[Python-ideas] Toxic forum

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Cleaning out the Ccs, presumably subscribed.

Nicholas Chammas writes:

 > From what I’ve seen on this list in my relatively brief time here,
 > this forum is mostly fine and the participants generally behave
 > like adults. I don’t read every thread, so maybe I don’t have an
 > accurate picture. From what I’ve seen, there is the occasional
 > spat, where people just need to step away from the keyboard for a
 > bit and cool off, but I wouldn’t consider the environment
 > toxic. That seems like too strong a word.

I would go further, and say that use of the word says more about those
who used it than about the list.

 > What I feel we lack are better tools for checking bad behavior and
 > nudging people in the right direction, apart from having
 > discussions like this.

I disagree.  I think this is a scale problem: we have too many people
posting, some of them new or infrequent, to prevent (1) people getting
triggered by one word in an otherwise excellent post and going off in
their replies, (2) intemperate rebuttals to the replies in (1), or (3)
interminably long threads sustained by people who don't yet know when
not to post.

If (1) and (2) can be solved by moderation, then you pretty much have
a toxic channel.

The best solution to (3) is not channel-wide moderation, but killing/
muting the thread or specific posters in your MUA.  If you're going to
participate in channels as high-traffic as the Python lists, and still
try to hold down a day job, this is one of the very few features where
I'm willing to say "bite the damn bullet and get a REAL MUA!"  It
really improves life.  If most people have muted the thread, there's
little to no harm in letting those who still care continue.  This also
has the advantage that you don't have to wait for a thread to be of
use to nobody to kill it.  You can do that now!

 > These things would have been pretty handy in several recent and
 > heated discussions, including the PEP 505 one I participated in a
 > couple of weeks ago.

PEP 505 was an example of none of the above as far as I can see,
though.  I think it's tough to find places where you could invoke a
thread freeze or a poster ban and not get a storm of pushback.  And
it's kinda hard to see how killing a thread on an open PEP is useful.

 > How much of this is possible on a mailing list?

Poster bans, whether temporary or indefinite, are possible.

Thread freezing or closing are in principle possible, but they'd be
really annoying to posters due to the nature of email, I suspect
(posts would bounce and clutter up your inbox later, rather than
having the "post reply" function disabled in the UI).  Nor are they
implemented in GNU Mailman, although spam-checking could probably be
coerced to serve (ban messages where In-Reply-To or References
contains recent IDs in the frozen/closed thread).  This would require
some additional scripts for efficient admin, and MUA tooling to
extract References would be nice, but all that doable in an afternoon
or two.

 > But I remember a year or two ago there was a proposal to move
 > python-ideas to a different format, perhaps a Discourse forum or
 > similar, which would provide some handy administration tools and
 > other UX improvements.

Going back to that discussion now that Guido is less involved might
get you a different answer.  (He was not a fan of Discourse, and while
he told me he likes Zulip at PyCon Cleveland, he also said he sees it
as independent of the function of mailing lists.  He also said Mailman
3's HyperKitty forum-like functionality sounds like it will be good
enough for him soon enough, so he'd probably be opposed to moving to
forum software on the "don't break what don't need fixing" principle.
All that is almost moot now.)

 > Overall, I don’t think we have a people problem on this list as
 > much as we have an administration tooling problem.

That's what @jack says, too. :-/  Sorry, that's a bit too snarky, but
the fundamental problem is that *people* post too much.  That's a
*people* problem even though there are no problem people, and the
people that are deciding what to post aren't the admins (unless you'll
accept out-and-out censorship, or an editorial board if you prefer a
euphemism).  So I don't see an admin tooling solution here.

Steve

-- 
Associate Professor              Division of Policy and Planning Science
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/     Faculty of Systems and Information
Email: turnbull at sk.tsukuba.ac.jp                   University of Tsukuba
Tel: 029-853-5175                 Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN