[clug] Member Moderation - Bryan Kilgallin

Sat Jul 6 04:19:30 UTC 2019

Believe it or not I actually actively lurk on this list and have been
keenly following this situation but have been conscientiously holding off
weighing in as I'm not an active member of CLUG community (partially
because of some if its quirks), but I had a nice chat with Neill about the
situation at CPUG and after Alastair's discussion here want to wade in.

I want to add my experience from a stint on the CoC committe at the
international level in the python community (from back a few years ago,
before I had a family): we had a phase at that time where it was the
first/second sort of wave of needing to evict embedded people from our
community who were known to be problematic. I can only imagine how some of
the (well known) people I was on the committees with would have responded
if some of the Bryan's behaviour descibed/displayed were in front of them
-- I think they would have been very motivated to act. All of what I saw
was less clearly problematic than the behaviour described in this situation.

These are all volunteer communities -- the social economics are
straightforward: if high quality possible participants/members of the
community are turning away/leaving/avoiding because of *one person's
behaviour*, then that person is given 3 warnings to change their behaviour
to community standard and if there are continued complaints then they're
banned (what this means is another story).

At least 2 high-contributing, high-profile members of that community were
necessarily evicted after a lengthy process as they refused to acknowledge
their behaviour was outside of expectations and refused to change (there
was invariably kicking-and-screaming-and-very-very-long-ranty-emails/posts
also).

What is occurring for CLUG here seems completely in line with modern CoC
enforcement, though a difference is that we had some (albeit imperfect)
mechanisms defined.

Further: if some outspoken members of the community are saying-out-loud
that they're deterred that means many multiples more are just quietly
evaporating from the community (and people like me are canaries for this).

It's the same reason why most top tier employers no longer hire people with
destructive social attitudes, despite any special (usually technical)
talents they might have: the damage outweighs the contribution. Even more
so for tenuously-held-together volunteer communities. Boundaries need to be
set for the greater good. The vast majority of people are deeply reassured
by having social boundaries defined.

For disclosure: personally I'd love to attend CLUG but, a) I'm merely a
'low" power user, while I've been pretty exclusive to linux for
boxes-I-do-work on for more decades than most people would think, I don't
give anything back and b) I'm chicken. As I was telling Neill the
"sore-thumb" factor for me still an ongoing matter that I wish I were a big
enough person to be entirely past, but even at this age/stage I'm not.

FWIW CPUG which I believe technically *is* a spin-off from CLUG is ticking
along, we've just got a good organising team together in the last couple of
months and figured out space at ANU (thanks again to Alastair for the last
talk in the old space, and I'm confident I owe you pizza).

We had 30 people come along to CPUG last week and a nice meaty talk and
demo on NCI of the cool distributed computing tool Dask. IT WAS (much
acronyms) VERY TECHNICAL. hint hint. Lovely vibe overall.

Also Michael, I heard python, you could discuss with our people over at
CPUG also? I'm an Aussie Broadband customer and have had curiosities about
their network (definitely had a low-key poke myself, nothing in your league
though). Suffice to say sounds like interesting matter. If you could be in
some way tempted to come and discuss this over at CPUG we could make
arrangements ...

Sorry for interjecting, but I do (at a distance) deep down care about CLUG,
and wanted to add a small vote of confidence from an outlying wing of what
I guess is still considered the community.
---
Elena Williams
Github: elena <http://github.com/elena/>

On Thu, 4 Jul 2019 at 14:45, Alastair D'Silva via linux <
linux at lists.samba.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 2019-07-04 at 02:34 +0000, James A Sparks via linux wrote:
> > All,
> >
> >   I have lurked on the CLUG list for many years and have contributed
> > only a few times.  I live in the USA and I have never attended a CLUG
> > meeting. I feel the need to contribute here.
> >   I do not know Bryan and I have tried to read some offending posts,
> > but I have missed the worst of the current problem.
> >
>
> Let's make it clear, the latest incident is that de posted defamatory
> statements about one of our volunteer speakers on his personal site,
> and then posted a link to that to this list.
>
> He has since altered that content.
>
> He has outright refused to apologise, even after prompting from people
> who help run the community.
>
> On an ongoing basis, he responds poorly to mailing lists, with the urge
> to respond to pretty much every mail as if it was a personal message to
> himelf, primarily with random, offtopic statements that don't make
> sense in the context of the thread.
>
> >  I have worked in the Developmentally Disabled community, including
> > with people on the Autism Spectrum, as an IT worker but I am not
> > formally trained in DD. I have some hands on experiense working with
> > some difficult residents of this community.  It takes much patience
> > and understanding. The most disruptive residents were not always
> > disruptive and they made great contributions. Sometimes they needed
> > time-out or moderation. I struggle to express myself with respectfull
> > language, but some people live in another world where rules that we
> > comonly understand do not make sense to people in the DD community.
> >
>
> Bryan needs specialist care, and as an informal community, we are not
> trained, equipped, or desire to cater to his demands.
>
> He has previously stated that he joins these communities on
> recommendation from his therapist for social contact, but he has not
> been coached (or is unwilling to take on board) how to participate in
> these communities.
>
> I used to help run the local hackerspace (which was a spin-off from
> CLUG), where he first appeared and spent a couple of years terrorising
> the community. We saw the same problem, people were unwilling to
> participate in the community due to his abrasive personality and
> expectation that everyone must bend to his will. The committee of this
> group (who were all volunteers) spent hundreds of hours dealing with
> him, to the point of seeing mediators. We tried to reach out and
> accommodate, but his unwillingness to treat others which the same
> respect (to the point of personally attacking my wife, who up until
> that point was his biggest champion and tried to accommodate as much as
> possible) won him no allies.
>
> It came to head when he decided it was a good idea to bring a gun into
> the space. Now, I'm sure that in the US, you would think "so what?",
> but here in Australia, bringing a gun out into the open is a really,
> really big thing.
>
> He was then banned from the hackerspace and any further efforts to help
> him integrate stopped.
>
> >  I have found the CLUG community to be compassionate and
> > understanding, and putting up with a disrupter needs increased
> > compassion and understanding. E-mail moderation is not a bad thing in
> > extreme cases of abuse. I have seen nothing that suggests a total ban
> > of any distrupter. That would be my fear.
> >
>
> Given that he:
> a. will not accept responsibility for his actions
> b. will not apologise for his actions
> c. contintually disrupts presentations & email threads
> d. has not learnt from the many, many similar incidents in the past,
> even when things have been spelt out very explicitly for him
>
> Can you explain why we should continue to subject the community to his
> abuse?
>
> >  I hope I am not misunderstanding this discussion and that I am able
> > to contribute to other people's understanding.
> >
>
> I think you are, you need a lot more context than what you have
> gleaned.
>
> --
> Alastair D'Silva           mob: 0423 762 819
> skype: alastair_dsilva
> Twitter: @EvilDeece
> blog: http://alastair.d-silva.org
>
>
>
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