 
It was me who said we can do the merge, file the report, and then just put that 
in the minutes and anyone who is interested will read it. I just didn't want 
the issues aired publicly, and if anyone thinks that was wrong of me, I am 
sorry, but I would do it a million more times. One thing I have always learned 
is when you have an issue with someone, you don't make your issues known 
publicly, you pull that person aside and you fix it. There are actually quite a 
few members in the community that I am grateful for having done this when 
dealing with me in the past. If I screw up, I don't want people attacking me or 
airing my laundry to the general masses. So it was this attitude that made me 
push really hard for the MC to keep some of the processes hush hush. I know 
this is an open and transparent community, but it shouldn't be open and 
transparent to the point that someone feels threatened almost.

| So there really is no consequence.  The fact that he may have chosen to
| reduce his "contribution" or hide it better doesn't change the fact that
| nothing more than a request was ever done.

What was the original request? I apologize for not knowing it as I am sure I 
have probably already seen it.

| As far as coming up with a general policy, what's been done?  It's been
| clear since this case came up that something is needed.  So far I've heard
| no request for input from the community, seen no proposals, and the MC call
| minutes (which I'm really glad are being done) don't show a lot of evidence
| of progress.

A general policy still needs to be drafted. It is really hard creating a policy 
on something you really can't control. Just like the Code of Conduct, we can 
only hope people respect it. If they don't there isn't anything we can, unless 
they are an Ubuntu member or such and those titles can be removed. With the 
previous incident, there was no title to remove nor a way to banish the person 
from the community.

| If MOTU doesn't have sufficient control of it's environment to effectively
| protect it's members from outside abuse, then that's something we need to
| work on.

I agree, but what can we do really? All we can do is ask for the person to be 
respectful. If they don't, then all we can do is choose to not work with them, 
throw in an /ignore if need be, and continue on with our work. It really does 
suck sometimes and I am with you on that, it is just tough trying to enforce 
the near impossible.

| Was it asked to have his account suspended?  Who said no?  What can the
| MOTU community do to solve this problem?  Do I need to write a getting
| people banned from Launchpad spec and take it to UDS?

Yes it was asked, but what good would it have done? This person simply recreated 
a new account and went back to work.

As for the "getting people banned from LP spec," I would say give it a shot. 
That was one of our first questions and we were told LP doesn't have that 
possibility at this time. It would be easy to ban an IP, but then there is Tor, 
and other anonymizers out there that would allow the person to create yet 
another account.

I wish there was a way to make this all better, but I just don't see how to at 
this time.

-- 
Richard A. Johnson
nixternal at kubuntu.org
GPG Key: 0x2E2C0124
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