[kde-community] Code of Conduct violations

[Valorie Zimmerman]

Hi folks, I'm replying to this old thread because there has been some work
behind the scenes on this banning discussion. Response below.

On Tue, Aug 6, 2013 at 10:54 AM, Anne Wilson <cannewilson at googlemail.com>wrote:

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> On 05/08/13 12:29, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > Some time ago a user started a page on http://community.kde.org on
> > which he detailed things that he considered to be wrong with KDE
> > software.  The comments were largely subjective, and in many cases
> > demonstrated things that were not the general experience.  At that
> > point he was asked to substantiate his complaints by pointing to
> > bug reports.
> >
> > That strategy backfired, as he then began creating a barrage of
> > bug reports, creating a good deal of work for triagers who have to
> > decide whether the report is a duplicate of some other, or invalid
> > for any reason.  Up to now people have been very patient with him,
> > but it has come to our notice that he has crossed a line.
> >
> > He has now begun defacing other pages, adding links to his
> > comments page and/or his bug reports.  This basically results in
> > what should be "official" information, posted by developers of the
> > application in question, being questionable, in that the reader
> > cannot easily differentiate his input.
> >
> > This contributor's input has repeatedly violated the Code of
> > Conduct ( http://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/). In view of this we
> > have reached the point where we believe that he should be banned
> > from posting on the wikis, and his comments completely removed.
> > This will now take place.
>
> A 2-week ban has been put in place and the contributor has been
> invited to discuss the problem and possible resolution.  If resolution
> is reached the ban will be immediately removed.  If no resolution
> appears to be possible we will go ahead, make the ban permanent and
> remove his content.
>
> I think this is the first time in 5 years that we have had to take
> such a step.  We don't do it lightly, and still hope that the
> contributor will talk to us and enable suitable conclusion to the story.
>
> Anne
>

The CWG was asked to take a look at this banning, because 1. an analysis of
this user's posts did not appear to violate the CoC, and 2. there was no
response to the ban from the banned user.

The analysis was quite complete, and can be found on the KDE-WWW list
archives:

http://kde.6490.n7.nabble.com/Draft-message-to-Community-ML-comments-please-tp1539530p1539662.html

In light of the facts, the web team has been asked by the CWG to look again
at the evidence, and re-think this ban. It does not seem justified to us.

My own personal opinion: I love seeing users with this sort of energy. I
wish he had been recruited into the Quality team, or BugSquad, or both. I
hope that someone from the web team will contact him and suggest that.

Valorie, for the CWG
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