Message filtering on this forum (was Re: Apology)

Philippe Cloutier chealer at gmail.com
Sat Apr 3 15:00:04 BST 2021


Le 2021-03-26 à 20:02, Valorie Zimmerman a écrit :
> Hi Niccolò,
>
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 3:26 PM Niccolò Ve 
> <niccolo.venerandi at gmail.com <mailto:niccolo.venerandi at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi.
>
>     > Posts about Richard Stallman are off-topic and will not be allowed.
>
>     This is... plain out wrong. Off topic means off topic.
>
>
> The KDE Community list exists, according to the subscription page: 
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community 
> <https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community>
>
>     The purpose of the mailing list is to provide a place for
>     non-technical information and discussions which are relevant to
>     the KDE community as a whole. All people who consider themselves
>     to be part of the KDE community are invited to join. Conversations
>     on the mailing list are respectful, considerate, polite and
>     constructive following our KDE Code of Conduct.
>     The list collects announcements, information and results from
>     discussions in other places and offers a place to get feedback on
>     non-technical questions or plans of relevance for the whole KDE
>     community.
>
>
> Anything else is off-topic.
>
>     A RMS reply to a thread about RMS is NOT off topic.
>
>
> The original post was about the FSF and their governance.


First of all, I find it unfortunate to be discussing messages most 
readers don't even have access to, and I want to thank Niccolò for 
reporting his experience.

Although I am not sure which exact thread Niccolò referred to, having 
followed kde-community fairly well recently, I very much doubt that the 
thread he replied to was not about RMS (even if it was also about FSF 
and its governance).


> Unfortunately "RMS pro/con" hijacked that thread and caused this list 
> to be moderated.
>
>     If you want to shutdown the discussion, just say so.
>
>
> I did so.


I don't know if the following is what Niccolò meant, but if some 
messages sent to this forum were indeed refused due to topicality, there 
is a problem.

This mailing list is not a web forum and threads cannot be "locked". If 
the new administration now rejects specific discussions which were 
already started, replies to the specific (sub-)threads indicating 
shutdown should be sent, so that participants do not waste their time 
writing mails which end up rejected.


If, as Valorie seems to say, the worry goes beyond specific discussions, 
we first need to avoid false dichotomies. Topicality is relative, and 
messages about RMS are certainly neither the most topical nor the least 
topical on this forum.

If forum administrators consider any discussion about RMS (or any other 
topic which many/most participants consider potentially topical) to be 
too little topical for kde-community, this should be communicated *with 
sufficient prominence*. Indicating that a topic is rejected in a mail is 
better than nothing, but has extremely low prominence in a mail titled 
"Apology".

The ideal place to warn about rejections would be in the forum's 
description. We could, for example, either:

 1. specify in kde-community's description that discussion about RMS is
    never considered sufficiently topical
 2. specify in kde-community's description that only highly topical
    discussion is accepted
 3. or add a link from kde-community's description to a page clarifying
    its filtering criteria


>     The fact that RMS is not "the issue" (he's surely _an_ issue...)
>     does not change that
>     the kde community email was about RMS. I sent an email 10 hours
>     *before* this apology.
>     It was rejected just*now.* As offtopic.
>
>
> I live in the US; most of the other mods live in Europe. If they had 
> wanted to act on your email they could have done so, but I believe I 
> was the one to reject your post. There was nothing time-sensitive in it.
>
>     I did not like that thread, but this handling of the situation is
>     plain out bad. This apology
>     mail only made things worse. If I did not know about KDE, I'd say
>     that they are censoring
>     the discussion. Instead I'm just embarrassed.
>
>
> Requiring lists to be on-topic is not censorship, which *governments* do.


I am not sure that defining censorship is helpful to this discussion, 
but note that censorship is not only governmental.


> [...]
>
>
>     Il giorno ven 26 mar 2021 alle ore 20:36 Valorie Zimmerman
>     <valorie.zimmerman at gmail.com <mailto:valorie.zimmerman at gmail.com>>
>     ha scritto:
>
>         Hello my friends,
>
>         When I put this list on emergency moderation, I felt that this
>         was necessary. It still seems so, but I want to lift
>         moderation as soon as possible.
>
>         I may have played a part in continuing the negative thread
>         that "wouldn't die" by expressing my own opinion. I should
>         have followed my own advice and walked away after writing my
>         email and then removed parts which expressed a personal opinion.
>
>         While I may disagree with others about the value of RMS to
>         Free Software, he is not the issue. The more organizations
>         I've been involved with, the more I realize the value of good
>         governance. The FSF has been critical to the growth of Free
>         Software, and the recent news about their Board is very worrying.
>
>         My statement did not do anything to convey that or to help,
>         and for that I am truly sorry.
>
>         Posts about Richard Stallman are off-topic and will not be
>         allowed.
>
>         Thanks to those of you who called my attention to my part in
>         all of this.
>
>         All the best to each of you, to KDE and all of the Free
>         software communities,
>
>         Valorie
>
>         -- 
>         http://about.me/valoriez <http://about.me/valoriez> -
>         pronouns: she/her
>
>
>
>     -- 
>     Niccolò Venerandi
>
>
>
> -- 
> http://about.me/valoriez <http://about.me/valoriez> - pronouns: she/her
>
>
-- 
This mail's original content (non-quoted parts) is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0.

Philippe Cloutier
http://www.philippecloutier.com

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