don't quite understand mailing list

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 10:03 PM, Ethan Furman <ethan at stoneleaf.us> wrote:
> On 09/06/2018 07:40 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> Ethan, you are a great contributor on many of the Python mailing lists,
>> but your tone-policing is inappropriate, and your CoC banning of Rick and
>> Bart back in July was an excessive and uncalled for misuse of moderator
>> power.
>>
>> To my shame, I didn't say anything at the time, but I won't be
>> intimidated any longer by fear of the CoC and accusations of incivility.
>> I'm speaking up now because your reply to Reto is unwelcoming, unhelpful
>> and disrespectful, and coming from a moderator who has been known to ban
>> people, that makes it even more hostile.
>
>
> Actually, you did say something at the time:
> https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list

Not sure what this link is stating. Did you intend to link directly to
a post? Or are you saying generally that "stuff was said, check the
archive"?

> What I find most interesting in this post, though, is your declaration "I
> won't be intimidated any longer by fear of the CoC" -- it doesn't strike me
> as a scary document; it basically says, "be nice".

It doesn't have to be worded scarily. Suppose the CoC simply said "be
nice" - literally just those two words. It would actually be *more*
scary, because its power would be far more arbitrary and at the whim
of the individual moderators.

Perhaps the mods would be less scary if there were more words in the
CoC, such that we could point to section 5, subsection b2q, paragraph
theta, as an explanation of the ban. I don't think it'd make
python-list a better place, but at least it'd remove any accusations
of "misuse of moderator power".

For what it's worth, I support Ethan's actions - including when I've
been on the receiving end of the criticism. The banning of Rick and
Bart was most assuredly NOT misuse of power, at least not in my
opinion (which, I'm aware, has zero weight, but hey, we all have one).
Maybe people are forgetting that python-list IS a moderated list, and
should be treated as one?

ChrisA