[clug] Member Moderation - Bryan Kilgallin

Bob Edwards bob at cs.anu.edu.au
Sat Jul 6 05:13:56 UTC 2019


Thanks Elena, for your thoughts and tips (and great reports about the
Canberra Python User Group).

Could I please ask folk not to quote Alastairs most recent post in this
thread? It raises a number of historical issues which are not directly
relevant to the current situation.

Please remember that Bryan is a fellow human being and deserves to be
treated respectfully. Sometimes he is even a decent friendly guy to
talk to and occasionally he does manage to contribute positive things
to CLUG.

Sometimes he exhibits bad/very bad behaviour and that is what we are
trying to deal with here. Some/many find his bad behaviour extremely
hard to deal with. I suspect (but don't know) that he finds his bad
behaviour hard to deal with as well - at least the consequences of it.

Anyway, lets try and move on now. Hopefully, one day, we can get to a
place where we don't have to moderate Bryan's e-mails any longer (I
suspect some will doubt that, but I am ever the optimist).

cheers (and happy Buster Release Day!),
Bob Edwards.

On 6/7/19 2:19 pm, Elena Williams via linux wrote:
> 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/>
> 




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